Amaryllis Coquelicot: A Wildcard Week Short

Alpha Belt
Mortal Realm
Rivers’ Residence
2015

Amaryllis – Amy – was fiercely protective of Elle Rivers to the point of nearly being the human representation of her element.

Storm.

It was commonly thought that those who shared the same Element shared similar personalities. More often than not, this seemed to be the case. A common trait tended to be shared; however, what seemed to go unnoticed was how the Element coincided with more than just the personality.

Motives and desires played a heavy role as well. With that in mind, one could even say that the Element of a person played a part in developing them into the person they were destined to be – as cliché as that sounded.

No matter how cliché, however, Amy found herself thinking that it was the case – when it came to her, at least.

Ever since she had been assigned to Elle Rivers, Amy found herself promising that she would do a much better job. The promise, however, became something hard to keep as the young Storm Original started to grow. As Elle grew up, Amy found herself questioning why Elle had been assigned to her, of all people, in the first place.

At first, it seemed as though she and Elle were polar opposites. As a child, Elle was difficult to connect to. She understood that Watchers were merely there to watch, to guide, to help out when the Assignment needed it. Additionally, she had thought that the less she would interfere with the Assignment’s life, the less the Assignment (and the Watcher) would have to suffer later on.

But as time passed, Amy found herself wondering if they were destined to suffer in the first place. (Damn you, Alpha.) Disguises were harder and harder to keep. Finally, Amy had no choice but to reveal herself to Elle one stormy night.

Coincidence? Maybe not.

Surprisingly, her Assignment warmed up to her quickly. Elle’s thoughts became easier to read once the two connected with each other; but at the same time, she became both easier and harder to deal with. In a very frustrating way.

Elle was a hard book to crack open and read. The Storm Original made sure that a limited amount – or better yet, no one – would manage to get inside. As the years passed, though, a number proved otherwise.

Amy was one of them.

The more she got to know Elle, the more she found herself finding similarities between them that ran deeper than mere Element. Both parties observed keenly. Both parties had a desire to protect. Both parties had the same saying: resent and remember.

Both parties had a storm brewing inside them. Amy’s storm, however, was different.

Amy gave off the impression that she was ready to burst any moment – a wrong move and she would be set off. A wrong word and she would tear the other to pieces. A slight threat to her Assignment and the assailant would find themselves regretting the threat in the first place. Amy was a storm which was ready to explode at any given moment and the results were never pretty.

Amaryllis – a plant with blooming flowers of red, pink and white. Delicate. Beautiful. Flowers which could easily be trampled and uprooted when the storms came. Flowers which were seen as pleasing to the eye and nothing really more on the inside; put on display to the pleasure of others.

Amy was not delicate.

Amy didn’t exactly live to her name, not really. She wasn’t delicate. She wasn’t someone who could easily be trampled or uprooted when disaster came. Amy didn’t live to be put on display like she was supposed to be before her duties as a Watcher –

She had discarded it long ago, and instead embraced something else.

Amy was fierce, Amy could be coarse and she wouldn’t care if others thought it was disgraceful. Amy lived for herself and decided that she would live for herself after that incident. Away went the frills and the life she had grown accustomed to; she was rough around the edges and embraced that she was.

Instead of being uprooted, she stayed firmly on the ground and challenged whatever went in her way. In other times, she was the one uprooting others and throwing them off someone else. In moments which Elle was feeling unsafe, Amy would bear her teeth and embrace who she really was and who she was destined to be. In those moments, she embraced her Element and her task at hand.

A Watcher.

A Storm.

Slowly, Amy glanced at her sleeping Assignment form her position on the floor. It was close to 4AM and she took it upon herself to force Elle to bed, threatening that if Elle didn’t go to sleep, she’d use Blake.

(Of course, it was an empty threat. An unspoken rule amongst the two Watchers was that Blake was to never ever enter Elle’s room. Even if Amy was there, too.)

She had expected for Elle to refute her and perhaps challenge, but to her surprise, the young Storm went to sleep without a single protest. Amy then thought that her sick feeling had to be that bad. Surprisingly, her Assignment hadn’t even thought to marathon any of the shows she had been planning to binge watch.

When she was certain that Elle was a hundred percent asleep, she stood up from her position and quietly exited the room. Blake was seated on the couch in the living room. Instead of sitting next to him, she merely stood near the piece of furniture and watched as his eyes glanced from the screen to her.

“Elle sleeping already? That’s a surprise,” Blake remarked. Amy rolled her eyes, unamused at the other Watcher’s comment.

“Give her a break. She’s feeling sick and she has to wake up in a few hours.”

“I was just saying.” Amy said nothing and Blake turned to the screen again. After a moment’s worth of silence, she turned to go back to Elle’s room, perhaps read yet another of the girl’s to-read books. She shook her head at the thought of more than fifty books waiting to be read. “Ams.”

“What?”

The dark-haired male said nothing at first, which irked the brunette. She spun and turned to the other, who still had his gaze on the television screen.

“Blake. Spit it out. What the fuck.”

With that, the other Watcher shrugged. “Let’s keep an eye on her more, alright?” Amy reverted back to silence. Blake took that as a chance to continue. “We haven’t been around lately. Let’s try to make it up to her.”

“I know that,” she answered in a clipped tone. She turned back to Elle’s room, keeping her head high. “And I already am.”

Blake said nothing, hiding a smile as footsteps retreated back into the room.