<div style="background-color:#443266; border:1px solid black; margin:10px 10px; padding-left: 5px; padding-right: 5px;"><div style="background-color:#C3C3E5; border:1px solid black; margin:10px 10px; padding-left: 5px; padding-right: 5px;"><span style="color: #443266"><img alt="" src="http://orig09.deviantart.net/715f/f/2016/072/4/f/rsz_1woman_308590_960_720_by_lordwizardhat-d9v0ayw.png" style="float:left; padding:6px;"/>★<span style="font-family: Edwardian Script ITC;"><span style="font-size: 200%; line-height: 116%;">V I V I E N N E</span></span>  ★<br/>It started as a prickle in her skin. <br/><br/>A light, ghostly tapping across her neck and arms, a chill down her spine like a thousand needles. As Vivienne chose a seat near the doors of the train, using the pole to lower herself down gently, she regretted following the woman. The train car didn't feel right. It was strange: it almost felt like the inanimate, thoughtless machine had....feelings. <br/><br/>It was the smell, mostly, a sickly sweet scent that was usually attached to Vivienne's worst patients. The smell that signaled their last appointment, and not because they had been cured, but had found an escape. The darkest escape.<br/><br/>Death. <br/><br/>She couldn't do anything for those who brought that scent with them into her office. All Vivienne could do was look into their eyes, and give them a last burst of hope and peace, any kind of comfort from the monsters of decay in the heart. The monsters often jumped and squirmed, attempting to bury into her own mind, but she fought them off through happy memories of her life. Her parents, her husband, children, graduation. The happy memories could chase away the dark, but only for her. The goodbyes as her patients left for the last time were the hardest. <br/><br/>The strongest emotions always lingered in the room after it had passed, imprinted into the very being being of every object that was near it. Vivienne would never explicitly use the word <span style="font-style: italic">aura</span>, but that was the most accurate description of the imprint. Vivienne looked out the window as the train lurched abruptly to a start, touching her fingers lightly to the metal bar between the windows. The woman she had followed, and the dread-locked young man had both been discussing an incident with a train. Had it been this train car? She had never known an imprint to last that long.<br/><br/>Still, Vivienne's skin continued to prickle.<br/><br/>Vivienne began tapping her thighs with her fingers rhythmically, a nervous tick developed from years of self-calming techniques. She was playing a song, a lullaby her mother had sang to her as a child. The name had faded away over time, but the notes were still there. Vivienne had taken piano lessons as a child and became quite skilled in the technical movements, sweeping her hands across the keys with a speed not usually known to her age. Despite this, her music teacher had told her that she had no <span style="font-style: italic">true</span> talent because the notes she played were mechanical and unemotional, ironic when compared to her special gift. Vivienne's detachment to the music led to her downfall in the area, and she substituted the lessons for a math tutor.<br/><br/>It seemed that the dread-locked man was still determined in speaking to the interesting woman. Vivienne looked at the pair with an unobtrusive eye, something she had perfected from her years of <span style="font-style: italic">watching</span>. She would never consider it to be spying, but from an observer, the unintentional deepness of her view would make most people uncomfortable, as it had when she was in school. Through experience Vivienne learned not to mention anything she had learned through her gift, but to instead pick up when people were agitated, frustrated, or upset, and work around lowering their negative energy levels. Vivienne straightened as she watched the woman pace from one end of the train car to the other, the man right at her heels like an inquisitive animal. He wasn't letting off any unpleasant emotions; he simply seemed like a passionate, curious man. The woman was filled with haste, and worry. Vivienne felt a pang of concern, gathering her thoughts. Her eyes rested on the woman's own soft green ones for a fraction of a second, before Vivienne turned away so as not to gather attention. So it was a man, not showing up when he should have. Vivienne was surprised as disappointment filtered through her head. Perhaps she had been expecting something more interesting, from the woman who had <span style="font-style: italic">seen</span>.<br/><br/>So focused was the empath, that when another woman on the train muttered, Vivienne almost jumped in her seat. The newcomer into Vivienne's observation had wild hair and the general air of organized disorderliness. If Vivienne knew anything, she knew that this woman owned multiple cats. Not that it was a bad thing. Usually the least organized but caring people of the world had a richer inner mind, Vivienne had noticed.<br/><br/>This sudden inclusion of another individual caused Vivienne to take the whole train car into account. A bearded man with a strange amulet was slouched in the corner, fingers scrolling across the screen of a tablet. Vivienne was well-acquainted with the newer touch-screen technologies, though they occasionally frustrated her. Her daughter Sam had always been the techie in the family, helping her brothers and parents to keep in the loop with the newest advances in computerss. It seemed that Vivienne's list-loving and logical problem-solving nature had manifested itself in that way with Sam, always picking things apart to understand them. <br/><br/>None of Vivienne's children had acquired her special, otherworldly gift, to her slight disappointment. She had never told them of it, hiding it from everyone except her husband. She had told him on their wedding night. Naturally, she had been scared, scared he would think of her as some sort of witch, or cheater, or demon. He had simply smiled, taking her hand after she had explained, and proclaimed, "I always wondered how you knew exactly what to say!" <br/><br/>The memory caused Vivienne to tear up slightly, and she wiped at the corners of her eyes with her cardigan sleeve. She wasn't used to memories getting the best of her, but over the years, her vigilance had been wearing off. It was like a protective mechanism, for her to hide her negative emotions, even though she occasionally pried into others'. She had only ever raised her voice once in her life, at her brother after he refused to pass her a toy. He had been so hurt that Vivienne cried harder than he had, upset that she had injured him so deeply. Vivienne understood the stabbing pains that words caused to others. Now she spoke softly, or firmly if she had to make her point be heard. She was kind, but not a pushover. Just because sometimes what she had to say stung others, it still had to be said. So much was clear when her parents had gone through their divorce, and Vivienne became the mediator and messenger, until she became fed up with the pair and informed both of them that they had to fight their own battles.<br/><br/>Vivienne was not prepared for her own battle, soon to come up the winding train tracks.<br/></span></div></div>