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Perhaps the most important thing Gustav st Germain noticed in a career of noticing was that Carol was going to be great. And she was.
She was great as a little girl, following gently behind him, camera taking up most of her chest. She knew little but how to learn, which in the end was all one need to know. She was denied a normal childhood because of this, but perhaps that was for the best as it was best for cacti to be denied the amount of water given normal plants. Different things are needed to thrive, and beneath the soft eyes and mousy hair was a desire for something more than what girls in her time were usually given. She may not have earned all the points, but there was something to be given just for showing up.
She was great as an adolescent, capturing a time that was so apt to slip away. She was shaped by her experiences the way tree’s rings are, each adding to a greater whole without changing what was already there. She turned her energy and her empathy to her advantage, willingly offering kindness to the strange and outcasted that could be won over with nothing but a hotdog and a smile. She took what little power she had and used it to be where she needed to be, which was near where the information was. Like any young women, she blossomed in pieces, clinging to some parts of childhood while throwing others freely to the wind. Still, despite the flashlight attacks and pouting faces, the woman she would become began to show through.
She was great as a young woman, holding her camera as the weapon it was. At this point she was no longer an apprentice, but a fine newswoman of her own volition. She was a bit to involved with the various characters of the city for Gustav’s taste, but every time he thought her connections would be her undoing they became her strength instead. She had managed to tame the immortal mouse, both literally and metaphorically, and it took a place of pride on her shoulder as she moved through stories and lovers like the trains she used to ride with him from city to city. She paid no attention to what the world wanted of other women of her age and beauty, and it seemed the world took the hint. She was far from the daily days first female employee( though they never seemed to have enough) but she was by far their first Carol and no one smart enough to work at the daily days could fail to notice the difference.
She was great as Gustav had to leave her, holding onto the shiny printed copies of so much that was lost. It wasn’t even a question that she would replace him, in fact his famous umbrella had barely left his own hands when it became hers and she put on the grand mantle of the vice presidency as easily as one would don a coat. She took her own apprentice, another little girl who was not suited for what the world wanted and still insisted they took trains despite it being fully the age of the automobile. For that was the struggle of one that age, to find what out what is tradition and what is just old. She did this and replaced what was old with traditions of her own. She was in every way a woman, a vice president and herself, all three merging together into a being that could do anything but be stopped.