Nepenthe • Something that can make you forget grief or suffering.
Never feeling like they belonged was a feeling that Lissa Dragomir lived with, even with her family and life long best friend, although they aided in that feeling not being so strong...
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"How do you know that word?" Kate questioned in a defensive tone, one that matched the one etched on Lissa's face. "How do you?" Lissa countered, her tone assertive.
"My mother and aunt taught them to me and my brother." Kate replied, narrowing her eyes to the pale blonde.
"I was taught about them by the school I attended." Lissa replied as soon as Kate finished speaking, her own eyes narrowing at Kate.
A moment of silence surrounded the two for mere seconds before Kate broke it, "You're like my mother." her voice was still low but filled with realization, followed by a small laugh that was clearly filled with bewilderment and mock amusement.
Before Lissa had a chance to question what Kate meant by her words, Kate turned her eyes back to Lissa, this time nothing but understanding shining in the forest green eyes.
"You're a vampire, a Moroi."
Lissa's heart dropped at Kate's words, only to begin thundering its way back to her chest. She'd ran from the Academy because she was feeling watched, and yet here she was sitting with Kate in a church. She looked at Kate with seemingly new eyes, trying to understand if she was a Moroi like her or a Dhampir, which seeing the fuller and plumper figure, Lissa knew that Kate was a Dhampir.
"You're a Dhampir." Lissa whispered, shock and honesty clear in her tone. Kate's brows furrowed slightly at the name, it was one that she hadn't heard in many years, one that her mother and aunt avoided saying in the vicinity of Kate and her twin.
"Well, my father wasn't Moroi." Kate replied, not denying the term but not fully accepting it either.
"Who was your mother?" Lissa then questioned, she knew most of the names of the Royal Moroi's, and she half hoped that Kate wasn't related to them. It was uncommon and almost forbidden for Moroi women to get pregnant with Dhampir children, it was more common for Dhampir women to get pregnant by Royal and non-Royal Moroi.
Kate hesitated, before reaching into her pocket and pulling out her wallet. Lissa followed Kate's movements with cautious eyes, watching as Kate opened her wallet and pulled out a rectangle polaroid-like picture.
Kate hesitantly extended it to Lissa, to allow her to look at her mother.
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"Her name was Mircea, she was born in Turkey. She specialized in fire and was the best cook in the world." Kate claimed. Lissa gently took the picture with one hand and looked at it, it was black and white but it was cute.
The woman in the picture looked familiar to Lissa, but she knew that she wasn't a Royal Moroi, which soothed her immensely.
"That was my twin brother, Christopher. He was older than me by nearly an hour. Mom used to say that I took so long because I finally had all the space for me." Kate remarked, her eyes filling with tears that she refused to let shed.
"What was her surname?" Lissa asked gently, but Kate shrugged gently taking the picture back and placing it carefully back in her wallet.
"I don't know, we don't have her surname, we-" A look of pain crossed Kate's face, "I have my father's name as a surname."
Lissa nodded slowly, at Kate's words. She understood the difficulty of keeping the past and the present separate.
"You don't look so good." Kate said as she turned her head back to Lissa, her forest green eyes noting how sunken Lissa's features had turned with the small amount of time that she'd been living with her. She knew that Lissa was looking like this, because of blood that she was drinking.
Thanks to her mother and aunt, Kate had learned all there was to know about Moroi, Dhampir and Strigois.
"When was the last time you fed?" Kate asked in an even more hushed tone, her eyes showing her slowly increasing worry.
Lissa was taken aback by Kate's question, she'd been doing her hardest to not let her hunger show on her features, covering her sunken features with make-up. She didn't want to admit when the last time was, though she couldn't deny that her stomach would complain at the continuous taste of human food instead of the blood it craved.
"When-When I left the Academy." Lissa confessed in an equally hushed whisper.
Kate pursed her lips, and stared at Lissa. "I'll help you with that tonight."
Lissa didn't know what Kate meant by her words, and while a part of her was happy that someone knew of her Moroi status and wouldn't question if she used compulsion, the other part of her worried about what it was that Kate had in mind to help her.
Slowly Kate got up and swung her backpack back over her shoulder, extending a hand towards Lissa, extending a metaphorical olive branch. And despite the inner turmoil that raged inside of Lissa, she slowly grabbed Kate's hand, allowing her to be pulled up by Kate.
Maybe St. Vladimir was looking over the girls maybe he'd heard their prayers and decided to take matters into his own hands, by giving them each other.
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