Blood Ties

Begin Again - part I

           

Since a very young age Karlie Kloss was fascinated about people; she liked to know their stories, their opinions, their motives - what made them tick. She soon realized that those strange beings that roamed around in the sun had the most intriguing behavioral pattern.

As soon as she was allowed out the castle, she would watch those creatures. Interacting with the small ones, Karlie found that human bodies aged far faster than their minds. They seemed to lack the knowledge of how fragile they were. Running too fast, tripping and breaking body parts. For creatures with such short lifespan, they liked to tangle with death.

One of her tutors told her that mortality made things more intense. Maybe he was right, humans had so much to do, so many people to meet and so little time. Their actions would often escape any kind of logic, especially if they did anything in the name of 'love'.  Karlie had read their books and plays, there their life mission was finding love. Not in the abstract form she was used to, but in the form of one single person. That was putting too much pressure in one single person. Pressure to be funny, smart, kind, beautiful, passionate, brave, honest, etc. To Karlie that was an ideal, an old wives tale not different from the ones she was told at night. That's why vampire's rarely married; they knew that people and feelings change, it was an inexorable part of life. They had a saying for that: let it be eternal while it lasts.

She still remember the bedtime stories her mother would tell her; stories where despite the odds being dim two lovers found each other, where your lover was someone you would beg for more than eternity together. Little Karlie thought it was odd to want to spend that much time with someone; she couldn't imagine ever loving someone more than her mother or father and she did not want to spend the entire eternity with then – more than that seemed just silly.

Humans however, often claimed to have found the love of their lives and maybe that was true. They lived for such a short time that loving only one person was possible. Karlie did not think it was something that could happen to vampires until her Breeder told her a story about mates; it seemed that vampires were not immune to the fates. At first Karlie was scared, she was barely 13 how could she be enough for someone else when she wasn't enough for herself yet? Her Breeder told her that it didn't matter what she thought, if one day she was lucky to find her mate it would just feel right. Since then the princess was enamored with the idea that somewhere there was someone she was destined to love and be loved in return.

On her 14th year, everything changed for Karlie. Nothing could have prepared her for the moment she looked around the Kloss court to find that she was the only one not kneeling to her father. She tried to kneel, but something would not let her. That had only one meaning; she was going to be Queen. She knew it was a possibility, after all Kristine and her were the ones bred to the throne.

From that moment on her life stopped being only about her wishes but about her people wishes. Her father was proud of her for being recognized as heir so soon, he himself was about 60 years old when he found his calling. Kurt arranged the best tutors for his daughter and wasted no time in finding a male worthy of her.

That was when 18 year old – now crown princess – met Joshua Kushnner. A handsome boy, even taller that she was with perpetually messed hair and rosy cheeks. When he first smiled at her Karlie felt something, maybe this was the 'love' everyone talked about.

In the following years Karlie and Josh became inseparable; they had the same tutors, the same battle masters. They would always go on adventures together; people watching as Karlie loved or exploring different places, as Josh liked. He was her best friend, the one person that she may not get tired of for eternity. To Karlie that was what love was. She knew Joshua had feelings for her, he had told her himself. They were each other's first everything: friends, confidants, lovers and untimely heartbreak.