Author's Note: I have to apologize in advance for starting new projects before completing other ones. So many stories, so little time... After seeing the magnificent Mariana Klaveno as Bill's Maker in "Sparks Fly Out," I wanted to know Lorena's story. Lorena was little more than a cardboard cutout in SVM, and we haven't seen much of her on True Blood, so I openly admit that we're possibly way off reservation here, but everyone has a beginning. We're following the little information from the blue-ray, that Lorena's mother was a lady in Empress Maria Theresa's court, and that Lorena was turned by a vampire Gypsy the night before she was to take her vows in the church.
This is a join effort by myself and nipsu. We'll specify who wrote which chapters. This one is mine... I hope you enjoy.
Lady in Waiting
The night air is eerily still as lightening flashes overhead and thunder rumbles off in the distance. I've never gotten used to the humidity here, how the moisture leaves everything sticky, the stench of mildew and mold overwhelming at times. But I do love the lushness of the vegetation. There are more varied shades of green than there are words to describe them, even if I only see them by moonlight. Nature is ever present here, reaching her tentacles towards that which is man-made, threatening always to reclaim what is hers. It's as good a place as any to wait for him.
I've been waiting my whole, long life. I've lost track of time since I left the safety of the palace and the damp stink of New Orleans for this cabin on the way to no where. Three years I've been alone waiting? Or maybe it's four now? Malcolm laughed at first when I told him of my plan, but when he realized I was serious, he took my hand and kissed my palm. "Oh, ma petite religieuse," he whispered. He's so seldom somber, but he kissed each cheek, his lips smooth and cool. "Don't do this. I've only just got you back." He kissed my forehead, my closed eyes. He licked the single blood tear that escaped and trailed down my cheek. "Please don't leave me again. You making yourself miserable will not bring him back from the dead." As much as I loved him, my brother in blood, he was not who I needed.
The Queen did not object, although she did warn me to use more discretion when I next made a Child. Her warning was unnecessarily – did I not go to ground in her palace for nearly a year after that disaster? But I merely bowed and thanked her for her kindness before setting off. I had a plan this time. There would not be another Micah, and I devised a test to find him. I knew he was out there somewhere, and I trusted that somehow fate would lead him to me.
As I learned long ago, a young female on her own attracts too much attention. Malcolm had always willingly played my brother, which left both us available for lovers if we felt inspired, but I didn't want him hovering. Malcolm bores easily, and a bored Malcolm is a dangerous thing. Instead, I chose an isolated place, surrounded by the wild beauty I love, and fortuitously, a war broke out. I am simply another woman waiting for her man to come home. That much of my cover story, at least, is true, and in the confusion of war, a person gone missing here and there arouses no suspicion: as many die from the diseases and fevers that constantly rage through the area as bullets.
I occasionally keep a pet around for a few days. Just before dawn, I drain enough blood so they spend the daylight hours in my bed, delirious and weak. Even if they did escape, they wouldn't make it very far. Once, a deserter who played the violin stayed for over a month. He was lovely and delicious, but in the end, like all the others, he was a disappointment. None of them ever pass my test, none are him, and I wait.
***
My earliest human memories, dimmed not only by the passage of time, but also because they were experienced by dull mortal senses, are waiting in the grand hall for my mother to arrive. Sister Therese would find me, usually with my nose in a book, and smile: "Lorena, your mother is coming!" She would dress me in my finest silk gown with heeled slippers on my feet, and she'd intricately arrange my dark hair. I would wait impatiently for my mother to arrive, my ears straining for the sound of her carriage, but more often than not, she didn't come.
I would vow to never speak to her again. I hated her. I hated her for leaving me in the convent, and I hated her for not coming. I hated her even more for my wanting to not hate her. The summer before I turned nine, Sister Therese found me hidden in the garden, my gown ruined with dirt and grass stains, my face streaked with tears.
"Don't cry, Lorena," she whispered as she took me into her arms. "Your mother's time is not her own. She doesn't come not because she doesn't love you, but because she is not her own person."
"But she promised," I wept. "She is supposed to be my mother."
"And she is," Sister Therese patiently explained. "But she is one of the Empress' ladies."
"She is one of the Emperor's whores," I spit out.
"Lorena!" Sister Therese held her hand to her chest and stared at me. "Where ever did you hear such a thing?" I didn't want to say that I'd overheard Lady Marie, who had been sent to the convent by her angry husband for her indiscretions. She had no desire for a life in the church, and she kept a steady correspondence with her allies at court as she waited for her sentence to be lifted.
"Listening to conversations not meant for your ears is not only unladylike and unkind," Sister Therese said after she realized I would not answer. "It is a sin. And Lady Marie should remember that gossiping is as well."
"Is it true?" I quietly asked. "Is the Emperor my father?"
Sister Therese bit her bottom lip and fingered her rosary beads. "We are all God's children," she finally said.
I stomped my foot impertinently. "Is he? Please tell me."
She shook her head. "I do not know. But it doesn't matter."
"How can that not matter?" I whispered.
"What matters," Sister said, "is that in this life, especially when the situation appears difficult or unjust, when all seems to be most lost, that we search for our Father's lessons. Have I ever told you how I came to this life?"
I shook my head, knowing that she knew full well she'd never confided that to me. Eager for the story, I wiped my cheeks with the backs of my hands.
"I am the youngest of eight daughters," Sister Therese began.
"Oh!" I sighed with envy. "Sisters…"
Sister nodded. "Yes, but my father squandered the family fortune on mistresses and at the gambling tables. There was not enough left for a dowry for me, and we were going to loose our estate.
"He found a husband for me, an older man without title, who'd made a great deal of money in the new world. This man wanted to be gentry, and my father needed his fortune. When I was twelve, my father informed me that I was to marry a man as old as he, and who I'd never met."
"How dreadful!" I exclaimed.
Sister smiled. "Perhaps is would not have been as bad as I imagined, but I was a willful girl. There was a boy in the nearby village who was apprenticed to our tailor, and I fancied him." Sister sighed and shook her head. "He was a wonderful boy, and I had my heart set on him. I stole away one night." Here she looked grimly at me, knowing that I often snuck out after dark to run in the nearby woods. "And went to his room above the shop. I told him of my father's plan, and I…" Sister blushed. "I gave him my virtue so that I would be spoiled for the man my father had chosen."
"Sister!" I gasped.
She nodded. "I told you I was willful," she smiled. "I thought my father would consent to my marrying the boy if he knew I was ruined. But he did not. He sent me here instead, and he had the boy sent away."
"Where did he go?"
"I do not know what became of him to this day. But do you see? There was a lesson, even though I was heartbroken. I was meant for this life, and I needed quite desperately to be humbled. Pride, I'm afraid, is still the sin I must fight most vigilantly."
"What lesson is there in my mother having me without a husband? In her leaving me here and lying to me?"
"The lesson," Sister Therese explained. "Is that one can only count on the Lord."
"That's not true," I said.
"Lorena!" Sister chided.
"I can count on myself, too. I will never lie."
"We all lie," Sister said. "Humans are weak, and we all sin." She stood up and pulled me gently to my feet. She wiped my eyes with her handkerchief and pressed me to her side, her simple black gown now soiled with my dirt. "Forgive, Lorena. You must forgive. Not only your mother, but also yourself. I know that it is difficult, but we must forgive as our Father forgives us." I solemnly nodded.
"You have been blessed with many gifts," Sister Therese continued. "You are so beautiful." Her hand gently stroked my dark hair. "You have a keen mind and a kind heart. And, most importantly, you have the freedom to choose your own life."
"What do you mean?"
"Your mother has told me herself that she will allow you to make your own choice," Sister said. "What a gift! When you're of age, you may go to court with her and, provided the Empress is pleased with you, and I have no doubt she will be, you'll be one of her ladies. Or, if you'd prefer, your mother will find you appropriate suitors to choose a husband. Your life is your own, Lorena." She pressed me tightly. "Do not take that for granted." I nodded, deep in thought at all she had said. "Come," she said. "Or we'll be late for dinner."
As soon as I saw my mother again, several months later, I immediately forgot that I was never speaking to her again. I forgot being hurt and angry and disappointed. My mother's visits were always very much the same. She would skip into the room, her rustling silk like an exotic flower, and she would crush me against her. She smelled always of lilies, and she would have some beautiful trinket for me that would make the sisters cluck their tongues in disapproval: sugared almonds in an ornate box, delicately embroidered handkerchiefs, jeweled clips for my hair, rings for my fingers.
"Tell me a secret," she would whisper as she clung to my hands. "Promise that you love me." She would smile and touch me and hug me at unexpected times during her brief visits. Her lips left warm kisses on my cheeks and my hair. "Tell me that you are mine."
***
These wild woods of Louisiana are nothing like the forests that surrounded the convent outside Vienna where I grew up. I didn't realize how young my mother was until my human life was over. She was still a girl, barely thirteen, when I was born. While I never found proof, it seems most likely that the Emperor was my father. History knows well of his many infidelities. I always meant to return to my mother and ask her, but, in that particular instance, I waited too long, putting off the journey until my mother was decaying in her grave.
I can't help but shudder as my mind drifts to my last night at the convent, the night before I was to take my vows. My mother was devastated when I told her I had no desire for a life at court. I wanted to stay at the convent with the only family I knew, the quiet stone corridors, the library full of books. I held her head in my lap as she wept, begging me to reconsider, but if I were to lose my will to anyone, it would be God, not the royal family.
Emilio's face, perfectly recollected after all these years, comes unbidden to mind, and I shake it away. For years, I was plagued with nightmares of his dark form materializing out of the darkness, just as I was returning to the tree I used to climb over the high stone wall, the moonlight glinting off of his fangs as he smiled at me. At first, when he appeared, I was arrogant enough to think he was an angel, sent to visit me before my marriage to the church. I'd never seen someone so frightening or so beautiful, all at the same time, with his long dark hair, crackling green eyes, and pale skin.
"I've waited for you," he whispered with a smile. "I first saw you several years ago, but you were just a little girl. There are rules…"
At the time, I had no understanding of what he meant. He wasn't a cruel Maker, but I felt no love for him. Despite Sister Therese's gentle lesson, I've never been able to forgive him. He must've loved some aspect of me, but I wasn't with him long enough to discover what exactly had drawn him to me, let alone to make him wait for me to grow up.
We traveled about the countryside for several years. Emilio, ever the Gypsy, had a show of sorts, where he used his vampiric powers to impress superstitious locals: slight of hand, levitation, glamour. One night, the crowd knew of the old myths. They saw him for what he was, and they came for us. I fled into the dark, and Emilio called for me to help him. He commanded me as my Maker, but they'd already wrapped him in silver, and his powers were too diminished to compel me.
I was miles away when they killed him, too far to hear, even with my sensitive ears, but I felt his death. We had shared blood. The blood always seeks to be united with its source, and I feel it still, nearly one hundred years later, my blood that died with him. Time has made the loss less noticeable. Just a few short years have even soothed Micah's death. But like what happened in Paris, the pain is always there. I carry it with me always, a pit held somewhere in the back of my throat, and I long for the one who will help bear it with me. Who, perhaps, will be able to make it disappear.
Oh, ma petite religieuse = Oh, my little nun
