This is a strange situation I've gotten myself into, really. How could I have possibly went along with the notion that I, Lucius Vladescu, would travel to America on my own to search for a girl I had never before met. Shouldn't someone else have been sent to collect the princess to be brought home to her family? How had I been deemed the most fit to perform this task? Perhaps they thought she would be most comfortable with me, probably the only vampire she had any knowledge of. Maybe they thought she would be more likely to drop everything and travel to Romania once I charmed her the way my family seemed to expect. Maybe no one else wanted to do it. Maybe they had caught on to my anticipation of the coming of this day, either way, here I am at the break of dawn standing in the misty fog behind an unruly tree. I would rather be anywhere but here.
I've checked the address probably several dozen times on my way here, so this has to be it. It was not what I was expecting, her home. Even as an adopted princess shouldn't she have been raised more extravagantly? No, this house was not what I had expected at all. It is a rundown little farm house, the kind that I pass when riding my horses through the countryside back home. I hope I'm not too early.
I pulled out the paper once more to check the address, and then the picture I keep in my pocket at all times to refresh my memory of her. As if I could forget. Every year the Packwoods would send a picture of her, I always managed to get my hands on it. It makes her more real. I have been raised knowing that one day I would have to marry the Dragomir princess and unite our families, but it was more of a fact of life than anything to my family, an event scheduled to occur, they don't look forward to it. Either way they weren't about to back out of the pact and start another war, not now, and that is how I have found myself here. Standing just across the road from her driveway. My head shot up at the sudden sound of gravel crunching not too far away.
It was her.
She stood slightly slouched under the weight of her backpack, her face stared off into the distance as if her mind were somewhere far away. She was somewhat different though, her black hair was straight, and her clothes very plain and Americanized, but there was no mistaking this was the girl whose picture I have searched for every year for as long as I can remember. I have waited anxiously for this day.
I shoved the papers back into my pocket and stepped out from behind the tree just enough to be seen, but not out from under its protection. I opened my mouth to say something, but remembered I haven't prepared a greeting, in all my planning, our meeting was not something I had remembered to prepare for. That is when she saw me. Her dark eyes started at me, but something in her face wasn't comforting.
"Antanasia!" I called out. Her expression changed to alarm, and she took a step back as I stepped forward. At that time a large yellow vehicle came to a stop between us. I began to make my way around it, but when it departed, I noticed she had gotten on. I saw her in the back, the only one aboard. She was looking at me, but it appeared to be a check if I were still here. I stood in the middle of the street with my arms crossed and called out to her again. This time she turned away and didn't look back. I watched the vehicle drive around the distant curve before I went back to my spot under the tree. Looks like I will be walking to school.
Worry flooded my mind for a brief second before I shoved it out as I have been taught. What if she hadn't recognized me. Surely she must be expecting me soon, maybe the dates were not communicated well. Whatever the cause of her disturbed reaction, I was unaware, but shall find out when I arrive at school.