A woman with long black hair pulled into a messy assortment of swirls gazed about the room of her daughter's empty chambers. This was the last place she had to look seeing as her daughter rarely spent anytime in her own bedroom. The woman closed her eyes repeating words in her head that she had said for the last seventeen years. She really isn't my daughter. Never was and will soon never be. She has always been his…
"Mamma!" A little girl cried from the stone hallway, rushing up on little bare feet towards the black hair woman. Hugging the woman's leg, the little girl stared up at her mother. At least this one I can claim as my own.
"Mamma! Sissy, dagger, fly! Brother, hit!" The little girl giggled between her broken sentences.
The woman dropped her basket that she had been carrying full of freshly picked vegetables and skirted her way outside. Once in the gardens of her just barely kept estate, she fled towards the west wall. No, not again. What is he thinking, letting her throw daggers at her own brother? No…he was not her own brother. She rounded the corner and came to the scene, her heart slowing instantly at the at it. Liam, the woman's son, threw his head back and laughed richly, enjoying the sight of the broken apple in his hands. Lillith stood there, concentration written deep within her brow, her dark brown hair blowing in wind. That child! I told her to leave the braids in! Now what is she going to appear like? A common strumpet. And that mud stain…oh heavens have mercy on her soul! As soon as the mother said it, her hand twitched. She stopped breathing for a moment, her eyes shutting tightly against the pain that radiated in her nerves. That was the hardest part, thinking about religion and relating it to Lillith. There would never be any mercy on her soul. She was bound to walk the Earth forever with the fallen angel.
The mother took a shaky breath and made her way over to the children. "Liam! Lillith! What do you think you are doing?"
"Practicing." Lillith simply grumbled under her breath. Dropping the bow, she pivoted about and stalked off back towards the small estate. "Where are you going?"
Lillith didn't answer as she moved off in her natural human anger. Even in her small fits she was unearthly—especially for a human. The mother shook her head, unable to comprehend the magnificence of her ethereal powers when immortal.
"She's just bored with shooting apples. She wants to go hunt." Liam laughed again, rolling the impeccably dead apple around in his palm.
"And there will be none of that." The mother eyed her son up and down, threatening him with a stare she knew he would obey.
Liam shrugged, his curly black hair moving with his shoulders. The mother instantly warmed to him catching hints of his father. But Liam's smile vanished as he recalled something and both of them instantly grew quiet. Liam watched his sister's small fleeing figure in the distance with a heartbreaking sadness. "It's tonight, isn't it? He comes for her tonight."
The mother folded her arms in a silent reverence. "He won't turn her right when they meet, Liam. He will just be introduced and that's all. We must allow her to understand what she must do—slowly. Forcing things on her won't help." The mother paused. "And besides, the faire will distract her from what is happening. She won't even notice she's met her future husband—her fate."
Liam nodded taking his mother's arm with sweetness like his father had taught him. "Ah, Pridora, my mother. It won't be so bad. Maybe she'll invite you into her home and show you all the disgusting things that vampires do."
"Maybe, Liam, maybe." But the mother knew that would never happen and no matter how much she prayed to God that her little girl would welcome her with open arms into her new life…she never would.
No, because she was never mine to begin with.