ASTER
Death would be a better choice for a lot, she'd heard of a lot of techniques. If she turned Strigoi then it would give her family a bad name though. She had to make the family name proud.
She worked day and night to make her name count for something.
Being a strong Spirit had its up and downs. So far she was advanced for her age, and it got her a break from all the pressure, but that only lasted a week of praise, then it was back to the complaining. Being Okay, not an option, being great, okay, being amazing, so, being fabulous, yawn, being extraordinary, we're getting somewhere, being invincible?! You can do so much better. On a scale of 1-10 you have to be infinity, but that's not good enough, not even pi is good enough!
It was driving her insane! Happy or sad?! When she was sad and doing everything life was unbearable, when she was happy and doing everything, life went way beyond unbearable to 50 feet in the ground and still going!
She waited for some breathing air, just enough to gasp enough to stay alive passed 21, but her lungs were collapsing.
So instead Aster went to bed one night an just shut her eyes and thought, she didn't do anything other than think. She questioned everything and nothing, leaving no stone unturned.
A family, making the name mean something, makes us higher up and important, keeping the bloodline pure with other powerful Moroi. Earning their praise, there trust, their minute of joy, being something they can talk about in public.
She then thought of the word she'd looked up.
A Family. Love unconditionally given, going beyond looks and blood. They never want anything more from each other that to be happy together. Their trust in you is unquestionable no matter what, being the light to each other's darkness's.
The definitions couldn't be more different, but they were for the same thing.
The next day she asked her teacher, he laughed saying, "Are we really going to waste time on something so stupid? I thought you were intelligent!"
After that instead of going to her room and hiding like she should have done, she went to the library and search.
The librarian was the only one in there from what she could see, so she went ahead and searched.
Looking through the 'family' section, which did almost nothing for her she moved forward, looking at 'True Bonds Beyond Blood' and other books such as 'Unconditional True Love' and 'Home of the Heart'.
Although the titles were terribly cliché, the stories were…they were the best thing she'd ever read. Soon she was traveling from family books to…romance. She found loving stories that made her heart melt with adoration, and stories that made her tear up with joy.
She was so caught up she hadn't noticed it was the next day, and she hadn't notice the impending doom until it was too late. So caught up with love she didn't see the guy snickering behind her before he pounced. It was day, which meant everyone was supposed to be asleep. But predators didn't sleep.
He pounced on top of her and covered her mouth, she screamed and thrashed but her in the end nothing worked, the Dhampir had her immobile.
Gone were her childhood dazes. She lost conscious sometime in between, saving her from more memories of the humiliation and pain.
Waking up from consciousness it took quite some time to fully grasp where she was and what happened. But that was shortly lived.
When he'd finished with her he'd tossed her in a janitor's closet, she was also completely nude, her clothes were discarded right on top of her.
Getting up was the worst pain in her life. She'd never experienced such real agony. She was disgusted and gagging as she quickly dressed, and then she was quickly running to her room, going every back route she could remember.
Then she was in the shower. The door opened, closed, and then didn't open for several hours. No matter how much she'd scrubbed and slathered soap all over every square inch of her skin nothing seemed to make her feel clean.
Then she'd begun throwing up, then came the bawling, and the pain didn't stop. Sick to her stomach she could do nothing but bawl her head off and rock herself, holding her chest to try to hold her insides from coming out.
Her heart was on the ground in critical condition, nothing helped, nothing could get it to beat as it once had, every beat was hesitant, terrified.
Aster knew what had happened, her heart was so confined, so caged, so petrified, and it had now become a wild, savage, animalistic insane creature. There was nothing that could control it, nothing she could do to save the once sturdy assembled heart.
It hadn't been easy assemble such a fragile heart, knowing nothing apparently of what a real family really is, that heart was more fragile than she'd suspected.
But now it was this. Who had done this to such a magnificent creation? Something so valuable? Something so…delicate?
There was so much she didn't know, but she'd found one thing today, Cinderella, when the glass slipper was shattered she'd had another one. But there was no other one. This was it.
Something so fragile…gone.
It had been shattered not by some evil stepmother. But by her whole family, her own blood family, in her own school, by someone who was supposed to protect someone like her and no one noticed anything.
Family and blood did not matter. They didn't truly care. She wanted to be free. Tired of being the maid to everyone else's glory, she was going to go become a princess. She wasn't the ugliest thanks to being a Moroi. One night. Everyone owed her one night.
A maid to everyone's grand destinies, a servant to her family, cleaning up and taking care of everyone else, all to be rejected by society, god if Spirit was some sort of Magical Fairy God Mother… let it just last till midnight! She didn't feel as pretty as everyone seemed to think she looked! She wanted to dance with a commoner in a plain dress in the back! Let someone else take the stage! Let the magic run out! Let her go home with just the event's acting as nothing but a memory!
If nothing else interesting were to happen to her if she lost her Spirit, she would happily live in the middle of the woods as nothing but a human.
