nepenthe | d. hale

o n e

It wasn't like Regina didn't know she was different. There was always that inkling that something separated her from others. When she was young, her mother told her that she was born with a heart twice the size of everyone else's. As if she was in a children's story of a villain-gone-good.

But with time, when Regina's tendencies got stranger, her mother's attitude change. When she was 5 and left the nursing home that housed her great aunt, she cried the whole way home about how the man in the rocking chair by the window would die soon. Regina didn't know how she knew it, but when she looked at the man, he was alive for a moment, until she blinked and he was slouched over himself, blue in the face, and motionless. Then she would blink again and he would be just fine.

Her mother though that Regina was just finally understanding that when people get old, there time is near. She though that the "man in the rocking chair by the window" was a euphemism for everyone in the nursing home. It wasn't.

It was heartwarming understanding of the circle of life when she was 5. When she was 14, she was demented. Or looking for attention. Or grotesquely enraptured with the idea of death.

Regina pleaded, screaming and sobbing, that those weren't true. She just saw more than she could explain. More than people would understand. More than possible.

Her mother was taking her out to get a new coat for the winter. It was late December, and they were walking down Main Street. The sun was setting and the street was relatively quiet.

And then Regina saw her.

She was lying face up in the street, bloodied and battered. Her eyes wide in terror, but she laid unmoving. But everyone around her just kept waking, as if the young woman wasn't lying dead in the road.

So Regina screamed. She screamed at the top of her lungs in terror as the woman's eyes seemed to bore into her. Regina couldn't attest for sure, but she's pretty sure her mother slapped her. Not that Regina blames her. It was probably the only way to snap her out of it.

When she came out of it, the woman was gone. And her mother was looking at her with something that resembled fear. Not fear of her daughter, but rather for her daughter.

For the next three nights, Regina woke up screaming at 12:30 at night. She kept seeing the woman from the street. In the afternoon of the third night, the woman was on the news. Her mother was finishing up dinner and Lydia and Regina were setting the table while the T.V. played in the background.

Her name was Lauren. She was 24. She worked at a daycare. She was walking home from dinner with her friends when a driving was texting and hit her. She was hit at approximately 12:30 a.m. They never caught the driver. Between the time of someone else coming along the road and the time for the paramedics to get there, Lauren had died. In the middle of Main Street. Right where Regina had seen her 3 days prior.

Her mother told her in a few days time that she would be going to boarding school. Immediately. She heard Lydia's begs from the kitchen.

Please let her finish freshman year with me.
Please wait until after Christmas.
Please reconsider.
Please, she's my twin. You said we we never meant to be separated.
Please.

Regina let silent tears roll down her face as she held her knees close to her chest. She had snuck into her fathers laptop that morning and searched the boarding school. It was prestigious. And expensive. But Regina had always made good grades. She wasn't a literal genius like her twin, but she was always above level. But then she read a subline on the website.

"Specializes in particularly demented youth."

Her mother was sending her away because she thought she was crazy. To be honest, Regina didn't think the claim was too outlandish. There was no explanation as to why she had seen what she did. There had been instances before, but this was the straw that broke the camel's back.

So she was shipped off half way across the country. And she was meant to stay there until graduation. Key phrase? Meant to.

Within the past few months, Regina received 3 letters. Lydia and her always talked on the phone. She talked less and less with her parents as she got older, but still, it was always on the phone.

The letters changed everything. Regina once heard someone say that if a childhood friendship can last through high school, it's meant to be. So there she was, 17 years old, receiving a letter from no one other than her preschool best friend. Cora Hale.

Cora sent 3 letters. One right before she left to find her brother who had turned up alive, one about three months later after she got out of the vault, and the last one was just before her brother was going to bring her back to South America.

If Regina didn't have reason to believe that she was crazy before, she certainly does now. The letters detailed everything. They were pages and pages long. She told Regina everything. About what she really was, what her family really was. About how her friends she went to middle school with now are found within the pages of a bestiary. She now knew what a bestiary was!

But what stole her breath was Cora's revelation of Lydia. A Banshee. It made sense, considering Regina's tie to death. But that still left Regina with a question: what was she? She had done her research, and according to Gaelic folklore, she could technically be deemed a banshee too, since she could foresee death. But her... skills were different than Lydia's.

She felt her chest ache at the thought of her sister not feeling like she could tell her this. It made sense logistically why she wouldn't tell her. What would be the likelihood of Regina believing her? And it's not just Lydia's story to tell.

In Cora's final letter, she detailed what happened with the Nematon. Regina had known something happened. In the middle of the night a few weeks ago, she felt this pull. This tether to Beacon Hills. She filed the paperwork the next morning to be sent back home. While Olive Oak did focus on trouble children, they were also just another prestigious boarding school. After her first year, she didn't need any extra help or mental evaluations.

To be honest, as much as she missed her sister and her friends, she didn't entirely want to go back home. To look her parents in the eyes knowing they could send her away again whenever they please. She knew she was looking at it in a cynical black-and-white kind of way, and not through the eyes of a concerned parent, but she only knew that in her head. In her heart, even three years later, she felt a sense of betrayal.

When her classes ended at the beginning of August, which was far later than normal schools, she hopped on a bus. School would be staring any day now in Beacon Hills, and Regina Martin was coming home.

— — —

Hope you enjoyed the first
chapter! This was just a
backstory to give some
context. Sorry for the
information dump!
Xoxo