The Hidden Formula

“I’ll die with you.”

So much hurt… yet she was willing to be there for me. I didn’t realise how quickly I’d gone from hating her to hating seeing her cry. To feeling like I needed to be close to her, to feeling like I would be lost without her. She smiled despite her pain, it was the purest thing I’d ever seen. It was overwhelming, so much so I began to tear up as well. She held me so tightly for hours, until we were both ready to face the future.

*-*-*

It was getting late… and the embarrassment was getting to both of us. Without saying anything we just sort of scurried away awkwardly. I was looking out at the night sky as it started to brighten, we needed to head back in and usually we would have made our way to our beds to take naps but…

“Hey, are you tired?” I asked.

“A little, but I doubt I’ll be sleeping for a while.” Aiyana responded. “Why?”

I wonder if she could tell how flustered I was. “I was going to go to the study, try a bit of research for old time's sake. Have to take my mind off it somehow why not try and find a solution?”

“You don’t sound optimistic about that…” she responded.

“Well, there’s not much to be optimistic about right now.”

She silently agreed and went to go off on her own, but I felt like I had something I needed to say. Something I had wanted to say since the very beginning, but didn’t have the strength to. Something that I likely wouldn’t have a chance to say later on…

“Aiyana…” I called, and she turned back to me.

The words began to flow. “As far back as I can remember, that man taught us that vampires were just murderers. Selfish creatures that would kill just for a laugh… yet I’m being saved once more by a vampire, and my own, human father will try to kill me because I am no longer human. For everything I did to you, pretending you were some evil creature just to fit my agenda, you stuck by me and helped me get this far. I should have been dead in that ice.”

I continued. “I realised a while ago that you and I are similar in more than just blood. Both of us have had the ones we loved most pulled away from us by the world and told to just accept it. Even when we try and fight against it, we lose even more. But the only time I won, was when I first met you.”

It felt right to kneel, even if it was difficult after the fight against father. Regardless of the pain I continued, much to Aiyana’s panicked confusion.

“He will come here, and we will have to fight to survive. I’ll be completely honest, we probably won't win. But for what it’s worth, I want to do everything I can do from now until the end. It all starts with something I should have said to you so much earlier than today.”

She blushed while still flailing, trying hopelessly to get me to stand up. Instead I bowed as low as I could. “I apologise for everything.”

*-*-*

Aiyana joined me on the hunt for information in Zaharia’s library. It was filled with knowledge, all we could do was place our chips on finding the missing piece there.

It was good, to focus on something for a little while and take the edge off. Of course we were both terrified, each time Aiyana passed me a book I noticed her trying to hide the shaking. I think she saw it in me too, or heard it in my voice, even though I tried to mask it.

We went through all of Zaharia’s personal documents, all of his experiments and experiences. Most if not all we’re about the sun. Not surprising really, how convenient it would be to be able to just walk out into the light and never look back. Not like it helped us much, still, the guy was obsessed.

We kept testing that night, and the night after, and the next. Days became weeks and weeks turned to months. Even after such a long time we hadn’t had any murderous visitors, not that we would have noticed. We kept going, pouring elixir onto samples of Aiyana’s pure blood and leaving them out in the sun, only to return the following night to find burnt plasma.

The next book on the pile was on Anthology, while we could rely on Zaharia’s notes for some of the uses of the plants we had access to, it wasn't going to take us all the way. We had already used a good portion of what was listed as medicinal: Ginseng, Goldenseal, Echinacea… hell we even tried some poisons like wisteria. If it’s poisonous to humans, maybe it would heal the undead? Safe to say it didn’t kill us… did leave us slightly I’ll for a few days however.

Despite our tests, none of them worked and none of the other plants we had available were going to work. It was like trying to solve a puzzle without any of the pieces. “There’s gotta be a way. Maybe we’re looking at it wrong?”

“Want to go take another look at the garden? There’s always a chance we missed something.” Aiyana asked.

“Yeah.” I responded with a sigh.

*-*-*

Not sure what we expected. Aiyana was the one that looked after it now, there’s no way we forgot anything. I suppose the change of scenery was nice.

“Worth a shot…” Aiyana said optimistically.

She had been through that catalogue everyday since I got here a year ago, it’d be worrying if she did forget something. I wasn’t very helpful here, I had tried to give her a hand moving some things once but ended up killing off some of the stock. Safe to say I was blacklisted. The only time I saw the things were from the book she gave me.

“Well, that’s that then. I’m going to go back to the study, hopefully I’ll have a breakthrough.”

“Right…” Aiyana responded, sounding a little disappointed. She continued to jot down notes about the flora around her as I wandered over to the door.

As I was leaving, something caught my attention. A flower laying in the pond that looked familiar, yet so strange. Even more strange was that though it was familiar, I was positive it had never shown up in the catalogue Aiyana gave me. It was small with dark petals and a red interior. I couldn’t understand how I hadn’t seen it before, it wasn’t exactly ordinary. “Aiyana. What’s that?” I asked. She was moping around near the lilies. She hobbled over and took a glance at it. “That?” She pointed and I nodded. “You don’t remember?” Her face told me that I had an extensive history with that plant but for the life of me I couldn’t understand why.

“Uhh, no. Should I?” I answered. Now she just looked completely dumbfounded, I swear she was this close to uncharacteristically calling me stupid. “Aster, it’s a lotus.”

“The Glass Lotus.”

*-*-*

Now it was my turn to look at her like she was stupid. “Glass Lotus? Really? It’s black, Aiyana. A glass lotus has see transparent petals… sorta how it got the name GLASS lotus.”

“No no no.” She refuted. “You’re thinking of its day form.”

“I beg your damn pardon?!”

“You haven’t heard of that? The glass lotus soaks in light. When it has no light it is darker, people called it a night form. When the sun is high, the petals drown in the light and lose their colour.”

I believe I held a very good pantomime surprise face.

“Didn’t you notice the colour change when we first met? You took one to heal your sister, right?” She asked.

The memory flooded back, remembering how I almost chomped my own sister. But as I recall, I placed the lotus by her bed and left, I didn’t spare the time to look upon it one more time. I made this clear to Aiyana, shaking my head.

“Well.” She said, “it’s a very strange flower. You see, much like Ginseng, Echinacea and Goldenseal it has medicinal properties. That will have been why you needed it to heal your sister. However, though it can heal humans, it can be poisonous to vampires.”

“Can be?” I asked.

“If it is in its day form. Because it soaks in and stores sunlight it can be deadly to vampires. When it is in it’s night form, the petals release the stored sunlight and darken. They become pretty much useless to both human and vampire in that form.” Aiyana explained.

It all checked out, consuming sunlight sounded like it’d be not so fun for us… then again, they were growing so abundantly here…

“It’s useless?” I asked.

“Well, yes… I believe father used it once to try and make a basic ointment but it didn’t do anything.”

That statement, right there, it just didn’t sit right. I believe it showed on my confused face.

“Aster? What’s the matter?” She asked.

“Well… doesn’t it seem a little odd to you? I mean, these lotus are all but extinct except for here. That doesn’t happen by accident. I was told that the fires of war killed them off, yet they are here? On the battleground?”

“Of course. My father loved them, he had them brought in from the hidden kingdom of Ezo, took the voyagers 6 whole months just to bring them back.” Aiyana responded.

“Yes but…” I paused. “Why plant something that you don’t need?”

“Unless…” my eyes widened. Finally, a breakthrough. “There are afflictions in this world that cannot be healed without first making it worse… what if the secret to all of this is weakening our vampiric blood… by taking in sunlight?”