"Help yourself to some tea if you want." said Aunt Lilith after she poured herself some into a nice china mug from her "trea of life" teapot and teacup set.
Get it? "tree" and "tea" name mutation equals "Trea".
No? Yeah, Clare thought it was pretty dumb too when she saw it written on the set of the, otherwise, adorable China.
Clare poured herself a cup of camomile tea, sweetened it with syrup and then topped it with plenty of fresh milk.
After stirring her very healthy beverage, Clare left the kitchen to join her aunty in her living room.
She made herself comfortable on a sofa before taking a sip of the hot drink.
"Ah, you can almost feel the tea travel down your G. I. T. and righting all the wrongs in your system." Clare declared before flashing her aunt a grateful smile.
"G. I. T?" Lilith asked confused.
"You know Gastrointestinal Tracts? G-I-T?" Clare explained to her aunt who still looked kind of confused. She sometimes forgot that her aunt was so old fashioned. "Like your stomach and intestines." She explained in simpler terms gesturing to her trunk.
Her aunt's eyes widened finally getting what she was referring to. Clare shook her head at her aunty. "Old people." She murmured under her breath knowing it would set her off, her aunt was always so sensitive of her age which made it so much fun to tease her.
It was one of the reasons they became so close in under two years. Her aunt was so friendly, brilliant and surprisingly easy to talk to that Clare felt so drawn to her. She was more than just an aunt to her, she was a dear friend.
Lilith glared at her niece. "I heard you."
"Are you sure you are not a werewolf, your hearing is like, too good for a human." Clare shot back.
Her aunt took a sip of her tea. "Next time, don't talk back at me then. I have an ear for things like that."
********
"I'm done with this book. It was just like I said, The legend of Heracles is actually just the story of Hercules like I watched on Disney only more intense." Clare stated matter-of-factly bending to retrieve said book from the book bag she had carried with her.
"And a lot more accurate than any other account you may have read or watched. Thank you!" Lilith huffed as she took the book from the younger and and kept it on her shelf.
"Accuracy my butt." Clare huffed. "That book is just full of a lot of mumbo-jumbo and some serious fan theories."
"If you don't like my books, then stop reading them!" Her aunt called from the kitchen. Clare had been so engrossed in checking for a new book to read on her aunt's bookshelf that she hadn't even heard the other leave.
"I love reading too much to stop, you can't blame me if my curiosity won't let me set high standards for what I read." Clare yelled back.
"Well you should, you are what you read after all." Her aunt replied. "Speaking of curiosity, do you know of Pandora?"
Clare paused and shook her head, then remembered that Lilith was in the other room. "No, I don't."
"There is a book for that in shelf. It should be on the third rung, right next to Prometheus' Legacy." Clare check and saw the slim book where her aunt where her aunt said it would be."
"Why don't you just take both books? I have been intending to loan you the other one."
Clare let out a shrill scream turning in surprise as she went. "I've told you to stop sneaking up on me like that." She scolded her aunt, bent over and clutching her racing heart.
"Hold still." Her aunt warned her in a stern voice. Clare obeyed and saw that her locker had caught on her aunt's handmade cloth bracelet.
She paused long enough for aunt to untangle it with shaking hands. Clare rolled her eyes at her aunt's overreaction over a very plain looking bracelet.
"You are so overprotective of that old bracelet. FYI, bracelets like that are so last decade." Clare said eyeing her aunt scared expression as she inspected the bracelet.
"Thank goodness nothing happened to it." Her aunt finally announced after careful inspection. "It was the last thing I had from my sister."
Clare's eyes widened when she heard that, "My mom gave you that?"
"Ehn?" Aunt Lilith snapped out of her reverie and glanced at her surprised niece. "You... your mother gave this to me. So it's very special. it's all I have to remember her by."
Clare felt her own eyes water at the anguished sounds if her aunt's voice. She and her aunt tended to skit around the issue of her parents so as not to relieve bad memories. But moments like this came up and they were the only two that could understand the loss they shared.
"I truly miss her." Her aunt sniffled as a lone tear ran down her cheek, a depiction of their feeling at that moment.
"Me too, and I barely remember her. I can only imagine how you must feel."
Her aunt looked at her, eyes filled with guilt and regret. Clare wondered if her mother had a fallout with her sister before she died.
That would explain how her aunt didn't know about her existence till she was sixteen, and all the unspoken apologies in her aunt's gaze.
"She— your mother, she was such a beautiful soul. S-she was so so full of life." Her aunt sobbed trembling all over.
Clare stood there wanting to comfort her aunt whom she had never seen looking so distraught.
"Can I hug you, Aunt Lilith? "
The older woman nodded. "Yes please. "
Clare wrapped her arms around the older trembling woman and patted her softly whispering "It's okay"s and "let it out"s while Lilith cried for almost an hour.
"You remind me of her," her aunt yawned when she had finally quieted down. "You look exactly like her. I'm so happy to have found you after all this time."
And she fell asleep, on Clare's lap.