My mother isn't the brightest of women. She's flippant, scatterbrained and always hopelessly in love. That is until she isn't. See my mom has a knack for falling head-over-heels for a man - romanticising and idealising - marrying them and then some years later she comes to the conclusion that she's miserable, so she divorces them.
Pare [father], was her first love, Antonio Javier Garza. They'd met on her trip to Spain where he worked as an Astronomy professor.
Which reminds me that I've forgotten to mention a very important detail; I'm a witch and so are my parents. Which makes this all the more embarrassing.
Anyway, my mom became infatuated with Antonio. Everything from how he talked to the way he walked made her heart skip a beat. A year later she moved to Spain and they got married. The following year I came along.
This is about the time that mom became disenchanted by the fact that Pare worked most of the year. She divorced him when I was two years old and moved us back to the states, into my grandparents' house in Florida. We always moved back to Florida.
She moved on to a man named William who she was engaged to for a while even though my grandma and grandpa didn't like him because he was a "reckless muggle" with long hair, tattoos and a motorcycle. Mom called off the engagement when William got her name - Natalia - tattooed on his chest. I was five when she pushed him in the front garden and threw her ring at him.
I never understood why she'd done it or why she could never be content in being single.
When I was almost eleven we moved to Hawai'i to go to their magic school but it was also because my mother had crossed paths with "the man of her dreams". He was nice, this Hawaiian guy, but of course it was soon not enough for her. She'd become bored.
I never felt bad for her; just for the sweet men who always tried to give her everything.
At fourteen I was still traveling to Hawai'i from Florida for school and mom ran into Sebastian, a Swedish ministry official who took a liking to her.
Sebastian was cool, calm, but always had a joke for me to laugh at. I was glad he wasn't hopeless like my mother and the other men she'd been with. She suggested early on that she and I move to Sweden but he declined saying that it was unfair to uproot me and that he wanted to take their relationship slow.
I can remember thinking that, finally, someone had a brain.
I don't think that anymore.
Two weeks ago I asked my mom when we were going to Hawai'i to get my new school things; assuming that she'd recieved the letter I hadn't. With a nervous smile she told me that we weren't and held out her left hand where a sparkling diamond engagement ring rested on her finger. Sebastian had entered the room behind her, placing a kiss to her temple and smiling down at me.
Childishly, I stormed off to my room. I know what it meant. The ring and the smiles. It meant that Sweden would be my new home and I would be transferring schools.
But I'm supposed to forget about all that today because it's my birthday. Oh joy. I hate how everyone is carrying on like nothing is changing. Maybe it is extreme of me to mope in my room but I can't pretend to be happy.
There's a soft knock on my door that I ignore but my grandma walks in anyway.
"You're lucky I can't do magic outside of school." I grumble, putting away the homework I'd recieved from my new school , Durmstrang, and my letter with its shopping list.
"Your guests are arriving." She tells me, placing a kind hand on my shoulder.
"They're your guests, not mine." I purse my lips and stand from the desk, slipping on red flats that perfectly match the nautical theme of my navy blue high-waisted shorts and sleeveless button down. I retrieved my navy blue cardigan from the back of the chair and put it on, checking that my dark chocolate brown hair is still as I had put it, in a top knot with my fringe grazing my thick, neatly arched eyebrows.
I never wore any makeup which had always challenged my mother's only undying love for the stuff. I didn't like changing the natural tan of my skin, the pink plimpness of my lips, or how my thick lashes fframed my wide amber eyes. There was never a time that I wanted to exaggerate my already angular features. I simply didn't feel the need.
"So beautiful." My grandmother muses.
She is to thank for most of my features seeing as she is full blood Seminole Native American. Mom doesn't look like her at all. My mother is the female replica of her father, a blonde haired Brit with dazzling blue-green eyes, pale skin and short stature. All my mother's family is short. I'm the anomaly thanks wholly to my Pare.
I'm a leggy girl at 5'11" with a relatively small waist and the latin curves that came from my Spainish half.
I tower over the old 5'3" beauty beside me as she took a long look at me.
"The day you're getting ready to walk down the aisle will be the most joyous day of my life." She smiles and the skin around her twinkling eyes crinkles.
"I'm never getting married." I turn to her.
"Why not?" She gasps.
"I can't depend on anyone but myself." I say matter-of-factly.
"Milena Carmen Neuville Garza." She snaps and I'm taken aback. Her eyes soften and she reaches a soft hand to my cheek. "You're mother has put you through so much and I feared the day it would harden your heart." She sighs sympathetically. "My love. You can't wall yourself in. My mother once told me that 'you can never inhale the sweet smell of the rose if you are afraid of the thorns; just be careful of them'." She laughs.
"I don't want to go." I groan, plopping myself down on my school trunk.
"You don't like Sebastian?" She asks, sitting next to me.
"He's alright but I'm tired of moving. Just as we get comfortable, we move."
"Natalia never did like to be comfortable." She sighs. "We can't change it now anyway." Grandma hugs me around the shoulders. "Now, let's get down to the tent. I have a few very special guests here for you."
The back garden is canopied from the roof of the patio to the three surrounding walls so that the whole garden is covered. Grandpa bewitched the space to be big enough for the nearly thirty guests and tables had been set up, including a long one with drinks and food and another smaller one for presents.
"Oh happy birthday Sweetie!" My mom hurries over to me, flinging her thin arms around my neck and kissing my cheek.
"Thanks." I hug her back.
"I had no idea vat to get you." Sebastian furrows his brow. "Hopefully vat I got make you happy." He smiles.
Next to bombard me are my friends from school.
"Hau'oli la hanau!" [happy birthday] My best girl friend Kenikila greets me.
"Mahalo." I laugh and hug her.
"I can't believe you're actually leaving." Her twin brother Keakonu. shakes his head.
"Yep. Off to Durmstrang."
"Hey that's where that one Quidditch player goes." Keakonu brightens.
"Who?" I question.
"Viktor Krum." He says but waves me off when I don't become as excited as he is. "He plays for Bulgaria but he goes to Durmstrang."
"If you say so." I shrug and Keakonu laughs at me. Grandma grabs my hand, excuses us and pulls me gently away. When I look up from her I see Pare with Àvia [grandmother] and Avi [grandfather].
"Pare!" I squeal and run to him, crashing into his chest and squezzing him aroung the middle with no intent of letting go.
"La meva dolça nena."[my sweet little girl.] He breathes into my hair, kissing the top of my head. "T'he trobat a faltar." [I've missed you.]
"I've missed you too Pare." There's a small clearing of the throat behind me and I turn to see my mother.
"Antonio." She nods.
"You're looking as beautiful as ever Natalia." Pare smiles.
"This is my fiancé, Sebastian." Sebastian and Pare shake hands and I expect to see some primal jealousy toward one another but there is none. Pare gives Sebastian that says,"You poor bastard" or "I'll pray for the safety of your heart and soul". Sebastian nods.
"Let's eat." Àvia grabs my hand and steers me toward the food. "Your Pare, he still loves her. No sé per què."
"When you take care not to jostle the glass vase you freeze in wonderment at how it breaks." I sigh. She looks curiously at me. "I'm not exactly the best person to ask about the mysteries of love." I chuckle and wave her off.
I portion food onto my plate and sit at an empty table, watching Pare talk to Sebatian while mom argued with Grandma and Grandpa.
Pare is as tall as Sebastian, 6'4" or so, with golden eyes and almost-black hair that's greying on the side but still full. He's leanly built, unlike Sebastian who is more muscled and brawny.
"Who'ya lookin' at?" Keakonu starles me, taking the seat next to me.
"My dad." I answer, swallowing down my heart.
"That suave lookin' dude, right?" I nod and giggle. "Man, we always figured you looked like your dad. I mean you had to. Either that or you was secretly adopted." He laughs.
"Might as well be." I say looking at Sebastian with his pale white skin, artic blue eyes, white-blonde hair and sharp features.
"You'll be fine at Durmstrang." Keakonu tries to reassure me.
"Yeah, there's people just like me there." I mock sardonically. Keakonu looks sadly at me. "Sorry Konu. I just don't wann go."