[b]32. CATALINA "LINA" CACERES[/b] 

(originally from My Undead Girlfriend + Lodge of Sorceresses (Urstyle))
Inspired by: Yelyzaveta Tereschenko

CS: https://urstyle.com/styles/1826671

[hider=Lina]
❂ 𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐖𝐎𝐑𝐋𝐃
loves the sea as her parents used to take her sailing as a child, makes potions that help with problems the school won’t (e.g. hangovers, fatigue, menstrual cramps), ignores most school rules and finds her potion ingredients from roaming the grounds or stealing them from the gardens/greenhouse

☾ 𝐂𝐀𝐓𝐀𝐋𝐈𝐍𝐀, 𝟏𝟗

"A mermaid found a swimming lad,
Picked him for her own,
Pressed her body to his body,
Laughed; and plunging down
Forgot in cruel happiness
That even lovers drown."

-"The Mermaid", by William Butler Yeats

𝐅𝐮𝐥𝐥 𝐍𝐚𝐦𝐞: Catalina Caceres
𝐍𝐢𝐜𝐤𝐧𝐚𝐦𝐞𝐬: Lina (most everyone calls her that)
𝐁𝐢𝐫𝐭𝐡𝐩𝐥𝐚𝐜𝐞: Mallorca (Majorca), Spain (though she's been living in England for the last two years)
𝐁𝐢𝐫𝐭𝐡𝐝𝐚𝐲: March 2nd
𝐆𝐞𝐧𝐝𝐞𝐫: Female
𝐒𝐞𝐱𝐮𝐚𝐥𝐢𝐭𝐲: Homosexual
𝐌𝐨𝐝𝐞𝐥: Luiza Scandelari

𝐎𝐯𝐞𝐫𝐯𝐢𝐞𝐰 𝐨𝐟 𝐌𝐚𝐠𝐢𝐜 𝐀𝐛𝐢𝐥𝐢𝐭𝐢𝐞𝐬: Lina's strength lies in elemental magic, especially when it comes to water. She also excels in her Divination classes, and can see possible futures in the waves. Finally, she's always been very good at anything to do with plant life, and she's loved making potions since she was a child.

𝐂𝐡𝐨𝐬𝐞𝐧 𝐒𝐮𝐛𝐣𝐞𝐜𝐭𝐬: Elemental Magic, Divination, Oneiromancy, Necromancy & Demonology, History of Magic

𝐄𝐱𝐭𝐫𝐚𝐜𝐮𝐫𝐫𝐢𝐜𝐮𝐥𝐚𝐫 𝐀𝐜𝐭𝐢𝐯𝐢𝐭𝐢𝐞𝐬: Human Studies, Swimming, French

𝐏𝐞𝐫𝐬𝐨𝐧𝐚𝐥𝐢𝐭𝐲: As a child, Lina was kind and sweet and gentle, always ready with a cheerful smile and reassuring words. Although she was rather soft-spoken, Lina was well-liked by her peers, if only for her friendly and welcoming personality. She was always very curious, too, though it wasn't something that she liked to advertise, as her parents were quite strict and conservative. Nevertheless, every time she heard somebody talking about "forbidden" topics ("forbidden" meaning that her parents would never let her or her sister talk about them, not that they were necessarily taboo among other witches), Lina was fascinated.

Lina was never one who liked being in the limelight or going against the status quo; there was part of her that strived to please everyone she could. As such, she was extremely generous and never went back on her word. Although she was quiet, she was always 𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘳𝘦, ready to be the shoulder to cry on for anybody and everybody. Lina had a tendency to fade into the background, though that is not to say that she particularly 𝘮𝘪𝘯𝘥𝘦𝘥. She had always been content to watch from the sidelines, and hated making a fuss of any sort.

After she met Maria, though...after she met Maria, there was a visible change in the way that Lina held herself. The sweetly shy young girl that Lina had been evolved into a confident young woman who went everywhere with a spring in her step and a yearning for new adventures. Outgoing and vivacious, there was a contagious sort of optimism in everything she did, and Lina finally started allowing her childhood curiosity really express itself-why was the sky blue, the ocean deep, the sun bright? 

In this time, Lina was energetic, though never rebellious. However, after Maria was gone, Lina became sad and lonely and increasingly erratic. Nowadays, Lina is quite standoffish and rarely speaks unless she absolutely has to. There is a profound melancholy in her eyes as she stares at the waves for hours at a time, though her expression shutters and she becomes snappish and unpredictable if somebody tries to disturb her peace. There are parts of her that are bitterly unhappy, and parts of her that are miserably sad, and parts of her that are searingly 𝘢𝘯𝘨𝘳𝘺, and one small, final part of her that's just...tired. So very, very tired.

Ever since Maria's apparent death and the events that immediately followed, Lina has become quite partial to flouting the rules, if not blatantly disobeying them. She's become distant and wistful and withdrawn, though she is still keenly perceptive when it comes to people's emotions, as she has been since she was a child. 

𝐒𝐤𝐢𝐥𝐥𝐬: fluent in Spanish, Catalan, and English and took a couple years of French when she was younger (which she has chosen to continue at the Lodge), swimming, anything to do with water-related magic, divination, a decent gardener, well-versed on a wide variety of wild plants and flowers, has a preternatural sense when it comes to animals, especially aquatic animals (she feels like she can almost 𝘤𝘰𝘮𝘮𝘶𝘯𝘪𝘤𝘢𝘵𝘦 with them), great at concocting up her own potions, also pretty good at cooking traditional Spanish dishes that have been passed down in her family for generations, sewing and embroidery, calligraphy

𝐁𝐢𝐨𝐠𝐫𝐚𝐩𝐡𝐲: From the day she arrived on this earth, Lina was one with the sea. Her mother gave birth to her in the family estate, right on the beach. And before she could even walk, she'd been on dozens of sailing trips, and Lina learned how to swim while she learned that "a" is for "apple" (well, technically, "m" for "manzana", but I digress). 

The Caceres were an old, proud family of witches, and Lina's childhood home was a centuries-old castle where the Mallorcan shores met the Mediterranean, shrouded from human view with ancient magic that had held since the days of the Roman Empire. Lina grew up with the sun and sand and sea, and in those early days, there was nothing that she didn't have.

Lina's family, however, was considered 𝘷𝘦𝘳𝘺 conservative, even for magic folk. Her parents and grandparents were not particularly trusting of humans (it had much to do with the Spanish Inquisition, which Lina now thinks is a bit ridiculous-that was 𝘩𝘶𝘯𝘥𝘳𝘦𝘥𝘴 of years ago!), so they kept themselves isolated to the castle by the sea, hidden from the tourists and beaches of modern Palma de Mallorca with a complex web of spells and illusions. 

And when she was a child, that was alright. Lina was perfectly content with the life she had-they would go sailing together, almost every morning, and she loved watching the sun rise above the horizon while her sister sat beside her and painted the colors spreading across the sky like watercolors on a damp sheet of paper. She learned four languages and she learned how to sew and embroider and how to cook, and she learned which kind of shrimp was best for her family's famous paella, and through it all, she knew that she was one with the sea.

Her sister, six years her senior, was off to the Lodge to refine her magical skills when Lina was twelve. After that, she began going to the human markets with her mother-to buy food and other necessities, and that was it. Lina was 𝘧𝘢𝘴𝘤𝘪𝘯𝘢𝘵𝘦𝘥 by the sights and sounds-the smell of sunlight and salt-spray, the sound of honking horns and lively music, the sight of colorful fruit and rainbow-reflective fish-though her mother never let her look for more than a second or two before hurrying her along.

Lina was perfectly aware of the stares she and her mother would get, wearing their old-fashioned skirts and wide sun hats as they strolled down the streets filled with people in T-shirts and jeans, though she didn't particularly mind. She was 𝘤𝘶𝘳𝘪𝘰𝘶𝘴, and she longed to see more. She wanted to go inside the gleaming malls and run her fingers through the wigs in the window of the barber shop; she wanted to try ice cream and popsicles and Oreos; she wanted to ride a bike and a motorcycle and even maybe fly in an airplane; she wanted to sail a tiny fishing boat out to the tourist-filled beaches of Palma de Mallorca and just sit and people-watch.

Lina showed a rare talent with magic when she was a child, especially when it came to divination and water-based magic (though she was also quite good with earth/plant-based magic, and she was as good of a potion-maker as she was a cook). She learned a great deal from her mother, great-aunt, and older sister. It was not until she was older that she showed any promise at all with oneiromancy, although she’s almost obsessively practicing it nowadays.

Lina had just turned thirteen when a pretty girl with an unruly mane of dark hair and wind-wild eyes washed up on the shores of her home, unconscious. Her mother and great-aunt were horrified, believing that the magic that hid them from humans had failed. While they argued over what to do, Lina and her father brought the human girl inside, determined to nurse her back to health.

Over the course of the next few days, Lina learned that she was two years older than her, from the city of Palma, and that she had been in a plane crash, resulting in her subsequent arrival in the Caceres’ ancestral lands. Her name was Maria-like 𝘦𝘭 𝘮𝘢𝘳, like the sea-and even at thirteen, Lina knew that Maria was the prettiest girl she had ever laid eyes on. But there was something more, Lina would later realize; she was so very, very 𝘩𝘶𝘮𝘢𝘯, with her hopes and dreams and aspirations, and Lina found herself wondering what it would be like to be as passionate as Maria was.

When Maria was well enough to return home, Lina brewed a potion that would make her forget that the incident ever even happened-as per her mother’s orders-although desperate, wistful thoughts of Maria lingered within her. She simply could not forget Maria’s infectious grin or her gloriously carefree laughter, like sunlight skipping across a restless sea.

She was fourteen when she saw Maria again, less than a year later. Her mother had twisted her ankle, and the potion to fix the problem would take ten hours to brew. Her great-aunt sent her and her father to the human marketplace for groceries.

Pedro, Lina’s father, was much more willing to indulge in his youngest daughter than his wife was. Remembering his own childhood in Barcelona, Pedro bought Lina ice cream and churros and they sat on the boardwalk to enjoy the treats. 

Lina turned her head. She saw Maria. 

Lina remembers that moment achingly clearly; Maria was alone, wearing a pair of cut-off denim shorts, her legs covered in sand and saltwater. Her hair-her beautiful, beautiful hair-was in a high ponytail, the strands plastered to the back of her neck. She was furiously scribbling something in a notebook, stopping and frowning at the paper every once in a while.

She was human. She was beautiful.

Her father caught her staring. “Why don’t you go say hi?” he’d said.

Lina stood up. Walked over. Maria didn’t notice her, at first, but when she looked up, Lina’s face broke out into a wide smile. 

Maria, of course, didn’t recognize her. Her smile was blandly polite, her eyes mildly interested. 

“Hi,” Lina said. 

“Hello,” answered Maria, her lips quirked up bemusedly. “Can I help you?”

Lina didn’t know how to respond to that. Instead, she held out the churros. “Do you want one?”

Maria grinned, then. “Sure.”

Lina handed her the churro and sat down beside her. Maria looked back down at the paper; Lina leaned over her shoulder. “What’s that?”

Maria grimaced. “Calc,” she responded, and Lina had absolutely no idea what that meant. Maria laughed, slightly. “I try to pretend that doing it by the beach makes it better. It really doesn’t.” She gave Lina a sidelong glance. “Why do I feel like I know you from somewhere?”

Lina’s heart raced. She looked at the ground. “I don’t know,” she replied, softly. “I come here a lot. Maybe that’s how?”

Maria frowned thoughtfully. “Maybe,’ she said, “though I would have noticed you before, I think. Like. Your dress is absolutely 𝘨𝘰𝘳𝘨𝘦𝘰𝘶𝘴. Where’d you get it?”

Lina blushed. “I made it,” she answered. “With my mother.” She looked away, shyly. “I like to embroider.”

Maria set down her ‘calc’. “That’s 𝘴𝘰 𝘤𝘰𝘰𝘭!!!” she exclaimed, and the two of them talked until Maria said she had to go home and finish her ‘calc’ if she ‘ever wanted to graduate’. “But it was so fun talking to you,” she told Lina as she stood up. “You said you came here a lot?” A toothy grin. “I’ll see you around, yeah? I live just a couple minutes away.”

Lina let a hopeful smile come over her face. “Yeah.”

She went home that night dreaming of sunny seas and long legs and lively eyes. It took her two days before she mustered up the courage to sneak out without her parents’ permission. She met Maria by the same bench, and Lina listened to her talk of coral and fish and the ocean and churros and every other thing under the sun, and she was content.

Lina kept visiting her, secretly. Sometimes they would go down to the water, when it was early in the morning and all the tourists were still asleep, and they would eat sun-sweetened peaches as rays of light filled the world. Other times Maria would take her to places in the city-her favorite churro place, her favorite coffee shop, her favorite museum, her favorite diner. 

But Lina loved it the most when Maria took her to the ocean, to the places where the sun and sky and sea seemed to bleed into each other like watercolors, away from the noise and heat of the tourist attractions. They would go to the ocean for picnics, or sometimes they’d just go for the water, or sometimes Maria would bring one of her textbooks and show Lina pictures of the creatures that called the water their home. And Lina would think to herself, 𝘺𝘦𝘴, 𝘐 𝘬𝘯𝘰𝘸, 𝘐 𝘤𝘢𝘯 𝘧𝘦𝘦𝘭 𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘮 𝘩𝘦𝘳𝘦. 𝘐 𝘤𝘢𝘯 𝘧𝘦𝘦𝘭 𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘮 𝘸𝘪𝘵𝘩𝘪𝘯 𝘮𝘦, 𝘐 𝘤𝘢𝘯 𝘧𝘦𝘦𝘭 𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘮 𝘪𝘯 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘸𝘢𝘵𝘦𝘳.

Lina never explicitly told Maria of her true origins, nor did she say anything about magic folk. But some part of her knows that Maria sensed it, and that same part of her knows that Maria would not have cared, one way or the other. 

Lina was fifteen when she realized that she was madly, hopelessly in love with her. She was almost sixteen when they kissed for the first time, with nothing but the quiet sea and the moonlight as their witness. 

Lina was seventeen, and Maria nineteen, when they were found out.

It was Lina’s sister, actually. Carina was the perfect daughter, in many ways-pretty and kind and caring and willing to bend to her mother’s every whim. She had noticed Lina sneaking out at the crack of dawn, and she had followed her. She’d caught Lina and Maria kissing underneath the almond trees, the white blossoms dyed orange in the sunrise. 

Later, Carina would tell Lina that she only wanted the best for her. That she was frightened. That she was worried, that they couldn’t trust non-magic folk.

But that didn’t change the fact that Lina 𝘭𝘰𝘷𝘦𝘥 Maria and that Maria loved her. That didn’t change the fact that she told their parents and great-aunt. That didn’t change the fact that as soon as they found out, they kept her confined to her room until they ultimately decided to ship her off to England to stay with her Aunt Jo (who was in reality her mother’s cousin) until she was old enough to attend the Lodge.

Lina would learn, a few months later, that Maria’s family found out; when Carina caught the two of them, the commotion had attracted plenty of attention, including that of one of their neighbors. Lina would learn that Maria’s parents and community were devout Catholics, that she had gone to a Catholic high school, that they all thought what had existed between her and Lina was 𝘸𝘳𝘰𝘯𝘨. She would learn that, after hearing nothing from Lina and after her parents basically disowned her, Maria jumped into the sea to be with the fish she loved so much.

Her parents did not tell her, of course. Neither did her Aunt Jo. But Lina found out when the dreams came-she 𝘴𝘢𝘸, clear as day, the moment that Maria jumped. She felt her fear and she felt her peace, and she felt Maria become one with the sea, with their precious 𝘮𝘢𝘳, and she felt all the flora and fauna of the ocean, from the humble sea slug to the enormous humpback whale and the Californian kelp forests, become a part of her.

And she woke up, and Maria was gone.

The visions and dreams became stronger and stronger with each passing week, until she was essentially communicating with Maria while she slept. 

At first, the messages were fairly benign, but then Maria began telling her to join her, to jump into the water and become one with the sun and sky and sea. She said that they had much to do; the oceans were dying, she said, and they could save it.

And Lina listened. A month before she was to leave for the Lodge, she jumped off the cliffs near her Aunt Jo’s home and plunged into the depths-

-and it was agony, it was 𝘢𝘨𝘰𝘯𝘺-

-and then she was being pulled up to the shore, and she dimly remembers worried voices and Aunt Jo’s concerned eyes and feeling tired, so tired…

It turned out that the waves had warned Aunt Jo; they had shown her that Lina would jump. And Lina would have been angry, except all she wanted to do was to sleep and go back to the almond trees and beaches and sunlight of Mallorca.

At the Lodge, Lina does not have any true friends. Sure, the people she makes potions for seem to like her well enough (and she’s one of the only people ballsy enough to steal plants from the gardens and greenhouse), but none of them understood her the way that Maria did. And Maria still comes to her, in her dreams, and Lina doesn’t know what to do, if any of this is real, or if it’s all just…in her head. 

She doesn’t know which one would be worse.

𝐈𝐦𝐩𝐨𝐫𝐭𝐚𝐧𝐭 𝐑𝐞𝐥𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧𝐬𝐡𝐢𝐩𝐬-
CARMEN CACERES (79): Great-aunt; Carmen is a powerful clairvoyant, and she has taught Lina much of what she knows about divining the future from the waves. Blunt and matter-of-fact, there is nothing that Carmen can’t get done. Indeed, she single-handedly raised seven children in rural Spain after eloping with a human man when she was eighteen. The former matriarch of the Caceres family disowned her for this action, although Elena, Lina’s mother and the oldest daughter, loved her favorite aunt and convinced her grandmother (Carmen’s mother, Lina’s great-grandmother) to allow Carmen to come back after her human husband filed for divorce. The children she had with him were given to their father, and she hasn’t seen them since (and as far as she knows, they have no magical talent). Through the years, the hopeful idealist in her-the one that longed for her husband to reach out to her, to come 𝘣𝘢𝘤𝘬-faded, and now Carmen has an extremely traditionalist attitude towards humans, and was less than pleased (to say the least) about Lina’s relationship with Maria. But after some time she began to understand, to some degree, and when she read in the waves that Maria was going to take her own life, she did everything in her power to try to stop her. Ultimately, her efforts were futile, and she’ll always regret that she did too little, too late.

ELENA CACERES (46): Mother; like Carmen, Elena Caceres has a no-nonsense, can-do attitude. She has a mind like a steel trap, takes no bullshit, and has absolutely no patience for incompetent people. Growing up, Elena was taught that humans are greedy, selfish, evil, wicked, et cetera, and what Carmen’s husband did to her has only reinforced this idea in her head. Strict and severe, Elena is rather controlling and overprotective. Nevertheless, she has a soft side that most people rarely get to see; like most members of her family, Elena has a love for the sea, and she still occasionally goes sailing in the mornings the way that she used to with her husband and children, though it’s much lonelier when her husband won’t talk to her, her youngest daughter hates her, and her oldest daughter can’t look her in the eye. Elena truly wants to do what she thinks is best for her family, but she’s coming to realize what 𝘴𝘩𝘦 thinks is the best may not be what her family really needs.

PEDRO CACERES (46): Father; Pedro was originally born to a moderately-influential witch family in Barcelona, and he met Elena when his family visited the Caceres on Mallorca when the two of them were in their late teens. Pedro is kind and gentle-the complete opposite of Elena, really-and although his family wasn’t exactly the most accepting of humans, they 𝘵𝘰𝘭𝘦𝘳𝘢𝘵𝘦𝘥 them. As such, Pedro definitely has a more “liberal” view of non-magic folk. He married into the Caceres family when he and Elena were twenty, and he loves his children with all his heart. He has been the most understanding of Lina’s predicament, although Carmen and Elena shot him down every time he tried to defend her. Pedro is starting to realize that maybe he doesn’t really 𝘬𝘯𝘰𝘸 his wife, anymore, and has been wondering if he would somehow be able to obtain legal custody of Lina and move back in with his family in Barcelona.

CARINA CACERES (25): Older sister; Carina was always somebody that Lina looked up to, and Carina has always tried her best to be a good older sister to Lina. She was her mother’s perfect daughter, in every sense of the word, and she was the one who found out about Lina and Maria’s relationship. She later told their parents, which Lina swore she would never forgive her for, but she truly did it with her sister’s best interests in mind. Carina has started to regret the decision, now, but she doesn’t know if Lina will ever speak to her again.
(FC-Antonina Vasylchenko)

JOSEFINA "JO" CACERES (36): First cousin once-removed; Lina’s ‘Aunt’ Jo has close ties with the Lodge and the teachers there. Lina stays with her Aunt Jo in England when the Lodge is on holiday.
(FC-Eva Green)

MARIA DE LA GARZA (DECEASED AT 19): Lina's former girlfriend. Maria was two years older than Lina, and she was everything that Lina was not-lively, outgoing, rebellious, and reckless, with a love for adventure and a passion that burned like wildfire. The two bonded over their love of the sea, and Maria would regale Lina with stories about the science behind it all. Maria studied marine biology and environmental science in one of Spain's universities, and she could talk for hours and hours about kelp or mangroves or plankton or whales. Maria was from a devout Catholic family and community, who basically told her that she was a sinner damned to hell when word got out about her and Lina. Maria eventually committed suicide after Lina was forced to leave Mallorca for England and her parents essentially instructed her to never speak to them or her siblings again.
(FC-Neelam Gill)

𝐐&𝐀 𝐒𝐄𝐍𝐓 𝐎𝐔𝐓 𝐁𝐘 𝐇𝐄𝐀𝐃𝐌𝐈𝐒𝐓𝐑𝐄𝐒𝐒 𝐂𝐎𝐑𝐃𝐄𝐋𝐈𝐀 𝐌𝐂𝐁𝐑𝐈𝐃𝐄-
𝐇𝐨𝐰 𝐝𝐨 𝐲𝐨𝐮 𝐟𝐞𝐞𝐥 𝐚𝐛𝐨𝐮𝐭 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐦𝐞𝐫𝐠𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐨𝐟 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐋𝐨𝐝𝐠𝐞 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐁𝐫𝐨𝐭𝐡𝐞𝐫𝐡𝐨𝐨𝐝?: It's fine, I guess. I don't really have an opinion.

𝐃𝐨 𝐲𝐨𝐮 𝐛𝐞𝐥𝐢𝐞𝐯𝐞 𝐩𝐞𝐚𝐜𝐞 𝐜𝐚𝐧 𝐛𝐞 𝐚𝐜𝐡𝐢𝐞𝐯𝐞𝐝 𝐛𝐞𝐭𝐰𝐞𝐞𝐧 𝐡𝐮𝐦𝐚𝐧𝐬 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐦𝐚𝐠𝐢𝐜 𝐟𝐨𝐥𝐤?: Well, why not? Of course, my 𝘱𝘢𝘳𝘦𝘯𝘵𝘴 don't think so, but I don't see why we shouldn't be at peace. 

𝐀𝐫𝐞 𝐲𝐨𝐮 𝐰𝐨𝐫𝐫𝐢𝐞𝐝 𝐚𝐛𝐨𝐮𝐭 𝐲𝐨𝐮𝐫 𝐬𝐚𝐟𝐞𝐭𝐲 𝐚𝐭 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐋𝐨𝐝𝐠𝐞?: No, not really.

𝐓𝐨𝐩 𝐓𝐡𝐫𝐞𝐞: the Lovers, the Moon, the Magician

𝐎𝐏𝐓𝐈𝐎𝐍𝐀𝐋 𝐄𝐗𝐓𝐑𝐀𝐒-
𝐋𝐢𝐤𝐞𝐬: Maria, water, the sea (especially 𝘩𝘦𝘳 sea), the sun and sky, wildflowers, dolphins, fresh blueberries, the color white (Lina used to 𝘢𝘥𝘰𝘳𝘦 bright, flashy colors-bubblegum pink, daffodil yellow, electric blue. But now they just make her eyes hurt), the color blue, calligraphy, fanciful fantasies of true love (Lina still holds on-she still holds on, despite everything-and she knows that she's fooling nobody at all, least of all herself), singing (Lina has quite a lovely singing voice), watching the sunrise, watching the sunset, standing outside in the rain, swimming (in all sorts of weather-blizzards, thunderstorms, typhoons, hurricanes...), meadows and country paths, the smell of the world after a rainstorm, old photographs from her life before the 𝘪𝘯𝘤𝘪𝘥𝘦𝘯𝘵, sunlight, moonlight, the stars, fish and all other forms of aquatic life, delicate lace and gauzy silk, seashells, the calm sea, the stormy sea, clear, cloudless days where she can see her reflection in the water, gray skies and gray winds that cause the sea to stir like a restless dragon, warm, breezy days, lazy summer afternoons, stories about mermaids and selkies and sirens, rainy days, saltwater, the river near the Lodge (where she spends most of her time out of class, now), making potions, flowers and herbs and just plants in general 

𝐃𝐢𝐬𝐥𝐢𝐤𝐞𝐬: being away from home and her sea for so long, too-sweet coffee or tea (or anything, really-soda, cookies, candy, ice cream; she can't stand that stuff. Though she used to love it), her friends who keep asking her "what's wrong?" (they wouldn't 𝘶𝘯𝘥𝘦𝘳𝘴𝘵𝘢𝘯𝘥, trying to remember something but being unable to, bright colors (oranges, yellows, and reds, mostly), social gatherings of any sort, people who have no respect for nature, wilting flowers, the smell of dead fish, meat, seeing people harm plants and animals, the concept of zoos and aquariums (don't get her wrong-Lina's fine with them if they're helping injured/sick/endangered animals survive, of course. But the thought of human crowds gawking at caged animals just makes her sick to her stomach), droughts, being in a crowded room or area, seeing her parents or Aunt Jo (they're always walking on eggshells around her, now. It's...awkward. And she will 𝘯𝘦𝘷𝘦𝘳 forgive them for what happened two years ago), the Lodge's dumb rules (𝘦𝘴𝘱𝘦𝘤𝘪𝘢𝘭𝘭𝘺 the ones about necromancy), Maria's family, not really too fond of her older sister or mother at the moment

𝐏𝐥𝐚𝐲𝐥𝐢𝐬𝐭: coming soon, hopefully
𝐏𝐢𝐧𝐭𝐞𝐫𝐞𝐬𝐭 𝐁𝐨𝐚𝐫𝐝: https://www.pinterest.com/ayzrules/catalina-lina-caceres-los/

𝐌𝐨𝐨𝐝𝐛𝐨𝐚𝐫𝐝
1. https://urstyle.com/styles/1826760
2. https://urstyle.com/styles/1827651
3. https://urstyle.com/styles/1827083

𝐈𝐧𝐬𝐭𝐚𝐠𝐫𝐚𝐦: hopefully coming soon!

𝐅𝐚𝐯𝐨𝐮𝐫𝐢𝐭𝐞 𝐭𝐞𝐚𝐜𝐡𝐞𝐫: Yara Driskell; Lina's become /very/ interested in the subject she teaches, recently.

𝐅𝐚𝐯𝐨𝐮𝐫𝐢𝐭𝐞 𝐥𝐨𝐜𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧 𝐢𝐧 𝐬𝐜𝐡𝐨𝐨𝐥: The river near the Lodge. Lina knows that it flows to the sea, where Maria is (now if only the ceasg who live in the river would be /useful/ for once and actually answer Lina's questions...)

𝐅𝐚𝐯𝐨𝐮𝐫𝐢𝐭𝐞 𝐥𝐞𝐬𝐬𝐨𝐧: Oneiromancy, because her dreams are the only place she can talk to Maria.
[/hider]

MY UNDEAD GIRLFIREND
[hider=The New Girl]
"A mermaid found a swimming lad,

Picked him for her own,
Pressed her body to his body,
Laughed; and plunging down
Forgot in cruel happiness
That even lovers drown."

-"The Mermaid", by William Butler Yeats[

[b]Title/Role:[/b] The New Girl
[b]Name:[/b] Catalina Caceres
[b]Aliases:[/b] Lina
[b]Age+Grade:[/b] 19+Junior (dropped out of a private academy after her sophomore year, for unspecified reasons, and is now attending Villain Academy to complete her high school education)
[b]Hero or Villain?[/b] Villain
[b]Species:[/b] Sorceress
[b]Faceclaim:[/b] Luiza Scandelari

[b]Likes:[/b] Maria, water, the sea (especially [i]her[/i] sea), the sun and sky, wildflowers, dolphins, fresh blueberries, the color white (Lina used to 𝘢𝘥𝘰𝘳𝘦 bright, flashy colors-bubblegum pink, daffodil yellow, electric blue. But now they just make her eyes hurt), the color blue, calligraphy, fanciful fantasies of true love (Lina still holds on-she still holds on, despite everything-and she knows that she's fooling nobody at all, least of all herself), singing (Lina has quite a lovely singing voice), watching the sunrise, watching the sunset, standing outside in the rain, swimming (in all sorts of weather-blizzards, thunderstorms, typhoons, hurricanes...), meadows and country paths, the smell of the world after a rainstorm, old photographs from her life before the 𝘪𝘯𝘤𝘪𝘥𝘦𝘯𝘵, sunlight, moonlight, the stars, fish and all other forms of aquatic life, delicate lace and gauzy silk, seashells, the calm sea, the stormy sea, clear, cloudless days where she can see her reflection in the water, gray skies and gray winds that cause the sea to stir like a restless dragon, warm, breezy days, lazy summer afternoons, stories about mermaids and selkies and sirens, rainy days, saltwater, the beach near Hero High, making potions, flowers and herbs and just plants in general 

[b]Dislikes:[/b] being away from home and her sea for so long, too-sweet coffee or tea (or anything, really-soda, cookies, candy, ice cream; she can't stand that stuff. Though she used to love it), her friends who keep asking her "what's wrong?" (they wouldn't 𝘶𝘯𝘥𝘦𝘳𝘴𝘵𝘢𝘯𝘥, trying to remember something but being unable to, bright colors (oranges, yellows, and reds, mostly), social gatherings of any sort, people who have no respect for nature, wilting flowers, the smell of dead fish, meat, seeing people harm plants and animals, the concept of zoos and aquariums (don't get her wrong-Lina's fine with them if they're helping injured/sick/endangered animals survive, of course. But the thought of human crowds gawking at caged animals just makes her sick to her stomach), droughts, being in a crowded room or area, seeing her parents or Aunt Jo (they're always walking on eggshells around her, now. It's...awkward. And she will 𝘯𝘦𝘷𝘦𝘳 forgive them for what happened two years ago), Maria's family, not really too fond of her older sister or mother at the moment

[b]Personality:[/b] As a child, Lina was kind and sweet and gentle, always ready with a cheerful smile and reassuring words. Although she was rather soft-spoken, Lina was well-liked by her peers, if only for her friendly and welcoming personality. She was always very curious, too, though it wasn't something that she liked to advertise, as her parents were quite strict and conservative. Nevertheless, every time she heard somebody talking about "forbidden" topics ("forbidden" meaning that her parents would never let her or her sister talk about them, not that they were necessarily taboo among other sorcerers), Lina was fascinated.

Lina was never one who liked being in the limelight or going against the status quo; there was part of her that strived to please everyone she could. As such, she was extremely generous and never went back on her word. Although she was quiet, she was always 𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘳𝘦, ready to be the shoulder to cry on for anybody and everybody. Lina had a tendency to fade into the background, though that is not to say that she particularly 𝘮𝘪𝘯𝘥𝘦𝘥. She had always been content to watch from the sidelines, and hated making a fuss of any sort.

After she met Maria, though...after she met Maria, there was a visible change in the way that Lina held herself. The sweetly shy young girl that Lina had been evolved into a confident young woman who went everywhere with a spring in her step and a yearning for new adventures. Outgoing and vivacious, there was a contagious sort of optimism in everything she did, and Lina finally started allowing her childhood curiosity really express itself-why was the sky blue, the ocean deep, the sun bright? 

In this time, Lina was energetic, though never rebellious. However, after Maria was gone, Lina became sad and lonely and increasingly erratic. Nowadays, Lina is quite standoffish and rarely speaks unless she absolutely has to. There is a profound melancholy in her eyes as she stares at the waves for hours at a time, though her expression shutters and she becomes snappish and unpredictable if somebody tries to disturb her peace. There are parts of her that are bitterly unhappy, and parts of her that are miserably sad, and parts of her that are searingly 𝘢𝘯𝘨𝘳𝘺, and one small, final part of her that's just...tired. So very, very tired.

Ever since Maria's apparent death and the events that immediately followed, Lina has become quite partial to flouting the rules, if not blatantly disobeying them. She's become distant and wistful and withdrawn, though she is still keenly perceptive when it comes to people's emotions, as she has been since she was a child. 

[b]Biography:[/b] From the day she arrived on this earth, Lina was one with the sea. Her mother gave birth to her in the family estate, right on the beach. And before she could even walk, she'd been on dozens of sailing trips, and Lina learned how to swim while she learned that "a" is for "apple" (well, technically, "m" for "manzana", but I digress). 

The Caceres were an old, proud family of sorcerers, and Lina's childhood home was a centuries-old castle where the Mallorcan shores met the Mediterranean, shrouded from human view with ancient magic that had held since the days of the Roman Empire. Lina grew up with the sun and sand and sea, and in those early days, there was nothing that she didn't have.

Lina's family, however, was considered 𝘷𝘦𝘳𝘺 conservative, even for sorcerers. Her parents and grandparents were not particularly trusting of humans (it had much to do with the Spanish Inquisition, which Lina now thinks is a bit ridiculous-that was 𝘩𝘶𝘯𝘥𝘳𝘦𝘥𝘴 of years ago!), so they kept themselves isolated to the castle by the sea, hidden from the tourists and beaches of modern Palma de Mallorca with a complex web of spells and illusions. 

And when she was a child, that was alright. Lina was perfectly content with the life she had-they would go sailing together, almost every morning, and she loved watching the sun rise above the horizon while her sister sat beside her and painted the colors spreading across the sky like watercolors on a damp sheet of paper. She learned four languages (English, French, Catalan, Spanish) and she learned how to sew and embroider and how to cook, and she learned which kind of shrimp was best for her family's famous paella, and through it all, she knew that she was one with the sea.

Her sister, six years her senior, was off to a private academy when Lina was eight. After that, she began going to the human markets with her mother-to buy food and other necessities, and that was it. Lina was 𝘧𝘢𝘴𝘤𝘪𝘯𝘢𝘵𝘦𝘥 by the sights and sounds-the smell of sunlight and salt-spray, the sound of honking horns and lively music, the sight of colorful fruit and rainbow-reflective fish-though her mother never let her look for more than a second or two before hurrying her along.

Lina was perfectly aware of the stares she and her mother would get, wearing their old-fashioned skirts and wide sun hats as they strolled down the streets filled with people in T-shirts and jeans, though she didn't particularly mind. She was 𝘤𝘶𝘳𝘪𝘰𝘶𝘴, and she longed to see more. She wanted to go inside the gleaming malls and run her fingers through the wigs in the window of the barber shop; she wanted to try ice cream and popsicles and Oreos; she wanted to ride a bike and a motorcycle and even maybe fly in an airplane; she wanted to sail a tiny fishing boat out to the tourist-filled beaches of Palma de Mallorca and just sit and people-watch.

Lina showed a rare talent with magic when she was a child, especially when it came to divination and water-based magic (though she was also quite good with earth/plant-based magic, and she was as good of a potion-maker as she was a cook). She learned a great deal from her mother, great-aunt, and older sister. It was not until she was older that she showed any promise at all with oneiromancy, although she’s almost obsessively practicing it nowadays.

Lina had just turned thirteen when a pretty girl with an unruly mane of dark hair and wind-wild eyes washed up on the shores of her home, unconscious. Her mother and great-aunt were horrified, believing that the magic that hid them from humans had failed. While they argued over what to do, Lina and her father brought the human girl inside, determined to nurse her back to health.

Over the course of the next few days, Lina learned that she was two years older than her, from the city of Palma, and that she had been in a plane crash, resulting in her subsequent arrival in the Caceres’ ancestral lands. Her name was Maria-like 𝘦𝘭 𝘮𝘢𝘳, like the sea-and even at thirteen, Lina knew that Maria was the prettiest girl she had ever laid eyes on. But there was something more, Lina would later realize; she was so very, very 𝘩𝘶𝘮𝘢𝘯, with her hopes and dreams and aspirations, and Lina found herself wondering what it would be like to be as passionate as Maria was.

When Maria was well enough to return home, Lina brewed a potion that would make her forget that the incident ever even happened-as per her mother’s orders-although desperate, wistful thoughts of Maria lingered within her. She simply could not forget Maria’s infectious grin or her gloriously carefree laughter, like sunlight skipping across a restless sea.

She was fourteen when she saw Maria again, less than a year later. Her mother had twisted her ankle, and the potion to fix the problem would take ten hours to brew. Her great-aunt sent her and her father to the human marketplace for groceries.

Pedro, Lina’s father, was much more willing to indulge in his youngest daughter than his wife was. Remembering his own childhood in Barcelona, Pedro bought Lina ice cream and churros and they sat on the boardwalk to enjoy the treats. 

Lina turned her head. She saw Maria. 

Lina remembers that moment achingly clearly; Maria was alone, wearing a pair of cut-off denim shorts, her legs covered in sand and saltwater. Her hair-her beautiful, beautiful hair-was in a high ponytail, the strands plastered to the back of her neck. She was furiously scribbling something in a notebook, stopping and frowning at the paper every once in a while.

She was human. She was beautiful.

Her father caught her staring. “Why don’t you go say hi?” he’d said.

Lina stood up. Walked over. Maria didn’t notice her, at first, but when she looked up, Lina’s face broke out into a wide smile. 

Maria, of course, didn’t recognize her. Her smile was blandly polite, her eyes mildly interested. 

“Hi,” Lina said. 

“Hello,” answered Maria, her lips quirked up bemusedly. “Can I help you?”

Lina didn’t know how to respond to that. Instead, she held out the churros. “Do you want one?”

Maria grinned, then. “Sure.”

Lina handed her the churro and sat down beside her. Maria looked back down at the paper; Lina leaned over her shoulder. “What’s that?”

Maria grimaced. “Calc,” she responded, and Lina had absolutely no idea what that meant. Maria laughed, slightly. “I try to pretend that doing it by the beach makes it better. It really doesn’t.” She gave Lina a sidelong glance. “Why do I feel like I know you from somewhere?”

Lina’s heart raced. She looked at the ground. “I don’t know,” she replied, softly. “I come here a lot. Maybe that’s how?”

Maria frowned thoughtfully. “Maybe,’ she said, “though I would have noticed you before, I think. Like. Your dress is absolutely 𝘨𝘰𝘳𝘨𝘦𝘰𝘶𝘴. Where’d you get it?”

Lina blushed. “I made it,” she answered. “With my mother.” She looked away, shyly. “I like to embroider.”

Maria set down her ‘calc’. “That’s 𝘴𝘰 𝘤𝘰𝘰𝘭!!!” she exclaimed, and the two of them talked until Maria said she had to go home and finish her ‘calc’ if she ‘ever wanted to graduate’. “But it was so fun talking to you,” she told Lina as she stood up. “You said you came here a lot?” A toothy grin. “I’ll see you around, yeah? I live just a couple minutes away.”

Lina let a hopeful smile come over her face. “Yeah.”

She went home that night dreaming of sunny seas and long legs and lively eyes. It took her two days before she mustered up the courage to sneak out without her parents’ permission. She met Maria by the same bench, and Lina listened to her talk of coral and fish and the ocean and churros and every other thing under the sun, and she was content.

Lina kept visiting her, secretly. Sometimes they would go down to the water, when it was early in the morning and all the tourists were still asleep, and they would eat sun-sweetened peaches as rays of light filled the world. Other times Maria would take her to places in the city-her favorite churro place, her favorite coffee shop, her favorite museum, her favorite diner. 

But Lina loved it the most when Maria took her to the ocean, to the places where the sun and sky and sea seemed to bleed into each other like watercolors, away from the noise and heat of the tourist attractions. They would go to the ocean for picnics, or sometimes they’d just go for the water, or sometimes Maria would bring one of her textbooks and show Lina pictures of the creatures that called the water their home. And Lina would think to herself, 𝘺𝘦𝘴, 𝘐 𝘬𝘯𝘰𝘸, 𝘐 𝘤𝘢𝘯 𝘧𝘦𝘦𝘭 𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘮 𝘩𝘦𝘳𝘦. 𝘐 𝘤𝘢𝘯 𝘧𝘦𝘦𝘭 𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘮 𝘸𝘪𝘵𝘩𝘪𝘯 𝘮𝘦, 𝘐 𝘤𝘢𝘯 𝘧𝘦𝘦𝘭 𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘮 𝘪𝘯 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘸𝘢𝘵𝘦𝘳.

Lina never explicitly told Maria of her true origins, nor did she say anything about the nonhuman society that thrived right under the noses of humans. But some part of her knows that Maria sensed it, and that same part of her knows that Maria would not have cared, one way or the other. 

Lina was fifteen when she realized that she was madly, hopelessly in love with her. She was almost sixteen when they kissed for the first time, with nothing but the quiet sea and the moonlight as their witness. 

Lina was seventeen, and Maria nineteen, when they were found out.

It was Lina’s sister, actually. Carina was the perfect daughter, in many ways-pretty and kind and caring and willing to bend to her mother’s every whim. She had noticed Lina sneaking out at the crack of dawn, and she had followed her. She’d caught Lina and Maria kissing underneath the almond trees, the white blossoms dyed orange in the sunrise. 

Later, Carina would tell Lina that she only wanted the best for her. That she was frightened. That she was worried, that they couldn’t trust humans.

But that didn’t change the fact that Lina 𝘭𝘰𝘷𝘦𝘥 Maria and that Maria loved her. That didn’t change the fact that she told their parents and great-aunt. That didn’t change the fact that as soon as they found out, they kept her confined to her room until they ultimately decided to ship her off to America to stay with her Aunt Jo (who was in reality her mother’s cousin) and be home-schooled until she was "over" this "phase".

Lina would learn, a few months later, that Maria’s family found out; when Carina caught the two of them, the commotion had attracted plenty of attention, including that of one of their neighbors. Lina would learn that Maria’s parents and community were devout Catholics, that she had gone to a Catholic high school, that they all thought what had existed between her and Lina was 𝘸𝘳𝘰𝘯𝘨. She would learn that, after hearing nothing from Lina and after her parents basically disowned her, Maria jumped into the sea to be with the fish she loved so much.

Her parents did not tell her, of course. Neither did her Aunt Jo. But Lina found out when the dreams came-she 𝘴𝘢𝘸, clear as day, the moment that Maria jumped. She felt her fear and she felt her peace, and she felt Maria become one with the sea, with their precious 𝘮𝘢𝘳, and she felt all the flora and fauna of the ocean, from the humble sea slug to the enormous humpback whale and the Californian kelp forests, become a part of her.

And she woke up, and Maria was gone.

The visions and dreams became stronger and stronger with each passing week, until she was essentially communicating with Maria while she slept. 

At first, the messages were fairly benign, but then Maria began telling her to join her, to jump into the water and become one with the sun and sky and sea. She said that they had much to do; the oceans were dying, she said, and they could save it.

And Lina listened. A month before she was to leave for Villain Academy, she jumped off the cliffs near her Aunt Jo’s home and plunged into the depths-

-and it was agony, it was 𝘢𝘨𝘰𝘯𝘺-

-and then she was being pulled up to the shore, and she dimly remembers worried voices and Aunt Jo’s concerned eyes and feeling tired, so tired…

It turned out that the waves had warned Aunt Jo; they had shown her that Lina would jump. And Lina would have been angry, except all she wanted to do was to sleep and go back to the almond trees and beaches and sunlight of Mallorca.

At the Academy, Lina does not have any true friends. Sure, the people she makes potions for seem to like her well enough (and she’s one of the only people ballsy enough to steal plants from the gardens and greenhouse), but none of them understood her the way that Maria did. And Maria still comes to her, in her dreams, and Lina doesn’t know what to do, if any of this is real, or if it’s all just…in her head. 

She doesn’t know which one would be worse.

[u][b]OPTIONAL EXTRAS[/b][/u]
[b]Rumors/Romantic Interests:[/b] Most people have absolutely [i]no[/i] idea where Lina came from, and why she's only a junior at 19. The headmistresses think that Lina may be part-mermaid, given her affinity with the sea and water-based magic/divination.

[b]Extracurriculars:[/b] Choir, though it's not like she shows up 90% of the time. 

[b]Favorite and Least Favorite Class:[/b] Lina likes her Practical Skills class for the oneiromancy and divination aspects of it; her dreams are the only place where she can talk to Maria, after all. Her least favorite class is probably stats-she's only taking it to get the stupid math requirement out of the way.

[b]Class Schedule:[/b] Practical Skills for Sorcerers III (PRACTICAL SKILLS), Hydrology (ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCE), Physical Education III (PHYSICAL EDUCATION), Spells and Potions for Sorcerers (CHEMISTRY), Statistics (MATHEMATICS), Modern Human History (HISTORY), Classical Greek Literature (ENGLISH), Choir (CHOIR)

[b]Important Relationships-[/b]
CARMEN CACERES (79): Great-aunt; Carmen is a powerful sorceress with plenty of clairvoyant abilities, and she has taught Lina much of what she knows about divining the future from visions and the waves. Blunt and matter-of-fact, there is nothing that Carmen can’t get done. Indeed, she single-handedly raised seven children in rural Spain after secretly eloping with a human man when she was eighteen. The former matriarch of the Caceres family disowned her for this action, which was (and is still) considered illegal, although Elena, Lina’s mother and the oldest daughter, loved her favorite aunt and convinced her grandmother (Carmen’s mother, Lina’s great-grandmother) to allow Carmen to come back after her human husband filed for divorce. The children she had with him were given to their father, and she hasn’t seen them since (and as far as she knows, they have no magical talent). Through the years, the hopeful idealist in her-the one that longed for her husband to reach out to her, to come 𝘣𝘢𝘤𝘬-faded, and now Carmen has an extremely traditionalist attitude towards humans, and was less than pleased (to say the least) about Lina’s relationship with Maria. But after some time she began to understand, to some degree, and when she read in the waves that Maria was going to take her own life, she did everything in her power to try to stop her. Ultimately, her efforts were futile, and she’ll always regret that she did too little, too late.

ELENA CACERES (46): Mother; like Carmen, Elena Caceres has a no-nonsense, can-do attitude. She has a mind like a steel trap, takes no bullshit, and has absolutely no patience for incompetent people. Growing up, Elena was taught that humans are greedy, selfish, evil, wicked, et cetera, and what Carmen’s husband did to her has only reinforced this idea in her head. Strict and severe, Elena is rather controlling and overprotective. Nevertheless, she has a soft side that most people rarely get to see; like most members of her family, Elena has a love for the sea, and she still occasionally goes sailing in the mornings the way that she used to with her husband and children, though it’s much lonelier when her husband won’t talk to her, her youngest daughter hates her, and her oldest daughter can’t look her in the eye. Elena truly wants to do what she thinks is best for her family, but she’s coming to realize what 𝘴𝘩𝘦 thinks is the best may not be what her family really needs.

PEDRO CACERES (46): Father; Pedro was originally born to a moderately-influential sorcerer family in Barcelona, and he met Elena when his family visited the Caceres on Mallorca when the two of them were in their late teens. Pedro is kind and gentle-the complete opposite of Elena, really-and although his family wasn’t exactly the most accepting of humans, they 𝘵𝘰𝘭𝘦𝘳𝘢𝘵𝘦𝘥 them. As such, Pedro definitely has a more “liberal” view of humans. He married into the Caceres family when he and Elena were twenty, and he loves his children with all his heart. He has been the most understanding of Lina’s predicament, although Carmen and Elena shot him down every time he tried to defend her. Pedro is starting to realize that maybe he doesn’t really 𝘬𝘯𝘰𝘸 his wife, anymore, and has been wondering if he would somehow be able to obtain legal custody of Lina and move back in with his family in Barcelona.

CARINA CACERES (25): Older sister; Carina was always somebody that Lina looked up to, and Carina has always tried her best to be a good older sister to Lina. She was her mother’s perfect daughter, in every sense of the word, and she was the one who found out about Lina and Maria’s relationship. She later told their parents, which Lina swore she would never forgive her for, but she truly did it with her sister’s best interests in mind. Carina has started to regret the decision, now, but she doesn’t know if Lina will ever speak to her again.
(FC-Antonina Vasylchenko)

JOSEFINA "JO" CACERES (36): First cousin once-removed; Lina’s ‘Aunt’ Jo has close ties with Villain Academy. Lina was sent to Aunt Jo after her relationship with Maria was discovered, and now she stays with her Aunt Jo in America over the school breaks.
(FC-Eva Green)

MARIA DE LA GARZA (DECEASED AT 19): Lina's former girlfriend. Maria was two years older than Lina, and she was everything that Lina was not-lively, outgoing, rebellious, and reckless, with a love for adventure and a passion that burned like wildfire. The two bonded over their love of the sea, and Maria would regale Lina with stories about the science behind it all. Maria studied marine biology and environmental science in one of Spain's universities, and she could talk for hours and hours about kelp or mangroves or plankton or whales. Maria was from a devout Catholic family and community, who basically told her that she was a sinner damned to hell when word got out about her and Lina. Maria eventually committed suicide after Lina was forced to leave Mallorca for America and her parents essentially instructed her to never speak to them or her siblings again.
(FC-Rasika Navare)[/hider]