The Indeterminate Mate

June 21, 2006 "How much longer do we have to wait?", thought 8 year old Kaia to herself impatiently. She sat on the floor, in the living room of her priest, and looked around at the walls. Paintings of the moon goddess, Selene, dominated the room, in all of her beauty and glory.  Her parents, were in the next room, discussing "adult matters" with the priest. It was most common for a priestess to be involved with rituals associated with the moon goddess Selene, however in rare circumstances, males also opted to dedicate their lives in service to the goddess. These weekday meetings were a common occurrence, her parents involved in the various rituals carried out in praise of their goddess. Unlike most vampires, her family paid obeisance to their goddess at every festival, Selene encompassing most of their lives. Living amidst humans, they followed the lore of the human world. In their part of the world atleast, there were few supernatural beings.  Kaia attended these Thursday night meetings with her parents, learning more about her kind and mythology about their goddess, Selene. Vampires had evolved over time, now being able to go out in the sun, and also being able to feed off genetically engineered blood, all these considered blessings from Selene. Fresh blood was considered an intimate act, only to be shared between spouses, although unmarried couples also partook in the act of feeding due to the associated bloodlust. The thing that had most intrigued Kaia though, was the concept of mates. Most common with the werewolf kind, vampires weren't known to have mates, and were free to choose their life partners. Recently though, there were more and more reports of vampires being blessed with a mate, 'divine' couples favoured by Selene. Kaia wondered whether she would be lucky enough to experience having a mate of her own one day... "Hi there!" Kaia, startled to have been interrupted from her musings by such a deep voice, one that was not of her parents, or the high pitched voice of her priest, looked up slowly through long eyelashes and innocent eyes. Her gaze, framed by lilac metal eyeglasses, fell on the face of a noticeably older boy. Golden brown skin, twinkling brown eyes, and a long black mohawk styled haircut as was in fashion nowadays. "Hello", the boy repeated. "I'm sorry to have startled you so. My name is Kadon".