Moira Lyttle was a classic Irish lass. Her flame-red hair fell in wavy rings to her waist. Her body was lithe, her skin milky-white and free of blemishes beyond a light dusting of freckles at shoulders, on the tops of her flawless breasts, and across her cheeks and the bridge of her nose. Her eyes were green and piercing. Any boy caught in her gaze would immediately be smitten.
Unfortunately, all of these wonderful traits were to be forever hidden away from men. With her father dead at a young age, and her mother unable to pay for any type of college, at the age of 18, Moira found herself being whisked away on a northbound train to a remote convent. She'd been told that the Mother Superior was a distant relation, some kind of umpteenth-removed cousin.
Most girls would have rebelled at this. Run away, gone to the city, and made half a life for themselves working as waitresses and what-have you at dead end jobs. But Moira had been raised in the country, and raised to obedience towards what her betters told her. She was quiet and unobtrusive by nature. When her mother helped pack away her bags, Moira had silently helped, hugged her goodbye, then boarded the train with ticket in hand.
The train ride was uneventful. Moira dozed fitfully, and awoke when she felt the temperature dropping. She put on her gloves and huddled into her coat, staring out the window as the train passed through farmland and empty moors. It got colder and colder, and Moira watched as the window slowly began to frost.
When she arrived at the Lake Seelie station, she was the only one to get off the train. She stood on the platform with her one suitcase, pulling her wool coat tighter around her and watching her breath freeze in the air, she wondered how she was going to get to the convent. As far as she could tell, there was no real town anywhere nearby, just a platform between two hills with a bramble thicket on the other side of the tracks.
As the chill was beginning to set into her bones, she heard a car pulling up. Lifting her suitcase and walking to the end of the platform, she saw an old, much-maligned station wagon. It coughed and sputtered to a stop. The door opened a out stepped the figure of a nun. Moira could smell cigarettes as the nun used the door as a fan, trying to air the smoke out of the car. Moira noted that she wasn't actually wearing a full habit, it was a more casual, "nun in training" affair, though at being a severe, heavy dress with mini-habit to cover her head, it was a far cry from the jeans and sweater that Moira had grown up wearing.
The nun turned, and Moira was surprised. She'd expected an old woman, or at least someone her mothers age, but this was a girl, who couldn't have been more than three years older than Moira at best. She had mocha skin that was too dark to be a tan, not that she could've gotten one in Northern Ireland in the dead of winter, and strands of thick, rich brown hair were slipping out of her habit here and there. When she looked at Moira she smiled instantly, as if they were old friends reuniting instead of new acquaintances.
"Mother Superior doesn't allow smoking," she said. "So I have to sneak in a faggot when I can." She winked at Moira conspiratorially, and Moira felt a warm rush in her stomach at instantly being treated like a bosom buddy.
"You are Moira Lyttle, right?" asked the dark girl.
"Yes," Moira said, sticking out her gloved hand.
"I'm Seetha," replied the other, giving her a firm handshake, "Or Sister Seetha, once we're around the others."
Seetha hefted Moira's bag suddenly and tossed it into the back seat. "Hop in," she said. Moira had barely closed the door before Seetha was rushing off down the road. Sister Seetha had her window open despite the cold, obviously to remove the last vestiges of smoke. She chatted away a mile a minute as they drove. "I don't usually smoke, but in the winter, it just gets so goddamn cold (don't worry, I'll say a few Hail Mary's for that later) and it just warms me right up. Of course if we had a little rum or something at the 'vent, that would do it too, but it's drier than Hell itself in that place, not a drop to be found."
Moira realized that Sister Seetha's immediate openness had bound her. She knew that she would probably have some moral imperative to share this information with the Mother Superior, but Seetha was so trusting of her that Moira instantly knew she would never do it.
Once Seetha rolled her window back up, the car began to warm. Outside they passed through a seemingly endless stretch of frosty green grass. "I know what you're thinking," Seetha was saying. "Isn't there any kind of civilization out here? There's actually a small town about ten miles south of the station, it's where we get supplies."
Seetha talked through the whole trip, and Moira occasionally chimed in, though mostly she just listened. The abbreviated version of Seetha's life seemed to be that she was of mixed Indian and Welsh heritage. Her father had been a wealthy Welsh noble, and her mother an attractive maid of mostly Hindi descent, although how far back it had been since her family had emigrated to the UK, Seetha didn't know. Her mother had died in childbirth, but it seemed that the noble had had a soft spot for his illegitimate child. Unfortunately, when Seetha was nineteen, her father had gotten married, and suddenly the bastard daughter wasn't quite as welcome in the house. Try as she might to fit in, Seetha was a rebellious girl by nature, and it wasn't long before the new woman of the house had had her packed off to the convent.
Coming around a corner, Moira found herself looking out across a long, narrow lake. It was set in a deep valley of grass and rock, and to the north a small river was barely visible feeding the lake. Deep, cold mists rose randomly throughout the valley, almost preventing Moira from seeing the castle. She gasped at the sight of it. It was tall, and clearly ancient. There was a high wall about thirty meters away from the castle itself, and as the car passed through the front gate, Moira noted that it was mostly ruined and torn down in places, in contrast to the castle's spotless facade. It had two high towers rising out of either corner of it's western wall. The southern tower was wide, about ten meters across, while the northern tower, which was easily the highest point on the castle, was merely two across. The main structure of it was long and and broad, and had what appeared to be a new roof (new in the sense that it was probably made only four hundred years ago, as opposed to however old the rest of the castle was) that resembled the points and arches of a major cathedral.
Seetha gave Moira a brief history of the castle. "It was built about six hundred years ago, and became a convent in the 1500's, which is why it's one of the few castles this far north that hasn't been completely destroyed by time. They put the new roof on in the 1600's, sort of their only attempt to make it look more like a house of God than a fortress."
Seetha looped the car around behind the castle, where a simple aluminum shed had been placed in more recent years. As they pulled in, Moira noted that most of the shed's cluttered interior held gardening equipment, with barely enough space to squeeze in the old wagon.
Seetha got out, and Moira wrestled with her bag. She was led in through the back door of the convent. They made their way through a twisting maze of cold stone passages. They'd been recently paneled in wood, trying to increase the insulation, but it was still cold enough inside that Moira could just barely see her breath. Moira spied a modest dining hall through an open door, and about forty women and girls, most in full habits, a few in the "training-nuns" that Seetha wore, preparing for dinner. They went up several flights of ancient, sturdy stairs, and coming down the end of a long hallway, stopped at a door with an ornate cross set into it's center. Seetha drew herself up, checked to make sure she her clothes were not overly rumpled, and knocked on the door.
"Come in," came an old woman's voice. Seetha opened the door and peeked around the corner a bit before opening the door all the way. Moira followed her into an office that had obviously been refurbished recently. I was much warmer here, and Moira suspected that good deal more care had been taken with the insulation here than in the cold, drafty hallways they'd passed through. Behind a large, elaborate desk in an antique leather chair sat the Mother Superior. Moira had been dreading this moment. She feared that she'd be here, spending the rest of her days in the company of some cruel lizard, but one look at the Mother Superior and she knew she'd been wrong. Her eyes, partially obscured by small, thin reading glasses, were kind. Her face was pale and elegantly wrinkled by age, the crinkling at the corners of eyes and mouth evidence of a lifetime of broad smiling. Other observations were useless, since the rest of her was lost inside of her habit.
"You're Moira Lyttle? Bethany's girl?" asked the Mother Superior.
"Yes, Mother Superior," Moira replied, nodding her head.
"You look nothing like your mother," the Mother said, smiling. "But that's not a sin."
Moira smiled shyly. It's true that her mother was a bit of a frog, but she'd never heard anyone else come as close to saying it, let alone a nun.
"Well," said the Mother Superior, standing up. "It's about time for supper. Sister Seetha, take Moira to her quarters and get her changed, then come down to dinner."
