Elina 🦇

Elina • she/her

🎵Crybaby - Nanna🎵

Elina is a vampire who is very important to the plot of Amongst the Oleanders. Because she’s a vampire, Elina has fangs and very long claws, and is also SUUUUPER tall compared to regular catfolk. She was Adrik’s adoptive mom who found him alone in the woods and decided to take him in and raise him as her own, as he had been abandoned by his birth family. During the start of the story, Loretta discovers that it was Elina who killed Loretta’s dad, and kills her in a heated moment of revenge. Loretta realizes that killing Elina doesn’t actually make her feel better, and now she’s just horribly guilty about the effect it had on Adrik, while secretly feeling like she was justified in some sense, because Elina was also a murderer. Later it is found out that Elina was very close with Laurence during the 1800’s time period before Laurence had been trapped away in the mirror. They were initially childhood friends but as Laurence moved away to the mansion on the outskirts of Dreigenstadt, the two had little hope of seeing each other again. During this period, Elina falls in love with a tailor named Simon and they are set to be married. This all changed when the townspeople started mentioning that a demon of some sort was haunting the town, and begged Laurence to put an end to it. As he investigates the situation, he realizes that the “demon” is Elina, who had been turned into a vampire. She explains to Laurence that she had been bitten, and that she had been abandoned by her suitor who was horrified by her curse (this is untrue, Elina actually bit Simon in a fit of bloodlust and after realizing what she did, she runs away in horror and guilt. She doesn’t tell Laurence this because she is afraid he will kill her). Laurence decides to take her back to the mansion and uses his powers to get rid of her desire to kill so she can live relatively normally. She still needs blood to survive, but she gets it from animals instead. Laurence also helps her transition because :). ANYWAYS she decides to repay him by helping him in a lab partner kind of way, and things go relatively well for the next few years! Her crush on Laurence is reignited, but there’s no sign of him feeling the same (he’s actually aroace and has No Clue how she feels about him) so it remains unspoken but they’re essentially in a qpr and are very close with each other! But as Laurence gets more and more paranoid of death, he begins to desperately search for a way to become immortal, often using innocent townspeople as subjects in his studies. Elina picks up on this and realizes if she doesn’t do anything, Laurence will cause much more harm to Dreigenstadt and it’s residents, so she makes a plan to stop him. With the help of Dreigenstadt’s Mayor, exiled apothecary, and a mysterious dream deity, Elina uses a magical spell book created by Laurence to create a spell that will confine Laurence in a prison of mirrors. Elina sets off and manages to cast it, trapping Laurence for nearly 170 years. Elina is pretty out of it after that happens and doesn’t allow herself to get close with anyone else, fearing things will turn out badly just as they did with Laurence. She wanders for awhile and distributes Laurence’s research to Laitoile scientists in hopes that they will use it for good. Eventually she actually ends up reconnecting with Simon, and they become friends again for awhile. She also encounters Selene, and despite a rocky start with Selene being resentful towards Elina due to her previous affiliation with Laurence, the two end up bonding due to their experiences. They end up living together and eventually move to the town where Simon lives to start a new life and have some sense of normalcy. Elina starts to notice the effects of her vampirism progressing, she becomes taller and more scary, her claws growing exponentially and she is horrified by how monstrous she looks. Selene reassures her that she is not a terrible person, and that she is worthy of being loved. The two fall in love and live for many years together until Selene’s death. In the aftermath of Selene’s death, Elina decides she wants to return to the mansion at Dreigenstadt, to face her trauma and make it into her own home. As she lives there, things are rough for her. She is all alone, and although she exchanges letters with Simon, she kind of falls back into the aimlessness of Before. This changes when she finds Adrik in the woods, and he is able to make the last years of her life happy ones. I’m not revealing why Elina killed Loretta’s dad though, that’s gonna remain a mystery for now >:)

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