Ileana Radu

She was named Ileana because she was born on May 21, the Romanian name day for Ileana. Her middle name, Brândușa, is because it means "crocus," and giving girls flower names is a tradition in the maternal line of her family. Brândușa—along with all other Romanian flower names—has its name day on Floriile, Palm Sunday.

She typically just goes by her given name, Ileana. Among her family she is occasionally called Ilenuța, which is simply a diminutive of Ileana. Her grandfather used to call her Nuți, a further diminutive.

And of course, among her friends in adolescence, she was Hearts, although that was more a title than a nickname. Nowadays, it's part sentimental relic, part emotional bombshell.

### Accent

Romanian

Ileana is the daughter of Viorica Țăranu and Nicușor Radu. She and her twin brother, Luca, were born of a short-lived, ill-advised marriage, which ended when Viorica took the two-year-old twins and left in the middle of the night, without so much as leaving a note for her once-husband.

Viorica had fallen out with her parents when she married Nicușor, despite her parents pointing out—quite rightly—that this marriage was a bad idea. After Viorica left Nicușor, she cut ties with the friends from that part of her life to prevent Nicușor from finding her and taking the children back. This left her a newly single mother, and utterly alone.

She struggled to take care of her children while providing for them at the same time. When she couldn't find a neighbor who was willing to watch the children during the day, she would leave them in the apartment alone while she was at work. As a result of this neglect, the twins became very dependent on one another.

By the time the twins turned five, Viorica was desperate enough to swallow her pride and make amends with her parents. She returned to her parents' home, the village of Mălâncrav in the Carpathian Mountains, with her children in tow. Her parents, Florina and Răzvan, had only met their grandchildren once before, due to their strained relationship with Viorica, but they embraced them immediately. Her twins—who Viorica had always assumed where just little demons by nature—flowered under the doting attention of their grandparents. It took only a few months of this before Viorica came to the conclusion that her children were better off with their grandparents—better off without her. And so, once again, she left, without so much as leaving a note.

Ileana and Luca spent the better half of their childhood being raised by their grandparents. When they first came to their grandparents house at age five, the twins had chattered to each other in their own language—Romanian based, but so rapid and mangled it was incomprehensible to anyone else, born of neglect, and them talking to each other *far* more than they spoke to any adults. By the time they turned six, the twins had stopped using their private language almost entirely.

Their father entered their lives again when the twins were eight, via contact between him and their grandparents. Florina and Răzvan had never much liked Nicușor before, but that was when he was the man their daughter was marrying on a whim. As an individual in his own right, they liked him rather better, and he had matured a great deal in the almost-decade since they'd last seen him. The twins did not remember him at all, having last seen him when they were two, but during the next few years they came to know their father. He visited them often, and they would occasionally stay with him for a few days.

As their grandparents got older and their health began to fail, the twins stayed with their father more and more, and after their grandparents' passings, he began their sole guardian.

## Mămică

Ileana's relationship with her mother is quite simple: they don't have a relationship. Ileana hasn't seen her mother since she was five.

Ileana's relationship with the *idea* of her mother is quite complicated. It's an ambiguous loss. Viorica simply *left*, without a word to anyone. Why did she leave? And now, decades later, the question becomes: Is she still alive? Where did she go? What did she do? Whatever became of her life?

With age, Ileana has come to forgive her mother after a fashion. After Luca ran away—after *she herself* ran away—Ileana came to have some measure of empathy and understanding for what her mother did. There is still a level of pain and resentment that is forever tied to her, but Ileana has managed to let go of the anger and blame.

## Tată

Her father, Nicușor, lives in Sighișoara with his boyfriend Dinu. While not a central figure of her life, Ileana makes a deliberate effort to keep in contact with her father. Calling him once a month is on her calendar.

He the only parental figure she has left, and even now, as an adult, knowing he's there if she needs him provides her with a sense of security. There is also an element of guilt at play—Viorica vanished on him, Luca vanished on him, and Ileana vows she will *not* vanish on him too.

## Luca

I don't know now. Livi, let's backfill rp!

Ileana, like so many of her generation, has a certain guarded, watchful solemnity to her. The exception to this is when she laughs. Ileana has always laughed easily and freely; it's an expression of mirth as often as amusement. When she laughs, that gravity vanishes and she seems almost childlike again for a moment.

She anchors herself by reveling in the little poetic pleasures of life—hot baths, the smell of the garden after it rains, the dogs napping in the afternoon sun—evidence that life is good and worth it. Ileana takes great pride in the life she had built for herself in the delta. She is most content—not *happiest* or most joyful, but most *content*, most at peace—in moments when she is most viscerally the mistress of her household. Evenings, when chores are all done, and Delia tucked into bed with one dog sleeping at her feet, and the other dog following at Ileana's heels as she looks about the kitchen, surveying it. Everything is well, everything is taken care of, and it is *her* doing, and that fills Ileana with a sense of deep peace.

At the core, Ileana is both a dreamer and a planner; a fantasist and a realist. Even knowing all too well how unpredictable the future is, how easily plans get crushed into dust, she cannot her mind from spinning ahead anyways, forming big beautiful ideas, and plans that are perhaps long shots, yet plausible.

### Piercings

Ears

Ileana takes after her absentee mother, with her fair coloring. When she was young, Ileana didn't particularly like her appearance. She often wished she looked more like Luca, who takes after their father.

Ileana only ever knew her grandmother, Florina, as an old woman. While she was alive, "what her grandmother looks like" had meant what Florina looked like *currently*. But after her death, the camera drew back, and Florina's life became a larger narrative rather than just the present moment. Only after Florina's death, as Ileana looked at pictures of her grandmother as a young woman, did she realize that when her grandfather said, "You look like Florina when she was young," it was not just sentimentality speaking—there really was some literal truth to it.

Knowing that these features came from her grandmother—that were not *just* her mother's—helped Ileana like them a good deal better. Though they *were* still her mother's too. It wasn't until her late teens, when Ileana finally began to make sense of her mother's place in her own life's story that she came to peace the resemblance between the two of them as well.

## Delia Kadnikova

Delia is Ileana's ward. During the collapse of EESM, Ileana's once-teacher Ivan Kadnikov pressed his 7-year-old bastard daughter into her arms and begged Ileana to take her. And so Ileana did.

Call Delia her *foster daughter*, if you wish, but never her *adopted daughter*. Delia is still Kadnikov's daughter in the end, and Ileana hopes—for Delia's sake—that Kadnikov is alive, and that she will see him again one day. (Ileana knows all too well the pain of ambiguous loss and an uncertain disappearance, particularly that of a parent.) And if Kadnikov ever resurfaces, Ileana is ready to give the girl back over into his keeping, though she knows it will tear her heart out a little to do so.

Ileana has *always* known that Delia is not hers for keeps, never considered Delia's place in her life to be truly permanent. And at times, this has even been a comforting thought—while she would never have turned Delia away, and while she loves the girl dearly, the fact remains that Ileana didn't *want* a child placed in her keeping at age 16, as their world imploded around them. The knowledge that caring for this girl would not be her task forever, has—at times—been a comfort.

Because even if Kadnikov never returns for her, Delia will grow up. She will go to school, or run off with her friends, or elope with her boyfriend—and that day will come sooner than Ileana is ready for. She *knows* this, and has long since accepted it. She just prays that when the day comes, Delia will remember what Ileana told her: "Take care of yourself, don't *ever* get into opiates, always use a condom, and please—come visit me sometimes."

## Jeni and Zhuchka

Jeni and Zhuchka are two street dogs who they adopted—Delia wanted one, and Ileana gave in. They're sweet. Jeni's the bigger one—the short-haired, goldeny brown one, with the long legs—and she's younger, and a goofball. Zhuchka—the longer haired one, with the spots—is older, more jaded and wary, but he's a sweetie too. The dogs make Ileana laugh hysterically, like a kid again, and that's nice sometimes.

* Ileana and Luca were never told which one of them is firstborn—their family felt it would only lead to fighting. When she was 16, Ileana asked her father once again, and he said that he *would* tell her now if she truly wanted to know—they were past the age of petty squabbling over it. But *did* she truly want to know? Ileana thought about it and concluded she did not.
* She has always loved Princess Ileana of Romania. Her grandmother told her about her when she was little. All little girls are brought up on stories of princesses, and Princess Ileana was hers.