1540? (Month is indecipherable. -E.O)

I am called Marie but I think it rude to omit the entirety of my name. I was christened Marie dite de Cantin in the year of our lord 1322 in a small village in Calais. Neither I nor my mother or father could recall the month of my birth, though I have been told that it was during one of the coldest winters that our dear country had ever experienced.

While my mother's life ended shortly after my fourth winter, my father lingered on for several more, long after he had married me off to a snow haired lord called Etienne Chalfont. This now sainted man thought me a witless young girl just as I saw him the doddering, mawkish old fool. Though he did teach me to express my thoughts upon paper and how to give shape to the words that filled my head, for which I will be forever grateful, he expected me to be a caring and obedient slave to his passions and his false bravado.

Thinking that I could be tamed by motherhood, Etienne sired a son upon me of the same name. When my maternal instincts failed to rear their heads to his liking, I was sent to live once more with my father. When word came that both my husband and the child had died, I must admit that I was relieved. Stoic though I may be, I have never been one to be easily tamed, nor am I easily swayed by the nonsensical song of sentiment.

While Father's health continued to decline, I began masquerading as my poor husband's brother during the brief hours when I was not expected to play nursemaid. No one questioned the sudden appearance of this long lost claimant to the Chalfont family fortune, for there had indeed lived a Jehan Chalfont, who had unfortunately- though rather fortunately for me- disappeared some years before. I kept Etienne's inheritance from being dissolved and thus neither I nor my father wanted for much else when it came to material goods.

It was on the eve of my thirty third year that my father was granted his heavenly reward and I, with no husband to hold me down, was free to do as I wished. You may be happy to know that that winter became the happiest of my life, for I dedicated the rest of that year to pursuing my passions. Though most of the books of that age were religious in nature, I found them most enjoyable and devoured each one that fell into my grasp, though these indulgences were kept hush hush and were often executed behind the ever vigilant backs of those who were elected to be their keepers.

The relatively new invention of the printing press has since made my academic life much easier and though I no longer need fear the demons in those older tomes- for I have since become one- I still enjoy the nostalgia that comes with old paper and words penned by bleeding hands.

Yet I digress. I lived a relatively happy, albeit listless life until my thirty seventh year. I had amassed quite the collection of relics, you see; bits and baubles made important only by the virtue of their very natures. My sex meant absolutely nothing when greasing the palms of unscrupulous men who cared more for the coin than the sanctity of the objects in their possessions. In time they became meaningless to even myself, but one item in particular seemed to attract all of the wrong sorts of attention.

(The rest of this page appears to have been gnawed or torn, though it has very likely crumbled with age. - E.O)

Elisabeth never visited me in the company of her own kind, not after explaining to me that so much was at stake. In a way this had helped me keep the illusion that she, like myself, was nothing other than human. A mad young lady who simply enjoyed spending time with one older than herself.

We had been sitting in her home in Grasse the night that she proved me wrong. Though it was over a century ago, I can remember that night more vividly than any other. The heavens had deemed to place every last one of its stars on display and the moon was so bright and so large that it lit the world around Elisabeth's little block house in a pale white glow.

Amidst the avalanche of information, the one topic that had never been breached centered upon the act of feeding. These creatures, if she was indeed one, preyed upon the living in a multitude of ways. With my head light from a few too many glasses of brandywine, I casually asked my dear little hostess about it.

The silence that passed between us seemed to stretch on for hours, though I knew this to be a product of the drink and the sudden awkward shroud that I had inadvertently cast upon the evening. When I opened my mouth to change the subject, Elisabeth did the most remarkable thing.

She answered me.

That darling girl told me that nourishment was indeed supplied by the human, through various points on the body. It was not painful to the human and was in fact deliriously pleasurable. It had been some time since she had been fed from and could not relay that firsthand experience to me due to the passage of time, but she expounded greatly the details of feeding.

Elisabeth explained that to feed was by far the biggest- and often only- joy that her kind experienced. It was like chocolate melting on the tongue during a particularly satisfying round of fornication with a partner so beautiful that your entire body was eaten with shivers before climax was ever approached. It was like that first burst of adrenaline and that last sigh before you lay your head down each night. It was like love and warmth and security and all of the things that human beings crave so.

Yet all of those things taken as a whole would never and could never approach the entire sum of the sensation.

If I had been besotted before, I was utterly enthralled then. It didn't matter that she couldn't remember how it felt to be human and to be fed from. I would have hung the moon for her had she asked and the only thing I wanted in the world was to give her pleasure.

I had never felt such selflessness before and I must say that I haven't since.

I gave her no time to deny me before my lips met hers, the meeting of our mouths cutting off any budding words of protest. With the copper on her tongue mingling with the wine on mine, I knew that I would get what I wanted the moment her cold arms embraced me.

Elisabeth's mouth and teeth and tongue traveled along my throat, bruising and eager and I had thought that I knew pure joy in that moment. My heart pounded in my chest and then stuttered when fangs I had not noticed before carved through my skin.

I cradled her head and stared up at the ceiling, and I'm certain that I must have made some sort of noise because Elisabeth answered with a muffled reply. It was everything she said it would be for her but flipped around and for the third time in as many months, I knew real want. It was not even over and already I wanted more.

It ended before I could thoroughly question the things going on inside of me and after she had licked the wounds- which I would later learn had healed them- my throbbing core relaxed and I placed her head against my breast.

Though my mind was scattered and I felt drunk on things besides those that I had consumed, I whispered promises against her hair and her ear in between grateful kisses.

I told her that I would never leave her.

It was perhaps one of the only promises that I have ever kept.

From there on out for weeks on end, I made sure to inject my desire to be Embrace into every conversation that I had with my paramour and each time my hints were blindsided by Elisabeth's explanations of how miserable such an existence was, how unfeeling and cold. There were protocols to follow, feet to kiss and egos to stroke when it came to such things. A hierarchy that she wished not to cater to for reasons that were strictly her own. I knew that she feared that I would bring up my preoccupation around her little cluster of kin, but I did not for that very reason.

Violetta already eyed me with staunch suspicion and I certainly did not want for that uncertainty to sour her opinion of Elisabeth. Distrust can be just as dangerous as any of its brethren, after all.

The months ticked by and Elisabeth had developed a visible flinch every time I mentioned the prospect of her being my sire. The blood exchanges continued and though I shared her bed more often than not, I felt as if she was drifting away from me. Perhaps I had gone too far in my quest to assert myself in the rays of her warm light.

And yet on a surprisingly warm December night, she approached me clad in nothing but a defeated smile. She traced her fingers along the curve of my waist as she so often did before such gentle happening resulted in their usual culmination of bare flesh and tangled limbs. But there was an urgency in the way she stroked my throat that stirred no small amount of alarm in the core of my stomach.

After all of the wicked stories that she had told me, I began to wonder if she was through with me entirely. I wondered if I would live to see another sunrise and yet I was unafraid to die by her hand. It has to be said that love is a strange and terrible thing.

She sat by my head and cradled it in her lap and I knew that whatever the decision weighing upon her soul, it was a heavy one. Then her hands slipped beneath my arms and she hefted me up as if I weighed no more than a kitten to sit in her lap, the breath that she so often projected for show coming out in chilled doggish pants against the back of my neck.

"Jeg f?r aldri forlate deg, heller," she whispered and I though I did not understand those words, I knew the meaning. Each syllable, the tone of her voice, the whole of the structure will follow me to my Final Death.

(NOTE: Translated from Norwegian, the text translates to "I will never leave you, either." - E.O)

As her hands formed against the twin spheres of my bosom and the touch of her mouth against my neck gave birth to a moan, I knew the taste of hollow victory. As her teeth penetrated my throat and just below the surface, I felt a certain sadness in the ecstasy of it. The pleasure devoured the guilt in short order and soon even that had disappeared with the sheer volume of blood that escaped into dear Elisabeth.

A hollow victory, yes, but I had still emerged the winner.

I had feared that there would be a confrontation between myself and Violetta at the next meeting and from the looks of things, from the wide eyed stare fallen to a narrowed squint and the baleful glances shared between Elisabeth and herself, it appeared that I had a fight on my hands.

I had seen the rage and the hurt beginning to boil in Violetta's eyes when my new nature was revealed. Dark emotions, all of them, and so strong that they made the very air around her cloyingly thick.

For all of Violetta's self serving heroics, for as much as she wanted her cohorts to see her as the Patron Saint of the Unwanted, it took my presence and my presence alone to unravel her carefully groomed veneer. And the more I stood and stared at her, the larger dog waiting out the yapping tantrum of its smaller cousin, the angrier she became.

But then Elisabeth surprised me yet again. She manufactured a lie that, coupled with one of her many preternatural gifts, put not only Violetta at ease, but myself, the Unwanteds and even a handful of poor, unsuspecting mortals down the street.

Their group needed me. I had a calm head and knew how to keep quiet. I was intelligent and apparently the only one amongst the lot of them that possessed the abilities to read and write.

I was, according to an impassioned Elisabeth, an indispensable addition to their cause.

Violetta had accepted the explanation with a simple nod and a grunt, just in case neither of us knew that her disapproval still lingered. And what could she do? Of course she could corner me along and kill me- I was young and still unlearned of all of my gifts- but then she would have enraged Elisabeth; and I assure you that an angry Malkavian is not something that anyone with half a mind would want to cross.

I was beginning to learn a lot about Elisabeth, amongst them all of the darker things that I refused to see in my infatuation for her, and it was those things that only made me love her more.

I cannot tell you how she felt about me after my Embrace but the midnight fumblings became more routine for her than myself. She seemed increasingly more distracted in my company, but filled with melancholy to the point of inertia without me. Her entire existence became a series of motions repeated on loop.

This continued for twenty years, wherein I climbed out of my shell only to stop Elisabeth from retreating into her own. Eventually it was only Violetta and I that handled the meetings, despite my disdain for the Unwanteds. Elisabeth had simply lost her heart for it. Sometime in my tenth year of Kindredhood, she had insisted that I teach her to read and write and I had done so with bells on. I had thought that it would bring her back to the sunny land that she had abandoned a decade before.

She was a surprisingly quick study and took to both skills with ease. For five months I had my darling sire back with me and I hoped and prayed that it would last. I only wanted to be close to her again, and she had seemed so happy. I had wanted to tell her that my Embrace was not her fault, that I understood the loneliness that had plagued her so, and yet I didn't.

I wish with all of my heart that I had, so that perhaps she would have forgiven herself, and now I shall live with that forever. For all of my life.

1540 November 14

I believe that for a time I was broken beyond repair. I believe that I still am. Elisabeth had represented what I thought be the definition of pure happiness and I could not understand that one days things would get better. Even if it was not meant to be so in the most human sense, the sorrow that I felt would lessen. We are, all of us, creatures of hope. Hope drives most of us, Kindred and Kine alike, to strive for that One Day.

It has been nearly a century and I am still waiting.

Long before Elisabeth's death, Violetta- whose trust I had earned if only by my treatment of my sainted sire- expressed a need to return home to Eire for no other reason than to quest for peace of mind. I had needed her then because left alone to my own devices I surely would have destroyed each of our charges with a smile on my face and a song in my heart.

She left a month after the first meeting to happen after Elisabeth's passing, with my blessing fresh on her mind. At first I had wanted to do right by my sire; to push forward and continue the work that she had spent a majority of her existence championing.

My own heart ached for home, for Calais and all of the trappings of the memories that it held. I scrounged up what funds I had available and moved the entire troupe of ten with me. Days were spent sleeping in barns and barrows and nights were saved for travel, despite the complaining of most of my wards.

However there was a young Caitiff man by the name of Jean that never complained and voiced his distaste at the reactions of his compatriots quite openly. I admired him in my own way. I saw in him an ambition and drive for greatness, the steadfastness in which he tried to learn his gifts and tried to figure out his place. It was for that reason that he walked beside of my horse.

I regret to say that I was far too holed up in my own head to give him the help that he had needed. At the time I had simply wanted the world to burn. I suppose I may have gotten my wish.

I had never before had the misfortune of crossing paths with a werewolf and that had always been for the best. Brutish beasts, every last one of them and there were as many stories about them as there were variations. I must confess that it was not on my list of things that must be accomplished before my Final Death.

Those roads, if they could be called such, were long and dark and desolate. While I recognized the depression that settled on most of the Unwanteds- with the exception of Jean, dear Jean- I did not completely understand it. We were creatures of darkness.

The path that stretched between Grasse and Paris was no different from any other that I've ever traveled, save for the few large beasts that had decided to intercept our journey. Both of them were huge, quite ugly white wolves that had appeared out of nowhere with such swiftness that their presence had not fully touched on me until they were in front of us.

It took but a second after my horse began to panic to know that they were not normal wolves and a second longer to figure out just what they were. I heard Jean mumble something and then they were upon us. My horse hadn't the time to throw me from his back before his legs were wrenched out from beneath him. Those of my group that were aware of their gifts found them to be incredibly useless against our attackers.

In that instant I knew fear.

I cared not that my cohorts were being torn limb from limb, even though I heard their flesh being torn away their bones and my eyes burned with the sting of their ash. Somewhere along the way I had lost sight of Jean, the only one I cared to see survive, but I found that I was no longer in my own body. That is as close to an apt description of what happened as I can properly articulate.

The sounds faded from my ears, if not my memory, along with the scents and sensations that came with witnessing such a massacre. The Unwanteds had never stood a chance, whereas I apparently had. I cannot to this day tell you how I ended up where Jean found me, or for that matter how Jean had survived. I simply remember waking up with my back against a large boulder somewhere close enough to civilization to see the strange glow of oil lamps.

We had made it to Paris and while my mission to preserve what Elisabeth had built had failed, I had survived a meeting with two of what I would later learn were called the Get of Fenris. I will never know the extent in which Jean had helped me.

I only knew that I had to carry on and if that meant without Elisabeth then so be it.

I would make my existence memorable.

Jean accompanied me as far as Avion. He had nothing to hold him firmly in Arras but thought it only proper to make sure that I arrived safely. I do not know where he went or where he is to this day, but I do often think about him.

The grief that I had been holding back for Elisabeth was there to greet me the moment I stepped foot on my home soil. To be true, it was the only thing that welcomed me. There were but a handful of vampires there at that time and the humans there regarded me as a pariah; for what sort of woman of noble marriage, if not noble blood, and a widow no less, gallivanted around so freely and at all hours?

I did and they could all, everyone of them, be cursed straight to The Devil. My stint as Jehan Chalfont had provided me with not only currency but unfettered access to the Chalfont ancestral home. A lovely white stone building with more rooms than I had time to explore. Ivy crept across the east wing like some verdant plague and it was lovely to behold.

Though the servants had long since been dismissed, I was not alone there. Elisabeth, for one, had followed me.

Like some flaxen haired nightmare, she appeared everywhere I looked; a manifestation of my guilt. I roamed the halls and there she would be waiting for me at the bottom of the staircase. I would look into a mirror and see her green eyes staring back at me. Just when I would work up the courage to reach for her, I who am frightened by so little, she would disappear in wisps of cloud and memory.

When I was not plagued by the phantom of my sainted sire, I found my head filled with voices. Hushed voices, screaming voices, men and women of all ages. I had thought myself able to tune such nonsense out, and yet on more than one occasion I would come to my senses in a neighboring town, in an alleyway or on a rooftop without a clue as to how I had arrived there.

They say that our progenitor infects the collective consciousness of all of his descendants. They say that he has formed a web of himself in which the voices of all those belonging to the Moon Clan, dead or alive, speak. I had learned to ignore this chaos long before I ever knew the reasoning behind it. On lonelier nights, however, I would listen to them. Without access to my beloved books, The Cobweb became my only salvation and even then I tapped into it begrudgingly.

During those times when self spite won out over my need for another person's voice, I simply stewed in my own mind. Elisabeth had been right. This existence was wretched. I was no longer a person, much less the person I had been. The world traipsed by while I became stagnant; a painting unable to escape the confines of its frame. I had the means to care for myself indefinitely, and yet the only thing of importance that I owned were my memories, and they were killing me.

For five years I watched as my husband's home became my prison. While Elisabeth still haunted me, I became somewhat of a specter myself. I paced from room to room incessantly. I howled and cried and destroyed anything that wasn't nailed down. I fed from rats and birds and those poor souls unfortunate enough to think that looting that damned place was a good idea. I had literally lost myself.

Strange that it was the shadows that saved me when the darkness was closing in.

Serge Bouchard fancied himself as something of an aristocrat, despite his trappings hinting of a time long ago. His kit was ill-fitting, seemingly crafted a century before for a man twice his size. I of the tattered gown and wild hair, must have seemed crazed to him, just as he did to me. I will say that I have never been the sort to look down my nose at others. This world has such a habit of placing every last one of us in different lights, some brighter than others. Even still, my time with Elisabeth's people had humbled me further.

This man with his smug smile and superior airs had not had such an experience, and he never would. I was offal to him, though I know now that he saw everyone who ventured into the faux warmth of his own light as such.

While seconds stretched into awkward minutes, while his gaze turned somewhat lewd, I found out more about Prince Bouchard than perhaps he even knew. He had a daughter named Annette. She was his prized possession, for even she didn't escape his pomposity. He had Embraced her- a taboo- the moment she had turned eighteen. I do not know how many other Kindred had knowledge of this, but I did. Perhaps he knew. Perhaps he didn't. I was still far too rattled from my journey with Anouk to hold this over his head.

A wave of his hand invited me inside of his home. It was opulent to the point of garish; everything colored the sort of red that seemed better at home in a brothel.

"Usually we deal with those who hide their presence in this city," he mumbled, and my defenses rose. A Parisian knew nothing of this city. His heart was buried back in that hole of depravity. Mine was firmly entombed in the dark soil of Arras. Still, I let him say his peace.

"But as you were unaware of such changes, allow me to be the first to welcome you, Madame Chalfont. I am the Prince of this city now, and in case you weren't aware, the mechanizations of how our kind work has undergone a drastic change. We are Camarilla, the bold and the caring."

I snorted in an attempt to hold back a laugh, and perhaps he was too polite to acknowledge it. I'll never know. As I drew my fingertips along the worn walls, he told me of Primogens and Sheriffs and blahblahblah.

I already knew. Everyone did. You could go into hiding for eons and still pick up on the childish games played by those who fancied themselves the figureheads of sinking ships.

"Madame Barinaga happens to be the Sheriff of this town, though I suppose she prefers the moniker of 'Hound'."

I could tell by his tone that he had no respect for Anouk, she who was far more terrible than I, but still I bit my tongue.

"And what," I asked, "do you want with me?"

"I want you to be the Malkavian Primogen. An easy position. Simply smile and nod that lovely head of yours."

I hated Serge Bouchard. I hated every last bit of star dust that crafted his being. He had no regard for anyone but himself, much less my beloved Arras. I would end him, I promised myself that.

When he turned to face me in anticipation of my answer, I flashed him a smile and gave a nod of my head.