I do not miss them. I can not afford the casual pain it causes, the longing. Here the ocean washes up to my doorstep and I have peace. I am calm. The blood does not call to any thing except the moon here. And the stars.

I have the music of the sand and sea. I have the wind in the leaves. I have everything I need.

Except Donatien. Except Madeleine-Antoinette. Except...except...

I do not dream here. My eyelids close and I sleep. Sometimes two or three days fall into one another before I realize how long I have been sleeping. I am old.

I know this now. I am old.

I forget that anything exists except the sea and my stairs. Except the moments I wait for it to have meaning.

But I am hungry now. I am searching and I am hungry. I have ceased to be the thing they taught me to be. I have found the blood lust again...

It is time to return to the world, but what will I find there?

My hands are shaking as I sit here and write this. I am furious this evening, and I can not tell you why. Is it the coming heat of the summer months? No. In Napa it is cold even now. Compared to the islands.

I don't know what causes my blood to rise. Perhaps it is the rumors come from so many places of the misbehaviors of my Covenant, hid behind excuses of the Mother and the Maiden. They are blasphemies and lies, those claims that breaking the traditions we hold so dear are integral to our worship.

I never thought to be so iron-fisted. But once again I find myself glad for my children, who I raised better. Who I raised to know. At least they make a good showing, in front of Ambrose. Not like this child Talon who claims to be an elder of our kind. Who claims that it is the fog of ages, his eternal slumber, which has clouded his mind. He should admit to the simple ambitions which he holds. We could work with that.

And the Sheriff-cum-Scourge. Who thinks to berate me for my inhumane behavior. Has he not noticed I am Kindred? I am no mewling kitten, walking through the nights to mouth pretty things for the Princes of Cities to adore me for. I am a woman, but more than that I am a Vampire, and let it never be said that my scorn was kinder than my hospitality.

Why am I so angry?

I slip out of the house and away from the watchful eyes of MA and D. Why do I feel like the child, and they the disapproving parents? But they must not know this, see this side of me. I am always so controlled with them, even when they see the facade of abandon, they believe the deeper mask hidden underneath. The calm, calculating, perfect mask.

But I'm not her. Tonight I will revel in what I am. A vampire. A monster. A shadow slipping from place to place, lingering at the edges of bonfires and feeding on the unwary. The innocent.

**

It is later, and I am up to my wrists in blood. This is not MA's clean butchery, nor D's carefully painful seductions. This is not the religious one's salvations, nor the imperious one's carefully meted punishments. I revel in the sight of it. The smell. The taste, copper and iron and darker than night on my tongue.

I listen to the whisper of the girl's scream, and idly wonder if I will cut her vocal cords, or if I will listen to the music until she is dead.

I realize it makes no difference.

**

As I fall into bed, exhausted, I banish them both from my room. For tonight my head is quiet. I have peace.

I vacillate between the states of mind. One minute I am a bubbling innocent child, and the next I am hungry with a force I can not name. I do not like this uncertainty. I do not like the changes that come over me when I am confronted with myself this way.

Donatien and Madeleine-Antoinette confirm my memories for me. I don't think MA knows yet that I am not certain any more, but D does. It frightens me. I do not wish to be one of those ancients who relies on her children to do everything for her. I am not a queen bee, to sit back, and be brought life on a plate. I must live it, experience it.

I must have control.

I provoke the Sanctified with my "blasphemies," but it makes them think. They must think. They cannot be the mindless drones which they have become conditioned to becoming, or we will all stagnate. We will falter and die.

Even to the godless, I am a mother.

What makes them my enemies, I ask. What causes me to be against them, and them against me? Perhaps I will be able to nurture these children in Monterrey.

I watch it all crumble in the face of time.

Dearest Madeleine-Antoinette,

Since the death of Lafayette I have been grieving a good many things, not all of them fit to be shared with the men of our family, but I think you will understand them. You have always understood the things I can not share with Donatien, nor explain to the holy one. I blame his religion for being in the way.

I miss being young. I envy you, right now, just a bit, with the experience of years and still the enthusiasm of youth. Perhaps when we are together you will indulge me by sharing with me some of your greater adventures. I shall simply listen to them and try to recall my own until the sun rises and we fall asleep as we once did, drunk on those words which pass between us.

I confess to longing for your brother terribly. I'm fairly certain you are the only one who understands just how much. Why doesn't he come to us now? What keeps him in Europe, so far from those who love him? I know you do not know, but I ask anyhow, as if to provoke the universe into answering this question I imagine written in both of our hearts. (Ah, had we been Daeva instead, that such melancholy wonderings wouldn't seem simply the idle fancy of women, but rather something soul-bound and divine.) One day, when he returns to us, we will have to pry the solution from him, what keeps him there, and why he does not come when we call.

You are ever my ally and my strength Madeleine, ever the mirror in which I am reflected and improved.

I remain, eternally,
Josephine