001
In your blood-hunger you destroy someone close to you. Kill a mortal Character. Create a mortal if none are available. Take the skill Bloodthirsty.
Dīs -
I could not find you at Accademia tonight. What did you say to me, the night we met? The night you snuck me home and kissed my hand and called me by my true name?
“You know where to find me, maiden.”
And, Dīs, I really thought I did. I believed you when you said it, like I believe you when you say all things, but tonight I am putting lives at risk to be here and I could not find you.
Do you know, you are the only person who did not look at me strange when I suggested that Proserpina might have taken her seeds willingly? Accademia is supposed to be a haven for forward-thinkers, for progressive philosophy and, yet, every other student told me that perhaps I should reread my own story! Wasn’t that wild, Dīs? Did I not make the metaphor obvious? The Religio Romana is the Underworld! I am Proserpina and I came and I stayed of my own volition! It was my pomegranate to eat and I did so happily! There was no rape. I chose Pluto.
Well, I chose you, Dīs. Close enough, I think.
Although...Pluto loved his wife. You must love me, too. Mustn’t you? I can’t imagine choosing to bleed so much for someone I did not love...
This is digression.
We have not spoken nor seen each other since the night you Cured me.
I know you know this. It seems pointless to remind you, but I’m writing it anyway. I am still stalling. I do not want to say what I came here to tell you. I do not want to read what transpired today in my own hand and be alone with it. But -
My godmother is dead.
No, that doesn’t quite capture it, does it?
I killed my godmother.
You once told me that Magdalena was not worthy of my reverence, of my love. You said, “Kore, she has more in common with your father than she does with you and what you think she is.” I confess to you, Dīs: it was the first time I did not believe you. It was the first thing you have ever said to me that made think, “He does not know what he is talking about. He cannot make these judgements on anecdote alone.”
But, Dīs, you speak with such conviction and sometimes your words haunt me. Because she is the only mother I know, she must be a conniving Ceres, plotting to deprive me of my throne so she can keep me to herself and live all her years in springtime. Because her visits are few and far between, they must be done reluctantly, out of guilt, for love of, out of obligation to my mother but never to me. She cannot know me, if she is absent. She cannot trust me, if she herself did not teach me the Classics.
(Someday, I hope to be as firm as you are when voicing my beliefs. I hope to say what I think is true with no fear. You have no fear, Dīs, and I know you must want me to be the same and I am trying but tonight I am so, so afraid.)
...Is there a way to tell, do you think (do you know?), a person by their pulse? Does all blood beat the same or is there a subtlety to the notes that would have sung out, “This is not just blood, it is Magdalena and you love her and she is calling to you”?
I was not deaf, though, to other things that did announce her - the sweep of her elegant skirt along the floor, the careful and measured steps against stone. And her voice, of course, beckoning for a child she used to know to descend the stairs, leave the shadows, and fall into her embrace.
“Marianna,” she said.
In my head, it should have gone like this: I would bound down the stairs, grasp her soft, beautiful hands and say, “Godmother, that is not my name,” and she would be so delighted to meet my new self and I would bring her to meet you, as well, so she could thank you for curing me and you would say, “You have proven me wrong, maiden! I see what you love and welcome her into our fold!”
Instead, my steps were too quick and she pulled back when I reached for her.
“Godmother,” I said.
But she said, “Your eyes! What is wrong with your eyes?”
Do you already know, Dīs? Have you seen? Do you think they make me look so different as to be unrecognizable to someone who has known me all my seventeen years? To be truthful, I think they are not so bad. Actually...I think they are beautiful. At a glance, it is something of a fright to see black as dark as ink, but now I know how the candlelight catches in them! Oh, I cannot wait to show you the colours!
Magdalena only saw the darkness. It pains me to guess (especially to you) that even if I had known there were colours to also show her, she would not have looked at them. She would have made the same sign of the cross and thrown out the same arm to stop me from coming closer.
If she said anything else before she screamed, it was lost beneath the rush of the winding rivers of blue, purple, red converging in the wrist she did not mean to offer.
Dīs, when you took my bad blood from me and replaced it with your own, why did you let me believe that would be enough? Why did you not tell me that I will always need more to replace what you took form me? Why, why, why did you not warn me about the hunger?
Six pomegranate seeds make a life, but not a meal.
You always listen to me, Dīs, you always lean in and kiss me when I speak to you and it lets me know that you hear me, that you care for my words, that you approve. If I could just see you tonight, before the sun rises, if you could just let me share what has passed and wipe the blood off my lips with your own...
While I am warm and sated now with Godmother’s blood in me, I do not know how long that peace will last and I dare not linger to risk any more lives, so I am leaving this letter where I know you will find it, should the business that keeps us apart have a timely resolution.
I must be rid of her body. I must be rid of this nightmare. With your aid, my teacher, my guide, my love, I know I can be both.
Please come.
Yours for eternity, Proserpina