Juliet's Origin Story

Story for my character in Luke's upcoming campaign.

Stats @ http://750words.com/entries/share/409816
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Juliet's memory was fuzzy. It always had been, as far as she could tell; her life was a highlights reel of moments of grief, sadness, and emotional torment, and, honestly, that's the way she liked it.

She knew her name wasn't always Juliet - well, perhaps it was, but she had no way of knowing one way or another and it didn't matter. Someone must have compared her to the Shakespearean Juliet in a Via Dolorosa or something, and the name stuck.

She always wore a bracelet with the word "Juliet" written on it in what were now antique pewter beads, so she could remember it was her name when she awoke.

She wasn't even entirely sure how old she was; that is to say, what century she was born in. She remembered putting corsets on. She remembered having servants help her with all the dressing, but only because it embarrassed her when her body started developing.

Her human life was, too, barely remembered. How much of it she had figured out from sparse notes she left with her torpid body versus how much was actually there in her mind she couldn't really say. But she did have a few vivid memories.

She remembered a strong feeling of love. Oh, how she pined for the memory of that feeling; tiny and fleeting though it was, the memory was all she had. The vampire psyche, over time, almost completely loses the capacity to feel emotions, yet her memories can bring those shadows to the forefront of her mind and make her happy again.

But what she remembered with perhaps even more vigor was the sadness. The feelings of loss and hopelessness. Because, after all, love is very rarely found without such feelings.

So Juliet knew that she was a very well-off child during her life. She had described her family, the architecture, the little memories that she would sometimes hold onto after torpor. People had told her everything; mostly, they seemed to converge on eastern Europe.

She died when she was about nineteen; perhaps she was older and looked young for her age, though. Equally, she may have been only fourteen and matured quickly.

Unlike most vampires, her embrace was not the cause of her death; rather, the death was the cause of her embrace.

Back to the love. The young woman that she had fallen for. She couldn't remember anything about her lover - not her name, her face, the way she looked. She wasn't sure whether their love was doomed solely because of their genders, or if she was from the lower classes, or even - like in the great story she named herself after - from a rival family.

She remembered the torment, though. The anguish that their parents, their families would never approve of their love. That sort of feeling is all-encompassing; she could think of nothing else for as long as she lived. Their visits were few and hurried; their letters were frequent and mournful.

From the torture of their forbidden love, it became clear that they would be unable to achieve happiness in their lives. Their letters frequently spoke of suicide; of ending it all. And with each passing week, it looked more and more appealing.

And so, one day, Juliet sent a letter that proclaimed her undying love, and proposed a suicide pact. In those days, at least, they had access to all sorts of poisons.

On the pre-determined night, under the full moon, Juliet and her nameless love made a toast to the stars, said a prayer, and drank the poison. Her death was like falling asleep, and with it came a feeling of ecstasy she had not felt before or since.

Unfortunately, her death was interrupted by a pale man with wild, dark hair and dark eyes. Juliet awoke to him, gnawing away at her neck, drinking her blood - or perhaps putting blood into her?

Her memories of the next few nights were vivid - physical torture, something she had not felt before, but something that seemed to fit well with the mental anguish she had been put through the past few months. On several occasions she almost laughed from the glee of it all, the release that this pain gave her.

The pale man would leave her, tied up in the wildnerness, only able to scream impotently at the wilds. She wondered whether he hid behind a tree and listened to her, or if he had business to conduct elsewhere.

Perhaps he had also woken her lover, and had her imprisoned in the next valley.

But if he did, Juliet didn't remember. Not now.

Not after the fog of dozens of ages clouded all but her most cherished memories.

If the star-crossed lovers had been reunited, Juliet wasn't sure that the memories of such a reunion would have made the cut.