Juliet and Sophie

Trying to expand on Juliet some more, give her some more backstory, etc.

I refer to her having Obfuscate 3 in this story; rest assured, this is not something she has now, but just one of the many abilities that she had once but has since been lost in her torpor. She doesn't even remember that she once had the ability to obfuscate.

Stats @ http://750words.com/entries/share/413277
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Juliet had had a productive couple of years.

It was the late 1800s, and she was enjoying herself immensely. Things were finally looking up for her. She had learned from a Mehket friend one of their most closely guarded secrets; the secret of making yourself invisible, a silent witness to the events that unfolded around you.

Juliet's girlfriend of the time was a perfect subject for her suriveillance, too; her name was Sophie, and she was a werewolf, as had become the norm for Juliet. Werewolves were out of control and tended to kill things that they loved. As long as Juliet avoided the werewolf's claws, she could be a witness of the aftermath of this destruction - and with her newfound ability, that was a piece of cake.

Sophie had five children and a husband - a husband she wasn't in love with, of course, but a husband who made a suitable father for the children and who was able to provide for them. Sophie had never dreamt of love, just of stability. But with both Juliet and her husband, she had both.

Of course, her husband had begun to suspect. How could he not, with Sophie spending nearly every night off with either Juliet or her pack. And Juliet, for her part, had done nothing to lesson his suspicions, even sometimes planting items of men's clothing around the house for the husband to find and fret about.

This night, as Juliet stood silently in a corner, completely invisible, she watched the final confrontation.

It started out as an argument; an argument that got more and more heated as time wore on. Juliet could see Sophie struggle to maintain control of herself, trying to suppress her rage.

But Sophie was a Rahu, and that was not in the nature of these beasts. When her husband accused her of being involved with one of her packmates, it was the last straw. This small, mild-mannered woman all of a sudden became a giant, furry killing machine. She roared at her husband, and, with a quick swipe of her monstrous paw struck three clean gashes into his chest.

The look of horror and disgust on the man's face before the life left his eyes made Juliet's heart leap as she felt, for one fleeting moment, the strength of his grief and confusion.

Sophie roared again, and that gargantuan head began tearing at the man's flesh, and swallowing it, crunching the bones as though they were nothing.

Juliet went up the stairs, and ceased her appearance of invisibility; one by one, she went to each of the children and with the power of her majestic charisma, convinced them to go into the lounge room.

Five children came running down the stairs; children who had no idea what was about to happen. When they entered the room, the beast saw them, attracted to the movement, and dispatched with them, too.

Eventually, Sophie recovered from the rage, but it was too late. She sat there, in the middle of the piles of flesh and the pools of blood, sobbing.

Juliet made her entrance here.

"Sophie? What's happened?" She asked, her face contorted into a very convincing mask of concern.

Sophie said nothing, as Juliet sat beside her, putting an arm around her shoulders.

"Don't worry, honey. These things happen." She said, smiling despite herself.

~~~

Ten days later, under the light of the full moon, Sophie and Juliet stood, hand in hand.

Sophie was not over her actions by any stretch of the imagination. But she had become determined, under Juliet's schooling, to go to a place where the pain would leave her, where she could be in peace.

And so, the pair of them made a toast to the full moon, Sophie muttering a prayer in first tongue, as they drank the poison together.

Sophie fell asleep for one final time.

Juliet, as a vampire, was unaffected by the poison. She watched Sophie die with a smile.

The grief that they'd shared, the grief that Juliet had caused, it made her feel something that she felt so rarely these days.

It made her feel alive.

~~~

Juliet, today, remembers only the werewolf killing her own children, and the suicide that resulted.

She does not even remember Sophie's name.

She is no even certain whether or not she embraced Sophie. Can a werewolf be embraced?

Perhaps Sophie is out there, somewhere, and has found out exactly how much of a hand Juliet had in the events of that fateful night.

Perhaps Sophie is a powerful vampire seeking her revenge.

Or perhaps Sophie just died by her own hand, and that was that.

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.