The Beginning

The road is dark and deserted as a young woman, looking to be in her early twenties, makes her way along slowly. Snow begins to fall in light whisps around her small frame as a chill creeps into her bones. She halts suddenly, making no sound as she pulls her black velvet cloak tighter to her pale skin. She peers around, her eyes heavily fringed with long dark lashes their color so deep blue, almost violet have strange slivers of silver radiating through them like stars. Sensing another in her presence, her eyes glow deep violet with fiery stars contained within their depths. As no one is seen, she walks on and turns down a dirt road. The snow, by now, was falling at a steady pace covering the ground where she walked, leaving small footprints behind her.

She slowly walked up a hill and into the depths of a cemetery. The skeletons of dead trees along her path seem to still as she passed by. She sighed softly wishing for a comforting touch to reassure her that her dreams would not be her tainted reality.

By the cover of darkness she steals up a hill that was once lush green grass, but now crumbles under her light steps. Her mind guides her feet as she nears a cluster of headstones. She gasps in disbelief at the similarity that this place has to her dreams. Her pace quickens as she walks to the far corner of headstones.

She stopped suddenly, almost violently, as her hand gently touched an angel statue atop of a headstone and her eyes fell to the name. Her heart shattered in agony as she screamed out in pain and grief, her face lifting to the heavens beyond. Silken snowflakes entangled themselves into her eyelashes and ebony curls as they danced around her sobbing figure, face looking to the stars. The girl fell to her knees, screaming out in anguish for her lost love as snowflakes enveloped her frail, shaking figure covering her in a silken white blanket.

Her tainted dreams and reality suddenly came together as one. She felt her incisors lengthen as she screamed out in anger. Her emerald eyes flashed as tears veiled her face.

The one she came to know only through a voice in her mind had stolen her love and life to replace it with this curse, this gift, to walk the earth under moonlight. He stole the light from the sun and placed it in her eyes. She now knew she was alone to wander in darkness without a familiar face to guide her way.

As her sobs quieted the snow continued to fall in light flakes around her body, the wind picked up tossing her curls madly about her body. "I am Jade, and I am alone," she whispers through her tears.

Everything was silent.

Life Being Carpathian...the First Ten Years...

If she had learned anything in her short years with her beloved Mikhail, it was that she possessed more abilities than most of her kind.

She could transform tears to diamonds, command storms to do her bidding, shapeshift into any creature she desired, and she was an incredible healer. By detaching herself from her own body she could enter another and heal the worst of mortal woulds. Accomplished as she was, she created an elixir out of roots and herbs that made it possible for her to exist during daylight hours with only minimal effects from the sun. Still, she could find no way to end her emptiness.

Ever since the night she stumbled across Mikhail's resting place, understanding that he was gone, the color in her life faded leaving nothing but an empty heart. The shadow of sadness was spreading itself like a stain over her soul slowly enveloping her in its darkness.

There were only two options left to her, stop taking the elixir and greet the afternoon sun to welcome death into her arms, or lock herself in the earth's soil and sleep the healing sleep of her people, far under the earth in hopes of redeeming her life and stopping the blackness in her soul.

She chose to sleep. Commanding the earth to open beneath her feet, she floated down into the soil. Before closing her own grave, she glanced up at the stars, seeing Orion just overhead. With a wave of her hand, soil buried her. Her heart and lungs stopped as if dead.

Two Hundred Year Later, In the Year of 2003

She awoke from her slumber a few nights past. Her heart beating rapidly as she burst from the ground in a spray of soil.

On this night she can be seen sitting alone in the back of a tavern by the fire. Her face was not radiating the beauty that it had in the past, nor did her eyes glow brightly. Sadness paints her features, and every now and then a single tear rolls down her cheek to be swiftly wiped aside.

Her clothing has been fashioned from fibers in the air making a pair of light blue wideleg jeans that sit low on her hips and a plain back tanktop that exposes her small stomach slightly. Since she awoke, she has found tattoo's and piercings to be fascinating. In her five days having risen she has pierced her lower lip in the center, tattooed a dragonfly on her hip and three stars on her spine.

Her legs are crossed indian style under her as she hastily writes in a tattered looking notebook. Inhabitants of the tavern come and go, but she never looks up.

After what seems like hours she raises her face. Her pale skin is even paler than usual. She raises her small hand up, fingers softly touching her lips as she remembers the warmth of his lips there just a few nights ago. Those few nights that felt like eternity.

He was the one who could make her see again in color, even if it was only for a moment as they kissed. The beauty of the colours and his eyes were etched into her mind for all of time.

A single tear fell from her eye and she catches it in the palm of her hand. Her eyes close, lashes creating dancing shadows on her cheeks as she closes her fist tightly around the teardrop. She speaks softly to herself, not audible to any other in the room, "a tear is not a tear at all."

She opened her eyes slowly and turned her face down as she quietly opened her fist. On the palm of her hand was a diamond, the fire making rays of light glitter across her sullen face. She thinks to herself at if she had a diamond for every tear that fell down her cheek that nght she wouldn't have space enough or all of then.

After rolling the diamond around in her hand for a few moments she quickly put it in her pocket. She scanned the room slowy, and with a sigh realized that here was nothing left for her there.

Slowly she closed her notebook on the nights memories and on her deepest thoughts. She carelessly stuffed it into her pocket, and with that she was gone. All that remained was emerald mist which floated to the nearest window and was gone.