My dear Marius suffers, my maker, my lover, my teacher… his pain is shared by all of his progeny. It is my hope that Pandora is deep within the earth, unable to pick up what we do or her efforts to buy us time would have been in vain.
But for now we must say goodbye to one of our own, a child. Pandora’s child. A child that for years did not know who or what she was. She only knew that she shared this affliction with her twin sister and that all around her, her human family was aging and dying, yet her own development was severely slowed. A child that was finally among others that understood her, that loved her, that wanted her, and that taught her. She was coming into her own, having been trained by the best of us, but a child none the less. Marius’ daughter.
A feeling that Marius never thought he would ever feel, least of all with his immortal beloved, Pandora. A woman he fell forever in love with as a mortal man, a soldier for the Roman Empire, she a Roman senator’s daughter, far far from his own league. Denied that love by her family, his dreams of ever becoming father to her children were stolen. Until the twins came. A chance to feel paternal in a much more human way than how he feels about us, those he’s made vampire. A chance to raise mortal children with his one true love. And mortal they are; half vampire half human. An oddity that is rarely seen and certainly condemned among those of us that keep the thread of humanity within us.
It is perhaps why Lestat and Louis are both here, in Sosaria. Only they would truly know what it means to loose a daughter, not just a progeny. That sorrow, that pain, lingers for all eternity and to see it happen to our coven leaders surely must resurface feelings buried deep about the little girl they turned into a fierce killer. Louis, the most human of us all, was a father and a mother to Claudia. A vampire child made against our rules by Lestat to bind Louis to him. Surely there will be awkward moments between them. Lestat holds Marius in such high regard, but he so often pushes the envelope of our society and its rules. Louis keeps mostly to himself in his estate in New Orleans; he was able to recover the property decades past. Now they converge here, to put another child to rest.
A funeral shall take place in the wee hours after midnight, invitations will be sent near and far. We will put this child to rest finally, whole… yet without her mother.