Perched atop one of the many mausoleums that marked the graveyard of St. Mary’s, a figure, dark and foreboding against the midnight sky, hummed animatedly. Luminous curls of flaxen fell forth from a violet ribbon. Her face was round and smooth, and full of a young vitality that belied nothing of her age.. Her skin, now warm with the blood of an innocent, was a pink tinted ivory that was impossible to distinguish from the silk material of her diaphanous Parisian dress.

Though the word doll had come to the minds of the countless dozens that had seen her, she preferred the thoughts ‘Marionette’ provoked within her; For while dolls were a piece of art on their own, and marionettes were simply dolls attached to strings, the latter could be manipulated into motion, could imitate live motion, could put on performances..

'Immortal, coveting a mortal way of life..'

And in the end, wasn't that what life, both mortal and immortal, was? Coveting the unattainable? Imitating the desirous, a life -- Entertainment for the masses! And it was that conclusion (Which had taken her a millennia to come to might she add) that could make her laugh out loud till her sides split and her strings snapped, leaving her broken.. And alone.

Yet it was that very same conclusion that had made her so fervently seek out solitude on her own violation. But solitude had driven her here, and though she resented the very idea of being anyone's entertainment, or playing the role of some frail, mortal child.. It was the only thing she had left, besides her pride.

"And dignity, can't forget about dignity!"

She chirped while slipping off of the tombstone, her sweet, childish voice giving note to none of the turmoil going through her mind.

There was something alluring about the cemetery in the night. The natural glow of the mood, and the artificial orange light both illuminated the dark ground, combining the old with the new in a way that wasn’t due to the new being buried along with the rotted flesh of their ancestors. Winter’s fingers still clung to the ground, unable to bear the thought of giving up his white dominion, and making the blades of grass shiny with frost. Likewise, the weeping angels and sullen crucifixes that rose out of the ground were coated with it, giving the whole place a kind of Winter Wonderland in Hell kind of feeling. There was little here that moved, and precious little more that breathed, yet the air was alive with a power all its own. Had she believed in such a thing, Euthalia would have attributed the heaviness about her to complacent spirits who walked next to her.

But she didn’t, and so the thought never entered her mind.

The follies of this thing called a ‘soul’ never ceased to amaze her. Whether you were a benevolent saint, coveted by the Christian God, or the psychotic instrument of what some had called evil, you still bled the same way – you still died the same way. Euthalia had never in her long life seen anything that had presented itself like a soul would. She’d never seen it, never felt it, or smelt it. To her, there were only two kinds of people: the weak, who let life pass them by, and the strong, who took what they both needed and desired. Then again, there were some who called her evil, insane, and countless other names that she had no great need to remember. If she were evil, then she was made that way by pain and circumstance. Both were things she could not control, so who was she to blame? God? Or was she to simply accept the evident truth where others wished to be blind? The truth that, in all things, the world was completely, and utterly, evil.

She walked out of the trees, appearing like a white specter in the dark night, or a fairy changeling come out of the wood that was her home. Her red-brown curly hair was pinned back with two small barrettes, and she was dressed like a little girl who was about to go attend a formal family function. Her walk, however, showed that all was not as it seemed, and that this body of hers was but a mere shell for something far more sinister – a hole where a demon could make its home, while remaining completely inconspicuous. She moved like she floated, and like she could control her body in a way that no natural creature – much less a child – should have been able to. Her hands were behind her back, and there was the faintest line of severity on her otherwise serene face.

Why was she here? That was a rather good question. One could say that she had unfinished business to attend to. The Tarepha leader slipped between the tombstones, there a moment, gone the next, until she came to stand before two of the plainer of the bunch. Two names were inscribed upon them, common, inconsequential names that she didn’t bother to read or remember. She knew them though – or had known them. They’d crossed her, and she’d been less than pleased. They’d meddled with her, thinking like mortals did that because she appeared young, she was young. They’d been proven wrong. The smell of blood had drowned out all others in that small little house of theirs. Now, the only smell they gave off was that of their bodies bloating with rot and decay down, down beneath the soft, cold earth.

Then, something caught her attention, and she turned to look over her shoulder in a way that was almost unnatural. Slinking about a tombstone, she leaned on it, looking at the other child vampire – one of the few she’d seen in her lifetime – with a look of plain distaste upon her face. What did she find so distasteful? Truthfully, she wasn’t entirely certain. She was rather intrigued to be sure, but it had long been said that those who talked aloud to themselves were on the verge of insanity. If you were insane, the least you could do would be to hide it, before slicing down the kill.

Such was her odd philosophy, in any case.