During the Early Renaissance, when the cultural movement of art and intellect pursuits began cupping the fringe of human intelligence and perspective, the first oil painting of Maharet’s nature was first displayed, bequeathing her the title of The Lady in Red. An enigma of what she was rather than who, for the man who captured her likeness in the forever swatches of colour had been found drained of his essence the following day his gallery had been embellished around the infamous piece. Though still careful and deciding in nature, some branches of the illustrious Nyctari family, known as the Nyctarius in the early royals of Italy, had been rather offended by the gall of painters, philosophers and men known to this day to have cultivated the branch between the fourteenth century and the seventeenth. To think they could seal away their beauty and power on a mere canvas or to be told within whimsical tales! Maharet was still young, fresh, youthful among the leagues of family and her creator, a woman who merely went by the name of Maman.
Vampires and other worldly creatures were still adapting, having been risen from a slumber of mysterious origins, old, decrepit elders were nearly petrified by their elongated rest and thus had taken to a gluttonous retribution and plagued most of the human realm with their - for lack of better term - disease. Most would call the time of feverish pain some other sickness, a plague of the dead, an arise of evil, satanic and barbaric with the feral condition most went under during this molestation of change. Maharet, created much sooner by Maman’s vanity and avarice to obtain many daughters, stood by to witness this carnage and felt the first struggles of bloodlust - no matter how cultivated her hunger was under Maman’s tutelage to partake of the purest of essences. But, they were not alone, many other creatures too blended along with the human kind, and for their cavernous hunger, they suffered pillages and consequences and as such, a smear of ebony came with their uttered curse.
However, Maharet, despite various warnings and advertisement against doing so, found a certain enjoyment in making appearances through the critical advancements in time, and always through the creation of a painting or the snip of a photo - though blurred. Perhaps it was her vanity, no amount of lessons could rid her of that sin, but the eternal perspective of her likeness always spurred a sense of desire in her, waking forth a long, dusted amount of lust when she managed to inspire a particular piece of fine, wonderful talent. She admired these beings who, like she, saw the world through different eyes - her perception shadowed and dead, theirs bright and ever lasting. Maman often advised against such admiration, often quoting that human life was vibrant, but also wasting, vanishing like stars and sunbursts. They were eternal, servants to the night, they would last and Maharet never quite understood that lesson until time bled into a dampened deluge of grey and black and before she realized it, centuries had leaped across her eyes in a fickle, slow, blink.
No one had ever told her of this eternity and in her only recalled moment of irrational behavior, the vampire child fled from her creator and disbanded from their family.
Becoming like a flicker of flame, Maharet wove her life seamlessly into the existence of others, she courted lords, she courted ladies, leaving their bed chambers in the night and fed on them, leaving only the whiff of her as a parting gift. She meddled into their lives, almost careless in her immersion and fed on more than her fair share, blood-drunk, she’d say and basked into the near euphoric gluttony she reaped across their hearts. She garnered many names, titles and stories, painting were made and fond memories were whispered of her, a new moniker gracing herself illustrated in the admiration of others.
But as time often proved to her, again and again, this too did not last. Maharet fell into a fitful slumber, sealing herself into a deep state of comatose to waste away her tragic being. Perhaps a bit theatrical, as later those of her ancient family would call her foolish and woeful, Maharet cared not for these sparing details for at the centre of her being pooled all the greys of her life into a weighted stone. She barely acknowledged fellow creatures, figuring them beneath her and so she slept, for how many years, she cannot discern.
This was until the Nyctari family woke her up.
Rousing the Lady in Red from her rest, it produced a cannibalistic slaughter, Maharet’s near mad feeding frenzy sating the hunger of a beast long induced into hibernation. Though viewed as almost taboo, to feed on those of her species, Maharet’s power of blood kept her from succumbing to a bestial insanity associated with cannibalism among their people. So, when the haze of red fled from her vision, they told her in somber words that Maman was dead. Initially surprised that the woman had lived so long, they admitted fleetingly that the ancient being was nearing a petrified state of withering bone and no amount of feeding could stave off her decomposition, much to their dismay when Maman literally was spent into a fine powder in her final hours. Instructions were left in her demise and in such was the demand that Maharet be awoken, for what purpose the Nyctari family was never informed and much to Maharet’s depressing displeasure.
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