Sunday, November 20, 2011

"Where do all the old vampires go?"



Hi there, this is Josefina. I'm just realizing I haven't written a blog entry in a long time! I've just been really distracted with school and stuff... the school newspaper takes up most of my writing time these days. It's good to be behind the keyboard for the blog again. :-)

Just to warn you, this isn't really a news post. It's more sort of a thinky post, about a conversation we had, and a question we couldn't figure out the answer to.

Several of us were sitting in the living room working on homework, when out of the blue, Kirsten asked, "Where do all the old vampires go?"

"What do you mean?" Felicity replied in a somewhat distracted way, looking up from the French verb conjugations she was memorizing.

Kirsten frowned, trying to explain her train of thought, and said, "Well, vampires are supposed to be immortal, right? So how come all the ones we've met have been turned really recently? Clare has been one for a little more than a year. Tabitha for less than two months. The ones who turned Clare and came after her don't seem all that ancient either, are they, Clare?"

Clare shook her head. "Nope. They were only turned a few years ago, as far as I know."

"Exactly!" Kirsten said. "So if they live forever, why haven't we met any old ones? Like Dracula, or something?"

"Because Dracula is fictional," Bree commented dryly without looking up from her book, her sole and oh-so-helpful contribution to the conversation.

Kirsten stuck her tongue out at Bree and rolled her eyes. "I don't mean Dracula specifically. Obviously! I mean really old ones like him. We know more vampires than the average people. How come we've never met any that were old? Like, not even that had been vampires for a few decades?"

All eyes turned to Clare, our resident insider vampire expert.

"I don't know," the resident insider vampire expert replied. "Vampires die a lot, though, I guess. We don't get old or pass away from natural causes, but we can be killed... and so far it seems like there are attempts to kill us a lot. Between vampire hunters and other vampires, the herd probably naturally gets thinned quite a bit."

We all thought this was likely true, but not a totally satisfying answer. That would explain why there weren't many older vampires. Like, why vampires don't just overrun humans and take everything over. It doesn't explain why haven't seen or heard of any, though... because there keep being new ones. Some of them are surviving long enough to create new ones, or else vampires would die out. If they can live that long, surely some of them make it to older age? Even much older?

"Maybe we should ask Inna this," Clare suggested. "She knows more than I do."

Including these two concepts - older vampires and Inna - in the same conversation made me wonder something. I wonder if that's what she's afraid of. If that's what's chasing her. She doesn't seem scared of newer vampires, like our resident ones or the ones chasing Clare. When Kiwi was taken, Inna was angry and afraid for Kiwi's safety, but she didn't seem to have any fears about surviving the rescue attempt herself; she seemed pretty confident. I'm sure some of it was for the sake of the rest of us - but I don't think all her courage was faked. When Inna manages to track the kidnapper vampires down again, she's planning to go after them, and again she seems confident about the outcome.

But there's something she is afraid of. I wonder if it could be the older sort of vampires that we haven't seen yet? Maybe she got on the bad side of one at some point, and now the vampire is out for revenge? It's just a guess, of course. But it's the only idea we've had so far of what might have scared Inna so badly she'd wonder if we were better off without her...

Love,
Josefina

12 comments:

  1. Salut, Josefina!
    This post makes me miss Lilly so much! She'd love reading this...
    Anyway, I wonder what she is afraid of, too. I want to know about the older vampires, too...
    Bises,
    Sabine

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  2. Hmmm .. that is an interesting thought, I know we talked to two older vampires in South America when Brya came into our family and we needed some information on how best to deal with a 1/2 vampire sister. They had a couple 1/2 vampires in their family, but the two 'parent' vampires were the only older vampires in the family. We never thought to ask them about being older, but they were not 'old' maybe 50 years or so is all.

    It would be interesting if that is what is going on with Inna, could be. Let us know if you find anything out about the old vampires.

    Maybe they get tired of living and allow themselves to be killed, out living your friends would be really hard to deal with over and over again. And for those who have no real 'lives' may just be in danger so much they get killed off. Interesting thoughts.

    Hugs,
    Taryn

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  3. Josefina says:

    Salut, Sabine!

    We miss Lilly, too. She hasn't been by in awhile.

    We talked some more about this - although not to Inna, because she had a dinner thing for work that ran really late - but amongst ourselves.

    We didn't really make any progress, though. It deteriorated into jokes about the "vampire retirement home." ;-)

    We'll let you all know if we find more out. :-)

    Love,
    Josefina

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  4. Josefina says:

    Hi Taryn!

    It's really neat that you took a trip to South America to find information. I bet there aren't many people out there who know about half-vampires. We'd never heard of that before we met your family.

    We'll let you know what we find out. Interesting idea that maybe they reach a point where they don't want to live anymore... I bet that's true for some of them. Physical immortality has to get old eventually. (I'm Catholic, so I believe in other kinds of immortality.) I bet they do get killed a lot, too - especially the feral ones who cause a lot of trouble. It doesn't take long before the torches and the pitchforks come out, I bet, if one hurt a lot of humans.

    I hope we can find out more from Inna soon. We'll update let you know. :-)

    Love,
    Josefina

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  5. Josefina,

    Yes, it took us awhile to find someone who knew about 1/2 vampires. When we got Brya, we did not know she was a half vampire until some vampires came to take her away from us, they then told us to kill her as she was just a 1/2 vampire. We fought to keep her, and one of the vampires was nice and told us he had heard of 1/2 vampires in South America, if we were really going to keep her alive.

    Lynsy and Aunt Vyky took a trip to find out all they could about our sister and how to help her live in a normal world. They had only basic information as they did not live in a normal world, so most of our findings have been trial and error.

    Keep us updated.
    Hugs,
    Taryn

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  6. Josefina says:

    Wow, they suggested you KILL her? That's terrible! Poor Brya! I'm glad she ended up in your family, rather than a mean family that would have hurt her.

    Out of curiosity, which vampires came to take her away - were they just random, or some kind of group? Why did they come for her? How did they know she was there? Why did they make you fight to keep her instead of just leaving when they saw she wasn't what they wanted?

    They sound really mean! I'm glad you got rid of them!

    Sorry for all the questions, but we're trying to find out stuff about other vampires so we can keep Clare and Tabitha safe.

    We're doing a lot of trial and error, too. So far it's mostly working out. :-)

    Love,
    Josefina

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  7. we will answer soon .. we have not forgotten .. we were really busy at friends ..

    Hugs,
    Taryn

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  8. Josefina says:

    That's fine, Taryn. No hurry. :-)

    Have fun with your friends!

    Love,
    J

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  9. Ok, first questions .. Which vampires came to take Brya & Why did they come for her .. they were the Ricean vampires, they are an interesting and seductive vampires, but they do not believe that other vampires should live among humans and curve their true vampire cravings.

    The main three of them are Nosferatu, Verdilak, and Lamia. They are the evil and mean vampires that wanted to just kill Brya for being 1/2 vampire, they said she should never have been allowed to live. Thank God we got her and at least had learned to protect her too. Yama was the one that told us to look to the vampires in southern South America.

    We have no idea how they knew she was with us, but I think they are a highly knowing group of vampires, the vampires in SA talked about how they have some special powers to know things.

    Why they made us fight for her is because they do not believe that vampires should live together with and act like humans. They believe that humans are just for food.

    Our friends in SA had a thought for us, we asked them about old vampires, and this is what they said.

    ~~Boredom – the bane of immortals, who remain the same through centuries of change. Boredom kills the spirit just as effectively as fire or sun kills the body. Few vampires actually have the stamina for immortality. A vampire must possess the stamina, flexibility, and imagination required to accept inevitable changes as time goes on. Most vampires, rather than being killed simply waste away from boredom and depression as they must watch all they hold dear fade away and change as they themselves remain unchanged. ~~

    Any other questions just let us know, our friends have a website all about vampires and we are forever asking them about things too. But like you, most of this is trial and error too.

    Hugs,
    Brya

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  10. Josefina says:

    Thanks for commenting, Brya!

    By the way, the reason your comment went into moderation instead of posting right away is that we moderate comments on posts over a week old, just so we notice when someone posts to them and we can reply. ;-)

    This is really interesting info.

    You're going to laugh, but we didn't know there were different groups of vampires with names and stuff. (Inna probably knew that, but the rest of us didn't.) That must make it easier to find out about them.

    I suggested to Clare and Tabitha that they need a cool group name like The Avalon Coven (that name comes from where we live in NL) but somehow they don't think that's as awesome as I do. :-P

    Thanks for telling us about the different groups you've come across in your research and travels. Interesting explanation about the boredom, too; that makes a lot of sense!

    It's good for us to know this stuff, so we can keep our eyes out and stay safe.

    I still wonder which group killed the vampires that turned Clare...? We haven't found any clues yet.

    Love,
    Josefina

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  11. The Ricean vampires are a very old coven from the european continent, that is why they have such old funny names. I guess they are kind of a big coven, but then they do not really live together, just in the same area. They have all been around long enough and have the same beliefs on how vampires should live. Or at least most of them, Yama was a Ricean vampire too, but was nice to our family.

    We really hope that we do not have more trouble with them, it is kind of scary to have them know about me now for sure. I can sustain myself on human food and just go out once a month or so and hunt deer or elk around here, that is the good thing about being 1/2 vampire. I would rather drink blood all the time, but I try to be normal for my family as much as possible. Right now they are not allowing me to be alone other than at home, but at least I know I am loved.

    I like the Avalon Coven, but guess it sounds to tame for them. LOL .. they should start a name that would be kewl. Our South American friends are a name I cannot pronounce or spell, lol as it is a tribal name, so we just call them the SA coven ourselves. hehehe

    We thought the boardom sounded normal too, I am not sure how I will keep going when my family is gone, and no one knows for sure how long I will live or how much I will age. The frist year I was here I aged around 5 years, the second year about 3 years, but it seems to slow down all the time, as I am not aging like that anymore. Our SA friends who are 1/2 vampires do not age visably anymore, they are in that adult stage and have not gotten 'old' yet, so we are not sure what to plan for honestly.

    That would drive us crazy to now know who had killed the vampires that turned Claire. It could be good or bad depending on who did it. Keep us posted as you find clues or things happen.

    Hugs,
    Brya

    P.S. We understand the approval posting, we have it set for two days so that we know when we get posts to answer too.

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  12. Clare says:

    Hi Brya, this is Clare this time - Josefina said I should be the one to respond because it's kind of about me. ;-)

    Thanks for the info about the Ricean vampires... scary to know, though, and worrisome that they're aware of you. Hopefully they'll leave you alone from now on. I'm glad your family stays with you and protects you. Mine does for me, too.

    The reason me and Tabitha said no to the Avalon Coven idea isn't because it's tame - actually, the opposite. We're trying to be regular people, and being a "coven" just seems strange. We're not really one. We're just a family.

    Also, people who didn't know we live on the Avalon Peninsula might be confused about the reason for the name, and think it was supposed to be mystical or something. ;-)

    That's cool about your aging. I'm still not quite sure if I'll still age or not since it's only been a year. Inna thinks Tabitha and I will probably always look like teenagers. I guess that's okay, though.

    We still haven't found out any info about the vampire killers, which is very worrisome.

    Love,
    Clare

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