PFC Episode 18: Interspecies Kin

Loretta Fabron Onfoy discusses werewolf and vampire relationships and tells the story of the ill-fated Amise, 5th born of Sister Sophie who wandered with the horde for decades until she met a werewolf name Timeo. The two shared a lifetime of love.


Warning: Child vampires

For more information or to ask Lady Loretta a question: please visit https://www.elizabethguizzetti.com/paperflowerconsortium or email her at info@paperflowerconsortium.com

Written and Performed by Elizabeth Guizzetti

Music:

Opening and Closing music: Loretta's Theme by Evan Witt.
Learn More at www.wittynotes.com

Transcript

PAPER FLOWER CONSORTIUM Episode 18: Interspecies Kin

Recording by Loretta Fabron Onfoy, former Lady of the Kingdom of France and current historian and librarian of the Paper Flower Consortium.

Beloved Initiates and Other Listeners:

Forgive me the reprieve from recording, but the Paper Flower Consortium is mostly fixed from the flood damage! Our home is complete, baseboards and all, though a few apartments must still be finished. It is such a relief. 

Let’s get started. Tonight I am going to speak on Interspecies Relationships. 

Due to the huge amount of what is now called “shifter fiction”, this question has begun to pop up more and more. Can Werewolves and Vampires have love affairs and more importantly can they live a happily ever after? 

My beloveds, Vampires do not live. We are dead. But yes our existence can be happy. Interspecies relationships can be complicated, but they too can be happy, but a warning no relationship with a living being lasts forever. 

However, before I go on, I would first ask you, dear initiates, If you are still a human and want to be with a werewolf, why are you seeking an existence as a vampire coven? 

Why don’t you join a werewolf congregation? Our friends at the Howling Moon have openings in their HOA too. They have a Winter Fellowship and Summer BBQ which are open to the public and offer an orientation to their initiation program. Like ours, it is three years and discusses the pros and cons to transformation.

There are fictional accounts about how vampires and werewolves were sworn enemies and engage in open or hidden hostilities. Maybe some groups in some parts of Europe may have competed for land or resources, but that hardly means all vampires and werewolves are enemies. All the werewolves I have met have just lovely people. 

Obviously as a librarian, my experience with groups outside the coven is limited, but my husband and brother-in-law have had werewolf clients. My sister has acted as an official witness in her capacity as coven liaison. My daughters’ company MYT Clothier has a whole line of clothing made specifically for shifting species. And Norma has always had werewolf friends and clients.

The other more insidious fictional stereotypes about Dominant/submissive fantasies are not real life. Werewolf females have complete freedom of their person and wealth. Men do not call women the B word unless they are jerks.  Sorry, but most women don’t like bad boys, we like men who respect us and help raise children if that blessing is in our future.  The words Alpha, beta and omega don’t exist in their lives, though I am sure like many people they might have fun with such things from time to time behind closed doors. 

Here are some generalizations that I have found to be true. Werewolves are wonderful parents and have close family relations. They raise their children with gentleness and kindness and do not glorify violence. As I said in the Spring special, this is why Derrik contacted them for assistance when Norma was a struggling teenager. For those I know to speak to, I’ve found most to be quite house proud. Their homes and gardens are simply lovely, and their community property is well kept. Their motorcycle club also seems to be quite motorcycle proud. Their quilting club seems to be quite quilt proud. My darling Charles purchased the most amazing quilt for our coffin when they had a quilting convention at the Night Owl. I am sure you understand. They are simply people, just like vampires, with a virus that is at times inconvenient, but also provide a certain set of gifts. 

But let us say you are a vampire and you meet a werewolf and fall in love, well my beloveds, that very thing has happened to one of our allies. Unfortunately for those involved it happened in a time and place before condoms were readily available. We will return to France in the sixteenth century. 

Now France during this time period had some attitudes that we do not share now, especially that a woman’s worth had to do with her ability to bare children. 

You may remember our friend Marcus had transformed the sweet sister of mercy, Sophie into a vampire and Sophie turned her charges suffering from the plague into vampires. For much of their early existence, Sophie and her offspring existed as a wandering horde, feeding off unfortunate humans or dying animals. It was the Good Sister Sophie who told Agata this story of her ill-fated 5thborn, Amice. 

Before I continue I will remind you, my beloveds, that Sophie transformed all her charges from the hospital. back in the 16th century, there were guidelines in the official vampire communities, but there were no laws or even a council, so though child vampires were frowned on, they were not illegal. Some failed to thrive, others joined her in death. And dear ones, know that young vampires meet their end in this telling. 

Amice was a girl of sixteen who was sent to the hospital to die by her parents when they found the tale tell black tumors. She spoke well, could read and came with funds both for a bed at the hospital and to pay a priest to bless her into heaven. Sophie believes Amice was most likely from a merchant family, but Amice never spoke about her human family.  She rarely spoke about anything. She was very shy. She was gentle with the younger children. Sophie’s first born, David and Amise were friends

Still she quietly wandered with the horde for decades. 

People of this age do not understand the unending cold and darkness of the night and the harshness of day. The horde did not have coffins, they found grottos or dug holes and slept in the earth of France. To keep themselves comfortable, some vampires coupled up in love or lust and held eachother in the cold ground.  Amise did not -- though she, at times tried to protect the younger children from the coldest winter days – In those early years, several child vampires stopped existing. They would wake frozen and hungry, unable or unwilling to move during the night. The horde was too hungry and weak to care for them. Dawn would come. Sophie burned with her offspring. No amount of prayer could save her from it.  But David and Amise did their best to comfort her.

Sophie told us each morning before Amise covered herself with the earth of France, she prayed for love to find her. . After a time, David asked her to be his, she refused. His form was, but, thirteen.  The others pestered her and told her it was wrong to deny David, but she still refused. Sophie told her horde to let the girl be, so they did. 

And so it was, one night, the horde came across three men at arms who protected a group of pilgrims. The horde thought to pick off the elderly, but Amise kept her eyes on the youngest man at arms. Sophie believes he was seventeen or eighteen. I am told, he was quite dashing with a thick mane of brown hair. 

So of course, the men at arms heard the horde in the darkness. They fed their fires and encircled their charges. They put their swords outward looking for danger. 

With only fingernails, teeth, and sticks for weapons, the horde sought easier prey, but Amise was smitten by the lad. She said goodbye to Sophie and awaited the dawn. 

The men at arms moved their charges during the day. Amise tracked them at night. For weeks, Amise buried herself at the previous camp and practiced what she might say to the lad, but feared approaching too close. One night she heard his name was Timeo. She learned he had a father, mother, brother and sister at home. The leader of the men at arms was his uncle, Theo. And the other was a family friend.

Yet this information did not help her in the wooing of Timeo.  

It was the night of the first fill moon n the night of the first full moon, the pilgrims and men at arms 

hobbled the horses and prepared to change into their wolf form. They raced through the night. At first Amise feared their claws and snapping teeth. The elder vampires had sometimes told stories of wild beastmen, but Amise too felt she was beastwoman. So she waited in the shadows for him to return to human form. 

He sniffed her out first. 

“Timeo.” She said and stepped toward him shyly. “I am a woman alone. A French Woman.”

As Timeo was a noble son of the crown, he growled something. Because he had his clothes at camp. He turned to his human form behind a tree.

“You’re alone?” he asked, hiding his nakedness.

“I left my kin,” she said. “Where is your pilgrimage?”

“To Jerusalem.”

“Will you take me there?”

“You’re a vampire. Set apart from God.”

“My people claim we are closer to God,” Amise said. “And say your kind is not.”

“I am a son of the crown and a man of God,” he said. “You won’t seduce me.”

“You wouldn’t have stirred my heart, if you were not,” she said.

“Well, I suppose if you really have no protector, you should go to the fire, but give me a few minutes, I’ll tell them you are coming.” And so he did and covered himself with a tunic and cloak. His uncle was not pleased, but Amise was an educated woman alone. She asked out their pillgramage and did not act in any way unbecoming.

Theo had her look at his crucifix. She did not burn. She held it. She knew the Lord’s Prayer. She was gentle with the children in the group.  

For a month, they remained apart. The werewolves moving in the day, every night Amise following, coming to their fire. She quoted the bible and Anne of France’s instruction for my daughter with ease.

And one night, she told Theo she loved Timeo and fate brought them together.  

“Werewolves and vampires cannot be together. It’s unnatural.” Theo warned them. “Amise cannot bare children, her womb is dead.”

Which of course is true, but as you already must have realized the young lovers succumbed to their youthful lust and growing love. 

Theo was angry with them both, but to keep Timeo on the right side of the law, he gave his blessing for them to marry. Timeo and Amise traveled as husband and wife. He protected her from the sun and she protected the party in the darkness, always taking her turn at guard. Obviously, Amise could not bare Timeo children to their grief, but they grow closer to each other in their sorrow. 

After the pilgrimage, they returned to France, Timeo’s family would not accept a vampire wife. He took work as a night magistrate. Another decade passes and the gendarme is no longer a young man, but a man in his prime. They existed happily even as his hair turned gray. 

However, their neighbors took notice the beautiful Amise had not changed. And washer women sometimes saw black puss staining her clothing. And of course, she never allowed the sun to hit her flesh. Whispers of witchcraft followed them and before the whispers became hysteria or violence, they returned to Timeo’s parents.

Though unhappy with the situation, his father and mother welcomed the couple. Their anger had softened in the time Timeo was away. Because, a mortal’s time is short and Timeo’s mother was dying. She especially wanted Timeo and Amise to exist in felicity.

Later his father died, but Theo was still part of the village so the two remained. 

And even when Death came for him, Amise and Timeo still lived with the werewolves.  

However, in a short blink of existence, our brave and dashing Timeo became an old man. Sweet Amise still loved him and cared for him in his dotage, yet as his powers decrease and became more erratic.  He no longer could run in the light of the moon and he could no longer control his turning. In the end, he grew forgetful and at times forgot her name. She stopped loving him as a man and began to love one as one might love an old faithful pet, yet she still cared for him until the day he died. 

The screaming started. You see, beloveds, Timeo awoke during the day and hungry. 

With fire, the werewolves drove Amise and Timeo out of their village and into the forest. Several times that day, he shifted half way, his bones cracked and popped. Hair spouted on his face and his skin twisted and tore. 

Amise carried him. They burned until they found themselves deep in the wood. In the night, Amise sought food, but only came across mice. Still she forced them down her husband’s throat. Then she buried them both before the dawn came. 

He clawed his way to the surface of the earth, breathing deep and burning his flesh. He would turn to animal, to demented man, he would forget her all over again. 

And of course, the cruelty of a vampire’s existence is we burn with our offspring. All Amise could do was drag him back under the earth. This means Sister Sophie felt the rebirth of Timeo and the flames and agony of her progeny. She sent her most powerful clairvoyant to find his sister, but the man did not easily find them through the bloodline’s torment.

Later, in the deepness of night, Timeo returned and begged his wife: “Stop this pain, Amise, Kill me. Let it end.  Why did you do this to me?” 

“I don’t know how this happened, but I will fix it.”

She buried him a final time. 

She wandered until she found a church surrounding a village and in the dead of night, she stoles what she needs. A silver crucifix and a copper ring, a clay pot to act as a crucible and a fire pot primarily for speed.  

She built a fire and set the silver crucifix inside, it melted and bubbled. Then she melted the ring.

She uncovered Timeo from his grave. 

As dawn crested the horizon, she poured the molten metal into Timeo’s open mouth. His lips blister and he screams. Amise screamed with him. Then through the agony, she repeats the procedure to create her own draught of melted copper. Their lips burnt and throats scorched they lay in a grassy field as the sun rose. 

When the horde finally found her, Amise was still broken and blistered flesh, her beloved Timeo was nothing more than ash. He called to her, she refused to budge to save herself. 

The horde was close enough to save her, though it was an ill attempt and just delayed the inevitable. 

When able to speak, Amise explained everything to Sophie and claimed she would be rejoined with Timeo in heaven or hell. It didn’t matter to her. Sophie tried to bind her, to set a guard. It didn’t matter. The vampires had no home. 

David asked her if it had all been worth it, just to suffer now. 

Amise said it was. 

And on the first day in the earth, Amise climbed to the surface and set herself ablaze. 

Sophie burned for the next day and vomited blood in the night due to the pain. Amise’s ashes were burnt seven more times that night and at the next dawn scattered into the wind. 

The moral of this tragedy is not werewolves and vampires cannot comingle. Vampires and werewolves can have close kinship. They can even be lovers if they are consistent about condom use and caps their fangs with a mouth guard or other methods to control saliva and blood transfer.

But if you chose to do so, you must always be careful and considerate lover not to spread the virus to eachother.  Because death will come for the werewolf, human, or any living species you chose to love. And if you love your partner, you will care for them and let them die. 

Amise and Timeo’s exchanges were that of bodily fluids in the acts of love. Obviously we don’t know all such things they did in the decades they were married.  

Remember the vampire virus does not kill you, it brings you back. Our friend Laurence died by smoke inhalation years after he contracted the virus.  Our Lady Agata was strangled by a priest. Timeo died an old man, unable to control his transformation. He came back an old man, unable to control his transformation.

If you have questions about safe sex between species, please discuss it with Agata in the clinic. 

Now a word from our sponsor: 

DENTIST

Now Time for Questions: 

Initiate Fern asks: So Timeo transformed when he was a young man, but what happens if a young werewolf wants to transform into a vampire?

Though there are fictionalized accounts of werewolf, vampire hybrids, we have never met one.  

We do know William tried to transform an unwilling werewolf. The man was marked subject 032. According to his journal, the man transformed into a wolf, but William had him bound. William did consume the blood, it made him vomit.  The man cried about his wife and children. He was their sole breadwinner of their family as often the case in 1951. When we discovered this we sent five years wages to the family and the coven to ensure they did not suffer financially. 

We don’t know what would happen in a successful transformation, but it is illegal to knowingly transform a anyone but a human. 

It may be that we are undead that their virus cannot be transformed into us, or perhaps it can be. I am assuming their lives would go on just as our lives go on. Basically I’m saying they’d be nothing special. They’d still have to do their dishes and pay their taxes.  

Initiate Lynn askes, Lady Loretta So are you against shifter fiction?

Not at all. People enjoy these books for fantasy fulfillment. Not reality. While you comprehend that I don’t see the problem with it. Plenty of people enjoy such things. 

But becoming a vampire is a serious matter. And the idea you would become a vampire or a werewolf or anything due to some expected romantic entanglement is not a good idea.

Initiate Troy asked This is a terrible story. Why did Amise kill herself for love?

I warned you this would be a tragedy. She killed herself because she could not see beyond the time that her existence would be one where her nights and days were dark and alone. She did not want to be part of wandering horde again, always hungry, always cold for centuries. 

She had Timeo’s love, yes, but she also had the protection of love. A warm comfortable home with someone who truly loved her in return. 

It is your privilege that you were born to a century with cheap heat and light. Unless you have suffered homelessness, you do not understand Amise. 

That’s all there is tonight, next time I will discuss the topic of forgiveness in a vampire’s existence, because one cannot subsist as long as we do without letting some stuff go. 

Good Day Beloved Initiates and Sleep the Sleep of the Dead. 

The Paper Flower Consortium Podcast was written and performed by Elizabeth Guizzetti. For more information, please visit: www.elizabethguizzetti.com/paperflowerconsortium.

And while you are there, If you have a question for Lady Loretta, please click on the ask Lady Loretta button or email her at info@paperflowerconsortium.com  If you want to support the show, please like and share this episode. Or consider donating either one time or through the patreon. 

Amise and Timeo’s story is not told in the books, but the Wandering Horde, Sister Sophie and David are mentioned in Chivalry Among Vampires.

The amazing intro and outro music was written by Evan Witt. You can learn more about his music at www.wittynotes.com