My name is Bettina (Elixabete) Jasy Escarzaga de los Santos and I am a vampire. Like most vampires you have encountered I began my life as a human, but that was centuries ago. My human life began in the mid 1500's at the beginning of the European invasion of Guarani lands in what would eventually become Paraguay. My vampire life began in 1562 in the city of Asunción del Paraguay. I was the product of a tumultuous and failed love affair between a mixed-race Guarani woman and Basque explorer. My mother was a poet and my father was a wealthy adventurer and a coward.
I became a vampire without much fanfare - walking home one evening, the streets were teeming with people enjoying a festival, I was dragged down a darkened alley, fed on, and left for dead. This was the moment when I should have died, but instead, I awoke the next day confused and alone and continued with my life as though nothing had changed - soon after that, the hunger began, and though it was mostly right on the surface at all times, I was able to ignore it and keep living my life as a human. As time passed, events came together and led me to understand that the reason I did not die was because I carried in my blood the memory of my mother's clan, ava reta mbopi - and I was already part anga pyhare - a soul of the night. My ancestor's blood kept me from dying but it made me a different kind of vampire - though I prefer blood, I can eat other foods but not exclusively, my vampire powers are present but muted, and most significantly, I am very long lived, but not immortal. Because I am half-formed and not fully anything - I have begun to die. My final decades are upon me, and though I am still very much a vampire, I will age, suffer, and die like a human. I will finally be allowed to return to the mystery that so many of my beloveds have disappeared into. It's a gift really - these last few decades on this shining earth. My imminent death has awakened in me an incredible nostalgia for all my many lives (not a rare thing really as vampires are known for being nostalgic creatures) and for the first time I ache to share my story.