The Journal of Artemisia Stefania Anastos:
Day 1:  The Power of the Flower

    Dirhonda Migora.  I swear I saw the stained flesh of a red flower tattoo on her wrist when she handed me my orders.  For some reason that image burns in my mind as if a reflection in a pool.  What does it mean?  What larger world is beyond my reach?  The mystery feeds the burning fire of hatred I feel for those who have overlooked me all my life.  First it was my matron mother Panagiota, though I received a stiff reprimand for ever referring to her by her first name in her presence.  My mother soon forsook me as well, by I know it was my grandmother's doing.  It was almost as if she demanded the very shadows of the household to do her bidding.  The nerve of her choosing Calliope to succeed her, when I am older and certainly more skillful then that inept boyish half-wit.
    As for Dirhonda, I'm certainly not fond of her calling me a bastra or a tree-chig, but that strange stain seemed to somehow spontaneously birth an enmity for her.  I am tired of being called a half-breed bastra tree-chig.  I am half-elven.  My eyes an ears are sharp.  I have all the potential for a Matron, but humans can be so blind!   Or perhaps it is the lack of blindness that has forced them to take notice of me....

    And then there is Carmin.  She too had a red flower, a tulip.  She left it on the body of Lucy's Felix.  They seem connected by something beyond my reach.  Carmin said she was there to "recruit" Lucy and that my kind wasn't accepted.  Lucy declined, but I fear she may know too much.  I fear I may know too much, though I'm not sure what I know.  That is why we must be gone from the city.  There is an agenda behind that flower, and I know I can only suffer from it.
    I'm not sure if I should continue my assignment or not.  I do not know if I am a still a servant of the Matriarchy or a victim of it.  For now I shall keep alert and try to determine whether I am being hunted before I begin my hunt for Leonidas Tiberian.