Marzine and the Far East

It was a good time to talk about addiction and how it helped Marzine construct her comeback in the mid 1960's, where she learned to be mentor and muse to a new generation of story tellers.

From the early experiments with reefer, to the unrivaled lascivious delights of absinthe, Marzine was already familiar with hallucinogens. (Culminating in a full-blown addiction to opium, having tried it on while on her journey around the Orient in the late 50's, after her husband was murdered.) She gave up on America and found herself with the means to emigrate to China, where she spent many an hour on the floors of an ornate rug, staring down at the shadow left by an opium pipe.

She was haunted by visions of four armed bandits and demigods offering redemption, while she struggled to find meaning out of the hollow beetle shell of her mind. If she dared to peel away the layers of haze in her heart, she might have found universal truth. But when she would found it, it was normally hard to describe or transmuted into another language entirely. Rarely did infinite wisdom come in her native tongue, rather in a seemingly made up language, forever on the brink of comprehension.

Hershel's visits were few and far between, normally casting a tone of judgmental shame over the proceedings.

"Your not what I made you, your squandering your talent and imagination,all in the name of mourning. You never mourned me Marzie, you just kept on, why should this one be any better?"

He plainly stated, after fading away in a spiderweb of smoke emanating from the adjacent chamber and tossing his hat, landing squarely on her jaw for her to see when she awoke hours later by the proprietor, telling her it was time to go home.

Marzine found in opium the love that she never found in humans, at least for very long.