Shields of Power

Chapter 1- Meeting Mythical Beings

Chapter 1- Meeting the Mythical Beings

BPOV (Bella is 4 years old)

I was standing in the hotel room, looking out the window and watching the children playing on the streets in Rome, being as clumsy as I was; it was wiser to stay out of situations where I might get hurt. Besides, I didn't really know anyone yet, as I'd just moved to Italy with my mother a few days ago, I didn't even understand what the other children were saying.

*FLASHBACK*

A few days ago

"I'm sorry Bella, but we're going to leave Charlie, Mummy doesn't love him anymore." Renee softly whispered to me, as we boarded the plane that would take us away from Forks.

All too soon we landed in Rome, where Mum booked us into a hotel while she tried to find us a house to live in, and sorted out the divorce papers with Dad.

She didn't think I understood what a divorce was, but I did.

*Back to Present*

I sighed, and gave up watching the other kids, I moved away from the window. I knew that even if I had spoken their language I wouldn't fit in. I was different from other people, I had a gift. I was able to shield myself. From what I could tell it was invisible to others, to me it looked like a translucent haze of white when I cast a shield around myself. Others also couldn't feel it, although to me it felt like a comfortable second skin.

From the age of two I had realised that I had a shield. I had experimented, finding that wrapping myself in a shield was surprisingly easy to do, and came in very handy as it stopped me from getting hurt when I tripped, or fell. The main things I noticed about my shield was that it not only acted as a physical barrier, but it also seemed to absorb the force of impact, so I was never hurt at all. This was a fact I noticed when I tripped and ran into a pole one day, managing to throw up my shield before I hit it, I was surprised to find that while I felt nothing on impact, the pole now sported a small dent.

As I got used to my shield I started experimenting, and found that I could cast shield around other people and objects. That was how I found that they couldn't feel my shield, I regularly cast shield around my parents and held them for hours at a time, and they never gave any indication that they had ever felt it. In fact one time, I had been shielding my mother while I watched her make dinner, and she accidentally chopped her finger on the chopping board while cutting the vegetables. The knife had ended up with a slight dent and mum's finger had been fine. She had seemed a bit puzzled at first, but she quickly shrugged it off while I looked on innocently.

By the age of three I had control of my shielding ability enough to be able to pick up multiple items and move them by wrapping my shield around them and mentally moving my shield. It came in handy at night when I was in bed and didn't want to get up and go to my bookshelf to retrieve books, instead I simply wrapped a shield around my chosen book and moved it until it was in my hand.

I did find that while wrapping shields around myself and others, and moving small things didn't take any energy, if I tried to move large things it became very tiring. Like the time I decided to move my bed around my room. I could only lift it about a foot in the air before I started to feel slightly drained of energy (not a whole lot, but noticeable nevertheless).

These days I tended to only use my shields if I was protecting myself from a fall, which happened regularly with my clumsiness, or if I was feeling particularly lazy and didn't want to get up to get something.

Of course, I never used it in front of people, I had no desire to stand out from a crowd, and I tried to fit in as much as a plain, clumsy kid could. I also had no desire to have people prod and poke me if they found out what I could do, so I kept silent, as my gift was fairly easy to hide, no one suspected that I was anything other than ordinary.