✓ | 𝟑 | 𝐑𝐀𝐈𝐒𝐎𝐍 𝐃'𝐄̂𝐓𝐑𝐄 ━ Jasper Hale

𝖎. A new life

Everything is clearer than before. Detailed is the word that'll bring justice to what she is seeing.

Dust particles floating in mid-air that she swore lightly glimmered, the seams of the bedding she's been laying on the piece of fabric between the edge of the material and the stitches are visible, that she can almost feel the texture just by looking.

Another sense is what caught her attention. Her hearing is much more audible; she could hear the ruffling leaves of trees outside, the whooshing of air from the strong current, the serene sound of the nearby falls, and the water. It was gushing over the rocks, surging and plunging down the mountain.

"You are oddly calm for a newborn," A voice, smooth as honey, its sweetness drizzling with every spoken word, caught her attention.

She looks over her shoulder, and her breath hitches.

A woman with hair as black as the night sky, skin that had an endless golden glow, her eyes were crimson red so that it reminded her of her blood.

"I beg your pardon?" Eloise asks, her voice hoarse and dried. She must have misheard what the woman said.

A newborn? She's eighteen, as far as she remembers, far from a newborn babe.

"Pardoned," The woman chuckles and grins at her as she crosses her arms over her chest.

"You're a newborn vampire," she bluntly says. No use in stringing her along; she'll know sooner or later, so why prolong it?

Eloise then laughs. She then stops, her own laughter surprising her at how angelic it sounded.

When it escaped her lips, she then looks at the woman and says, "You must think me a fool. Vampires are mere folktales for children,"

"Then perhaps you have another interpretation of what you were observing before I made my presence known."

She furrowed her eyebrows, considering the woman's statement.

And it dawned upon her that her senses were heightened.

She then looked down at her body. Her skin was flawless, ivory, and creamy. She then scanned her left thigh where a scar lingered just above her knee and saw none, no signs of imperfection whatsoever.

"Well?" The woman asks, rather impatiently but not annoyed. But no, she's not annoyed or impatient, she's curious about how the newly awakened newborn is ignorant of what she is feeling at the back of her throat, and she is intrigued, nonetheless.

"I don't understand..." Eloise tries to say something, anything, yet fails to do so.

She is out of words as of the moment, shock and confusion taking over her body.

"Of course, you do not. I haven't explained anything, have I? My name is Maria, the woman who saved you from the brink of death," she simply says. And it is far from simple if Eloise is being asked.

And then the events from before flashed before her eyes.

The ambush.

A man shot her father, her mother, and then her. Eloise's hand flashed to her stomach, searching for the bullet wound, but finding none.

It is not possible. She thought to herself.

"I'm supposed to be dead," Eloise mutters quietly, yet still, the woman hears her.

"And you are not. I changed you before you enter death's door. " Maria interferes, walking towards her, her movements graceful yet calculated, most of all weary.