Fools Game (The Volturi)

6

Forks, Washington
The mastery of gifts was a complex science. To most it was difficult to explain how a gift worked yet alone how a gift which had been termed 'mirroring' worked to enable the individual with such mirroring technique to manage the use of everyone else's unique extraordinary mental or physical extra abilities. Elizabeth found that certain gifts were easier to manipulate than others, she'd graded every gift she had come across in a now rather extensive written explanation as to how it felt and how she managed to use each one.

Initially it was assumed that she was only capable of mirroring a gift if she was under the influence or within close proximity to the original owner. To a partial extent this remained to have some truth, but after just a single encounter she had an idea of the fingerprint of a gift, however, fleeting a period she experienced. This being the case, she could only really master a gift after decent exposure to it, and depending on its complexity depended on how long such an exposure was required. Deciding the complexity of a gift could be easily explained to someone else. She used her parents as an example of simple and complex gifts.

Her mother's gift was simple, it required no transmission of thoughts or manipulation of any external factors in order to simply use the shield for her own mind. Of course it required much more concentration and therefore practice to use the shield as her mother could and extend its protection to others. In contrast, her father's gift was significantly more complex.

Telepathy required receiving information, this sort of transmission was tricky to segregate and so initially her uncontrolled ability at mirroring her father's gift created a constant white noise effect within her mind. Due to its inconvenient, Elizabeth spent a large amount of time taming this gift until she could control it. Once the controlling sequence as she had once described it as, was figured out, it became much easier to manipulate her mirroring in a way that was easier to manage and use. Now she could turn it on and off, and even more impressively - and a cause for her father's envy - choose who she listened to.

Thanks to her control over her families gifts, she was able to hide her mind and listen to whether any of her family were suspicious as to her letter writing actions. This was her second letter from the Volturi ancient, and as instructed in her previous response, Aro had dulled down the obviousness of his envelope, the wax seal being replaced for sellotape.

It was a difficult thing to keep secret. She knew it was wrong, she knew it was dangerous, but she couldn't help but want to continue, regardless of the consequences. The extent of such consequences could of course have been as minor as a reprimand from her parents and family or potentially a repeat of the near conflict where she had first met the Volturi. The latter of course was the worst out-come, and she assumed, hoped, prayed that her curiosity and continuation in correspondence would not result in such a terrible way.

Aro was pleased she had replied, and content with her detailed explanation of how Alice never actually slayed the Jabberwock, but instead only read about it in the nonsense poem, where an unnamed boy kills the creature. He had also responded to one of her many questions, promising to answer at least one more for every letter they exchanged. The first question he answered for her was his origin.

~

You find yourself in a niche collection of individuals now young Elizabeth, as I do not tend to openly share my personal history with many. However, in honour of our newly established pen-pal-ship, I gladly share with you this fairly short chapter of my life.

I was born and raised in Greece, approximately 1300BC, an age I am sure you will learn about in a history lesson one day. I have very little memory of my human years, which I know will disappoint you as I imagine you wished for dramatic tales of hunting prey with hand-carved spears and lighting fires with stream foraged flints. Alas, I have no stories I can tell you with confidence before I was turned, however, my early years as a vampire I roamed alone. For my first tens years I was a nomad, I had no guidance on how to be a vampire, no knowledge of what I was other than a cursed creature who could only quench the agonising pain and suffering I seemed to feel constantly with fresh human blood. I was reckless for those ten years, but I knew what I had become was more powerful than the human I had been. Being alone was difficult, so I returned to the village I had once felt was my home and found my sister whom I turned into a creature like myself.

I hope this appeases your desire for knowledge about my long, long existence, I am prepared to answer at least one of your curiousnesses within every response I send.

~

Elizabeth re-read over her response, thinking over how Aro would reply to her next question: How did you meet Marcus and Caius?

She had taken a while to write her reply this time, unlike this simple task of reading a couple of books to enable her to respond to Aro's first question this time he had left her a puzzled for several days on a jumble of nonsense words that she couldn't find in any of the many different language dictionaries she'd scoured through in her grandad's library study. It was by chance she figured out that by shifting the alphabet so many letters to the left the code was revealed. And thus Aro had introduced her to her first coded message using the centuries old Caesar shift – remarkably simple when you knew what needed to be done.