safe and sound. twilight

ᴄʜᴀᴘᴛᴇʀ ᴏɴᴇ

I followed her forward, bag trailing behind me and clenched tightly in my fingers. The old woman grinned as she ran her frail fingers twice over a narrow book, opening it with a careless clang. I peered down at the short list of names of which soon my half-false one would be added.

"Good morning, I suppose you want a room, yes?" The woman said, nodding along to her question as if she was answering it.

She didn't give me much time to answer that I did, and that it was in fact an hour into the afternoon too. But by the looks of it, time must have ran differently in her b&b.

"We don't really get visitors here often, you see. And when we do, it's always family of town residents and it's booked in advance. The many years I've worked here... I can't remember the last time I booked a person in like this!" She babbled on to herself, busy as she searched for a pen. "What's the name and how long for?"

"Elide Masters," I answered, cringing as she scrawled my name out after motioning with interest. "And for as long as possible, I have no date."

"Foreign no less!" The woman's eyebrows rose, creasing her pale forehead even more. "Can I ask what you're doing in a small town like this? We never get long term visitors."

My slight accent was apparently easy to acknowledge. No matter how good my gift of hiding was, I could never suppress it. Often, I thought it may be a psychological thing- a way of clinging to my beloved homeland even after sixty years of leaving and never returning to England.

I pulled on a sad smile. "I used to know someone that lived in Forks. I'd rather not talk anymore of it."

"Well since you'll be staying so long, you can pay per two weeks," she said, not giving an option to choose any different. She stated her price.

I held back a sigh as I reached a hand into my bag. It had been a long time since I'd done this. Begrudgingly, I placed a thick envelope onto the space in front of her, watching with narrowed eyes as she gripped it in her hands. She flicked through it with sharp fingers, nodding to herself before returning a few notes.

Her grin failing slightly. "I take it you'll be joining the high school, if you're here for so long?"

I nodded. "After Christmas break."

The woman nodded again, turning to pull a key from below the desk. She slid it across the wooden bench.

"Your key to room two. I'm Mrs Rochester. Breakfast is at seven in through that door there," she said, pointing toward the door that she appeared through only minutes before.

I'd forgotten about breakfast, but chose not to mention that I wouldn't be eating in the house. It was easy enough to deal with. I took the key, nodding in thanks as I headed toward the stairs to the edge of the room, bag light in one hand. The wooden steps creaked as I slowly stepped up them, emerging into a landing that branched into four doors, marked one to three, the last number missing. The key jammed in the door, taking a few seconds of pushing and twisting before I could push it open with my shoulder.

Inside it was barely larger than a cupboard. Though the baby blue wallpaper wasn't peeling like I imagined it would, it was still stained with soot at the edge where a burned out candle still stood on the bedside table. On the far side, a window was covered by a thin lace curtain, ruffled against the side of an oak wardrobe that was shoved against the wall too. In the remaining space there was a single bed, dressed in a plain white cover.

Dumping my bag on the bed, I sat against the crinkled pillows, hearing the screech of the bed against my weight, moaning from the aches of disuse. As I flattened out against the head board, I caught a glimpse of my face in the mirror adjacent, hanging limply in the few inches between the wall and window. The last time I'd seen myself was a few days ago in a truck rest corner shop, when I'd been figuring out where to go from there. Though I'd barely changed, I didn't like to look at myself. After years of being on Earth, you learn to be sickened by the value of vanity when the world grows older all around. My youthfulness was undeserved.

In the days since my stop, I'd grown impossibly paler, as if a reflex to the low sun that I hadn't yet seen in Forks. I missed a tan, the feeling of looking down and seeing sun kissed skin the colour of golden sand. Though I'd been lucky to keep some colour, it was nothing compared to the tint of pink that masked the freckles on my nose. I suppose I should be thankful I could hide myself good enough to not look like a ghost.

My eyes were a dark, chocolate brown. I hadn't fed in a while, and it was obvious.

After a few moments of loosing myself to the mirror, I shifted from the bed, dislodging myself from the springs that wedged into my skin through the quilt. The mirror didn't fog under my touch and I almost imagined frost to coat the edges, icy under my own fingers, as I lifted the mirror from the wall, tucking it easily into the back of the wardrobe, still bare without my minimal clothes. It was rather depressing.

For the rest of that night, I chose to stay in bed, rather than go out and search the town. It had rained and the sound of pattering had done enough to keep me occupied during the length of time that I couldn't physically sleep. It was one thing that I'd been cursed with, that I'd never missed. After a few years, I'd realised how pointless and time consuming it was to lay down and close your eyes for almost eight hours a day.

When I slid downstairs ten minutes before the clock in the reception hit seven, the house was still as still as it had been half an hour past midnight when I'd crept around my room, moving from the bed to the window. It seemed that Mrs Rochester was appalling at timings, as by the time a plate of food had been delivered by her husband, who I'd quickly realised would never speak, it'd been an hour since I'd sat. Thankfully, they didn't linger either, and I didn't have to suffer through the illusion of eating human food and instead dumped it in the bin on my way out- I'd stopped feeling guilty about such things years ago.

I expected the day would feel even colder to any normal person. As I stepped out onto the pavement wordlessly, glancing behind to see Mrs Rochester watching from the window, I stared back. Gazes like that always made me wary. And as I walked on through the edge of town, I had the sudden urge to cry. I spent the rest of the walk distracted, wishing that I even had the ability to do so in the first place.

☾