Their growls made me step back and raise my hands even higher. "Wow, easy, I won't hurt you." for the first time in my life I felt fear. Real fear. Not the kind that made me sad and lonely, but the one that had all my muscles locked in place. Without losing my surrendering posture, I inwardly began to list all the ways I could defend myself, should they spring at me. In the end I figured my only chance was to run away and hide, preferably somewhere high.
The two newcomers remained hostile, but the slightly smaller brown one relaxed his stance a bit. He even made a sound that seemed a lot like a chortle. The almost white wolf on his left, barked a short bark at him, but that didn't seem to phase the brown one.
I was right, they were intelligent. This relaxed my stance a bit. "I know I must scare you, but you seem to know what I am, right?"
"Yes, they know." A new voice suddenly rang. From quite a distance, but I could here her, anyway. Immediately I coiled into a defensive position. The wolves responded to me ever so slightly, but seemed to understand I didn't plan to charge at them.
It wasn't long before I could hear leaves rustling and footsteps running. Two, no, three pairs, moving fast.
If I still had a heartbeat, it would rise, knowing I was about to meet new vampires for the first time, because I was sure that's what was heading towards me. The brief exchange of words and growls I had shared with the boy in Seattle all those years ago, hardly counted as a meeting.
Two, three seconds passed and there they were. A brunette, seemingly a little younger then myself, a bronze-haired boy, just as young, but with eyes that looked like they'd seen the world and a huge, burly young man whose age was impossible to read. Fascinated, I used a second to take in their strangely familiar appearances. Smooth, white skin, slightly darker halve moons beneath the eyes, tense muscles that belied the calmness they tried to radiate, while examining me.
For a moment all that was heard was the wind and the quick heartbeats of the three wolves.
"Who are you?" The girl asked, after the second had passed, her eyes a lovely amber. Completely different from the eyes I had seen when I had first opened my eyes to my new live. She talked slowly, at a human pace.
"Ariadne", I answered.
"From what coven are you? We didn't know there were others like us nearby."
I wondered if she spoke like this for the benefit of the wolves. Had they even understood me before? Deciding it wouldn't hurt for me to do the same, I answered: "Other vampires, you mean?"
This time the boy next to her answered: "No, vampires who don't drink human blood."
I scrunched my eyes. "How do you know that?"
The girl cocked her head and pointed at her eyes with sort of a half smile. "The eyes. Didn't you know?"
For five years I had not looked in a mirror and the few times my reflection had been caught in a stream, I had not dared to look at my face. Afraid of the red. The most clear sign that I was no longer who I once was.
Looking at the eyes of the three vampires in front of me, I wondered if maybe my eyes weren't that awful, scary color of the only food I could still have. Before I could ponder this new information, the conversation continued and I stored the question for later.
"Where do you come from?" The girl now asked, her brow furrowed and her eyes crunched in confusion.
"I lived in Northern Canada for the last five years." Would they want to know the precise location? I didn't exactly have coordinates.
"Alone?"
"Eh, yeah." That seemed to raise a few eyebrows.
"And before that?" the young boy asked.
There was something in his eyes that made me wonder if he knew more then he let on.
Carefully I articulated: "Before that I was a careless traveler that made a quick stop in Seattle before continuing to Vancouver." I tried to grin, but my humor got lost somewhere in the silence that followed.
The girl shot a glance at the boy and he gave a small nod. It was so tiny and so fast that only superhuman eyes caught it, but wasn't that my new description?
"It's okay guys, she won't be a problem. We'll take her with us." The boy spoke to the wolves and one at a time they left, stepping backwards. Did they take his word for it that easy? They didn't exactly seem like pets to me. The brown one was the last to leave and I couldn't keep myself from waving as he sort of grinned my way.
"Seth says: see ya", the boy chuckled.
"His name is Seth?" I asked, looking at the bush where the huge wolf disappeared in. The myth of werewolves lingered in the back of my brain, a hazy tale, from the time I was a child. Did I just meet them? I looked up at the cloudy daylight and frowned.
That subject too, moved to the back of my mind as the boy answered: "Yes, and my name is Edward Cullen. This is my wife, Bella and my brother, Emmet."
Suddenly, all other subjects were shoved aside. "Your wife?" I echoed, shocked. They looked merely old enough to vote, let alone be married. I had to redefine my definition of the word: boy.
The girl, Bella, bit her lip, which made her look a bit embarrassed, but the big guy laughed out loud.
Before anyone could comment, Edward said, now speaking at vampire speed: "Come, back to the house."
They took off, almost at the same time, and I followed. I had never see myself run before, eyeing the three in front of me made me strangely appreciative of my own abilities. Did I look so fluent as well? Hardly touching the ground, jumping between trees as if gravity was a thing of the past? I wondered if a camera would be able to film it, I would love to see myself thus gracious.
When we got closer and closer to the town, I got more and more nervous. Until I remembered that these were no ordinary vampires. Not like the one's from the stories, the one's I've been created amongst. These golden eyed vampires lived on animal blood, just like me. Was that why they could live so close to humans? There were so many questions running through my mind. I couldn't wait to ask them.
The house we ended up at was still a few miles away from the main town and it took me a few whole seconds to take everything in. And that was saying something. It was huge. Did they live here with just the three of them?
That unspoken question was answered when the front door opened and three more vampires appeared. Two of them were a little older than the others, but not nearly old enough to be called their parents. And yet, that was exactly what Edward did.
"Mom, dad, this is Ariadne, she came from the Yukon. Ariadne, my parents, Carlisle and Esmee, and my sister, Rosalie."
Part of me wondered how Edward had guessed the Yukon had exactly been my home and not one of the other forests, but my new spectators drove that thought away.
Rosalie was stunning, but what shocked me the most was that the giant, curly-haired Emmet, who was supposed to be her brother, jumped up and pulled her in an embrace that was absolutely not brotherly. Or else it was very wrong.
Edward chuckled again and I pulled up one eyebrow.
Carlisle was the one that explained the situation. "They call me their father, but I am merely their creator. For the humans here we are a family, they are my adoptive children."
I exhaled. Not because I had been holding my breath, but as a sign I understood. I hadn't breathed like I used to do in five years. My ears, however, picked up wafts of breath all around me. In and out, like they still had lungs that needed air.
It was another question that left my mouth in the end, after I was done staring. "Don't people find it weird, that your children all marry one another?" I heard myself asking, and then I felt ashamed for the intrision. Or at least, I tried. Luckily I could no longer blush, no heat crept up my cheeks.
A chuckle told me Carlisle didn't mind me asking. "Yes, they do, and that's why we have to move from time to time. You are lucky you came here today, a few day's later and you would have found the house empty."
"Shall we go inside?" The small dark-haired woman, Esmee, asked and suddenly everyone seemed to remember manners.