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It had been a little more than four months since Esme joined the family. Carlisle could never be happier and I got glad from seeing him so joyful. It was strange, how much he could change thanks to another person, another soul. It was almost as if half of his personality had been locked inside a coffin, a box only she had the key to. She had opened that other half of his personality and it stunned me how different yet alike he had become. They moved as one, they thought as one and to be honest they almost were one individual instead of two. It was sweet yet absolutely annoying in the most lovely way.
Edward and I had made a hobby out of catching our parents snogging. Do not ask me why we did it, we simply loved to embarrass them both and oh boy did we succeed. If vampires could indeed blush they would both be red all the times we had caught them, catching them in the heat of the moment with loud laughters or joking gagging noises. It didn't matter how cautious they were because we always found one way to embarrass them, and it was the most golden fun we could ever have.
I could not imagine that our family could become so lively, so comfortable and calm. Yet this is all I could ever ask for. I have never felt so normal, so peaceful as an 80 years old woman. I could never imagine that I could get this lucky, I have the most loving dad who had found his soulmate. She was sweet and caring in ways I hadn't really believed to be possible. It seemed like no matter how cold I was towards her, no matter how untrusting I acted, she always found a way to brighten up everything.
Of course she had no idea why I was so distant, so mistrusting and doubtful. I had not told her nor Edward anything, though I suspected Edward knew bits and pieces but not the entire thing. I wasn't planning on it either, telling them that was. I liked the way they didn't know, how they stayed clueless to a part of the world I didn't want anyone to know about. Neither of them knew how dark the world really was when it wanted to be. Carlisle and I let them think that the world was a place for your own dreams, a place where nothing could go wrong. I wanted them to believe that, because once they realised the mask nature wore to conceal its terrible side, a side that was made out of nightmares and pain, they wouldn't look at anything the same.
Then again I suppose no one could be kept in the dark for too long. Sometime they needed to know. Sometime they needed to be told. That sometime just wasn't today nor any day into the long future.
I had this feeling, a bad feeling, that something would happen soon. It might happen in a week or in several years but I remember feeling this, this feeling before. It was exactly the same, almost as if it was warning me again. It was rather strange, it wasn't a gift or anything like such because then Eleazar would have told us. It was just something that happened, whether I enjoyed it or not. And I didn't enjoy it, rather on the contrary.
I had gotten the same omen, feeling, sign, whatever you wanted to call it in 1912. Though it would appear that the bad omen which the feeling showed happened years later, in 1914. It was the year of the beginning of the world war, a war almost everyone around the globe was either involved in or affected by. That samde feeling had left my body abrubtly at exactly the 28th of July 1914, and I would later only find out what it meant.
Joining that war was both cruel and amazing. I got to help so many people yet I saw so many things, things that still appeared in front of my eyes when I closed them. I had experienced death once more, death like the one I had experienced in my human years. The things I had seen didn't affect me as they should have done, nothing did anylonger. I had gone dull, the senses of danger and fright had vanished long ago. I never reacted anymore, I rarely did. I sometimes wonder if I am healthy, if I am normal. Of course I know the answer to that because it is very a simple one, no.
Carlisle did not know that I had flashbacks, and neither did Edward nor Esme for that matter. What can I say? Hiding things is my speciality. I hid them so well from them because I did not want them to worry, I did not want to show them that I am truly sick. I will always be the same sick, twisted and slightly dull girl with a side to herself that will never play out well to anyone else other than myself. That voice in my head always told me to do things for my own good, for my own benefit and survival. That voice never cared about what happened to anyone else other than myself, that is how I have survived over the years, thanks to that voice always keeping me in first priority view.
It was one of the things I was still grateful for, one of the things I still had use for. That voice always spoke to me through my mind, through a tiny whisper on my shoulder telling me what do to and when to do it. It was almost like a devil pulling its strings to make me answer to my own good, to do anything at all if it just benefited me. I had stopped listening to that voice, however. Instead I forgot about what I had once lived by and as a change put my family in front of those rules. It was a nice switch from before, a nice new way of living and thinking.
Esme had adapted herself to the diet amazingly, she was doing very well. The first week she had been turned she was very scared, always on alert of her surroundings. That could be expected of course. It had reminded me of how all the girls were scared when we all first arrived at the dungeons back in Russia. It might be slightly selfish to say this but it was nice to see that more than few could be scared of new things, that the girls back then along with I hadn't been alone.
The first two days of her awakening she did not talk to us, she only whispered hushedly to Carlisle if she had to. I suspected since he had been the one to be with her the longest on her first awakening day she trusted him the most. That I didn't mind, she could be as untrusting as she wanted to because I was exactly the same. Carlisle had taken her hunting, but after she was done it was almost as if she was physically stuck to the guestroom bed, she did not move once. We never heard what Esme was whispering about, she was too silent for that. Although we did hear Carlisle since he answered in a normal tone. He knew I never liked whispering conversations and hush hush discussions, they always made me wary.
Soon after the second day had passed she gently made her way down the creaky stairs to later see me and Edward in the salon, Edward sitting and reading a new book and my head in his lap with closed eyes. It was a thing we both enjoyed, sitting in each others presence even if we never spoke or just listened to the fire craclking lively in the fireplace. It was nice not needing to speak once in a while, just knowing that one's presence were enough spoken for itself.
The day when Esme did walk down the stairs I recall my head turning towards the opening of the room where she would appear before I opened my eyes to look at her, Carlisle's soulmate. She look at us with bewildered eyes, a spark of confusion that I recognised so easily to be Edward's and my owns when we had first woken up as well. Her eyes lingered on my face, probably looking at the many scars that still sat like moons on my face and stripes across my eye and forehead. This time she wasn't scared but instead more intrigued.
I could feel Edward smiling at her unlike me, and when she looked at us she finally let her pink lips turn up in a soft smile that I guessed resembled Edward's. I remember her walking very carefully towards the sofa across from the one we sat in and gently sat down, almost as if she was aware that this wasn't her house just yet. Almost as if she was afraid that she would break it. Her eyes drifted to Edward before they turned to me once more, this time a more apologetic expression on her face.
"I'm sorry for-"
I shook my head and closed my eyes, turning my head up towards the ceiling. "No worries, I'm used to it."
"How are you feeling?" Edward changed the subject fairly quickly and that got a whole conversation started. After that it was an evening filled with chatter, chukles and jokes. It was rather homey, dad with a woman that I wasn't quite sure what position she would have in my life. He looked at her like she was his world, she looked at him like he was his world even though they had only known each other for two days. It was both scary to see how quick to people could rely on each other, but also endearing in a way I couldn't quite grasp.
Right now I was again laying on the sofa with my head in Edward lap while Esme and dad sat opposite of us in a love seat. She was reading my favorite book, Shakespeares. I knew the book as my own hand, and if someone asked me to read it from my bare mind I would have no problem with quoting every single line ever written.
I felt that feeling again, that nagging feeling in the pit of my stomach. My eyebrows instinctively furrowed and my lips parted only a slight. Edward who saw everything recognized the simple change in my relaxed face and his face, as well as mine, also scrunched up in confusion when he turned his gaze to my face. I could not understand what this feeling ment, but it was as if a predator hunted it's pray and I was the pray. As if I could feel the bad coming towards my family.
I wasn't scared for my own sake, I had learned not to be. But I was frightened what might happen to either of them if something went wrong. What if a rumour spread about Carlisle's unchanging age and someone figured it out, getting the Volturi on our tail. That was a thing no vampire wanted. The Volturi was a dangerous organisation or well, abnormaly large coven if anyone would want to call them that. They could order the death of anyone in this world without it being discovered as murder. They had gifted ones on their side that neither of us could completely comprehend, and those were nothing to mess about.
This feeling always brought something negative, the question was only what it might be?
"What's the matter?" Edward made me open my eyes and I wiped away any trance of discertainty on my face and in my eyes. I made a small smile turn my mouth up and I waved my hands up at him, shaking the subject away as something less serious. "Oh I just remembered I forgot to press those flowers I was talking about."
"Flowers? Seriously?"
I opened my eyes and looked at him with a slight offended gaze. "What? Flowers are a beautiful creation, don't underestimate them for something pedestrian."
"Pede-what?" He was more stunned than before and I rolled my eyes at him, he clearly did not have the taste for superlatives nor more complicated words. Though I supposed being born in the 1900s did that to a person.
"Hey!" He was offended by now, having read my thoughts about being less bright because he was indeed born in the 1900s. Because of his insulted tone I felt a grin plaster itself onto my lips and they turned up. I crossed my ankles and let out a satisfied sigh, a cocky tone in my voice. "You heard me right you imbecile tosser. Being born in the 1900s clearly resulted in your less clever and intelligent mind."
He pushed me upwardly making me sit up. I laughed at him and he threw his book at me, I caught it with a grin and he grumpedly crossed his arms and legs. He could really be childish sometimes.
"Pedestrian means boring, something common or ordinary. Something pedestrian is something that you can find where ever you look, something you are not excited to see or to find."
He looked at me like I had gone absolutely mental, his face scrunching up in an expression that told me that it was too complicated for his liking. His voice matched his obnoxious face and uninterested eyes. "So what? Flowers are very pedestrian if that's the case."
He really didn't know when to appriciate something.
"You need to learn to appriciate daily things, young man. Before you know it those things will either vanish or disappear." I cocked my eyebrows at him, implying something he couldn't quite understand. He would understand someday, just maybe not quite right now.
"Please, as if flowers would ever disappear." He scoffed and leaned back in his seat. He was more teenager than he wanted to admit, though I found it highly amusing how cocky he could be at special times. It was fun having a younger spirit in the house, a person to bring the duller atmosphere to a lighter shine.
Teenagers were always so looked down on, how they always spoke up for themselves or how they got mad in times they weren't expected to. But that was just the deal, they had expectations riled upon them which weren't reasonable. It seemed like elder people couldn't understand that they had also once been teenagers with shorter tempers and sharper tounges. It had been a time when the oldest men and women had been youngsters with hate to things that they had learned to be okay with later in life. They had also experienced the frustration of people around them which couldn't understand certain things, people who always told them to be more quiet or calmer. It wasn't that easy, at least if you weren't violently forced into being the one everyone expected you to be which wasn't the case a lot of the times.
A light smile was clear on my lips as I looked at him. He resembled my sister in many ways. I wouldn't say anything but I shook my head at him, answering what he had said to myself in my thoughts even if he could hear me.
Oh you have no idea.
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Esme and Edward had gone out for a hunt which meant Carlisle and I were alone in the smaller house. He was in his study reading about some new kind of medicine which I would later learn from him. Though right now I had more important things on my mind as I marched down the hallway and without knocking opened his office door, making him narrow his eyes on me. It was a thing Edward nor Esme dared to do, interrupt him in his study. I couldn't give less shites however and barged in like it was my office to begin with.
"What did I say about knocking Ettie?" He had a tone that was supposed to be heard as serious, although I could clearly hear the amusement behind his words.
As if I cared about knocking. His words made my eyes roll slightly and I sat down on the chair opposite of his own, my legs now on the desk making him narrow his eyes again though letting it slide with a sigh. "I do not care about knocking you old fossile, now I have something we should speak about."
That made his eyebrows shoot up and he closed the book in his hands, immediately interested in what I was about so say.
"Shouldn't we wait until Esme and Edward are back?"
"No."
"Alright."
He must be the most easiest person in this entire world to convince.
"The feeling is back, just thought you should know. And before you say anything, no. No it's not different, it's exactly the same feeling as it was before." My arms crossed themselves over my chest and I crossed my ankles on the table, looking at his perfectly amber toned eyes. It hadn't been long since either of us hunted so we both had the same golden coloured eyes, the same warm tones eyes.
I guessed he had heard the unbothered and slightly unserious tone in my voice, as if I didn't care about this. His expression grew more serious than I wanted it to and I resisted the urge to groan, why did he always need to make such a big deal out of everything?
"This isn't something to take lightly Ettie-"
Now I groaned. Too fed up with his serious act he always pulled up. "Listen dad, I know it isn't. But you know what? I've taken everything so damn serious most of my life that I just want to for once take something less serious."
At that he nodded, understanding where I came from. He leaned back in his leather chair, his hands covering his face when he let out a deep breath. He spun around in his chair once, probably wanting to hit something or someone in the face. I wanted to hit someone in the face, but since I knew he would never allow me I just pinched my wrist instead. It was a way of me to transfer my anger or anxiety elsewhere, make it into physical pain instead of mental pain. Besides it was subtle, no one noticed when I did it and no one bothered to care about it since it was such a minor thing to do. If anyone did pay attention to it then they wouldn't even think it was something speical. With that said it benefited me in the way of silence.
Carlisle spun around one more time in his chair, it creeked slightly with the hasty turn. My eyes followed him as he turned around and around and around. If I had been human I would have grown dizzy of watching him spin around and around time after time without stopping. Fortunately for me I wasn't human and instead felt perfectly alright.
The chair stopped and he let out another big breath, a sigh of frustration. He had his head in his hands, his elbows on the desk and his hair frizzed up since he had run his hands through it a few times already. "So what are we going to do? What are you going to do?"
I laughed at that.
"What are you laughing about?" He looked up at me with his serious expression again and I slapped my hand agains the table, full on snickering to myself. His eyebrows shot up at my rather strange behavior as I couldn't get myself to stop laughing. Soon his serious face slowly got replaced by his own smile and he chuckled confusedly, enjoying how utterly amusing I found this situation. "What's so funny?"
My forehead laid against the desk table, I sat with my arms around my stomach and feet on the ground. Still laughing I slapped my hand once more against the table and felt the air vanish from my lungs with each second that went. I found myself missing the cramps of laughter I had gotten when I had been human, the times when my sister had said something that had made me laugh without stop.
"I'm not going to do anything!" I wheezed the words out, collecting myself quickly as if I never had laughed in the first place. I sat up straight, my brown hair falling behind my back and a light smile on my face.
"We can't do anything. We're just going to have to wait."
It was a strangely relaxing feeling, not knowing anything at all nor why the feeling came back. I had always been expected to know so much, to find out the answers to things I had no clue what they even meant or were. But now I didn't know anything and I couldn't know anything. It would just happen.
He smirked lightly at me with a shake of his head, still amused to why I had laughed so loudly. He had his serious yet warm tone back, a voice I would never grow tired of hearing. It was a voice of calm, it was a voice I would always connect with home. "Well, I suppose we'll just need to be prepared then."
"I surely guess we do pops."
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EDITED
January the 10th 2023