Childhood is not from birth to a certain age and at a certain age the child is grown, and puts away childish things. Childhood is the kingdom where nobody dies.
-Edna St. Vincent Millay
My childhood ended today. Ended with the most artful mockery of civil judgment.
I could hear him now, muttering to himself. Believing I was asleep. Saying things he would never say if he thought I was awake. I wish I were asleep. At least then I could escape the horrors that my life had now become.
The memories came anyway, playing on the screen behind my closed eyelids. Our last moments together as a family.
"I love you." I whispered filling my eyes, through the blur of my tears, with the beauty of her. Committing her to memory. My mother, beautiful and powerful and strong. The mother I had almost killed coming into this world six months ago.
"I love you too, more than my own life." Her pale fingers touched the locket hanging against my chest. Caressing the delicate gold circle, tracing the slender vine bordering. Her cool lips brushed my forehead, for what was to be the last time.
Jacob whined, just as devastated by this parting. His large russet head prodding her chest. My fathers handsome face was twisted with horror.
"This is what you kept from me?" Voice a whisper so the keen ears across the field couldn't hear.
"From Aro." She breathed, even in a whisper her voice was the sweetest of sounds.
"Alice?" A nod to his question. He composed himself before turning to me, but the pain was there. Along with his overflowing love for me, his daughter. Catching me in his arms he dropped a kiss on my forehead and both my cheeks, before setting me on the back of one of my most staunchest protectors. His arms were as reluctant to release me as I was to have them go. Jacob whined again beneath me.
"I know, I love you too Jacob. You'll always be my best man." My mother ruffled the thick fur, how hard my parents were fighting for strength right now. I had none, the tears poured freely down my cheeks.
"Goodbye Jacob, my brother... my son." A tear fell from a great dark eye, getting lost among the warm brown fur, as my father embraced my Jacob's huge shaggy head.
"Is there no hope then?"