The Dragon House

"It's not that hard."

"Yes it is."

"Just push play."

With that the camera came to life. Everything looked brighter through Alex's eye and she stood there, looking with awe at her best friend. She saw how her hair set just right on her shoulder and how alluring her deep brown eyes were. Her skin was so pale, so transparent that it almost glowed against her blue and black zebra striped shirt. She pulled on the black sleeves of it and looked away from the camera with a smile on her face.

"Okay, Isabella, explain why we hitch hiked a ride to nowhere and are now walking along the Sul De Luc." Isabella turned and faced the camera as she started walking. Her face was looking straight ahead but she turned and smiled at the camera. Laughing, she looked away. "Oh come one, tell them."

"Okay," Isabella started. "See, we have this 'vacation'" Isabella put air quotes around vacation. "To the most sunless region in the world. A utensil – Forks, Washington. Of course it isnt so bad with my girl by my side but this idiot little Puppy Dog, Jacob Black, started to follow us around like the little lost dog he was. I told him to go fuck off, he asked what does that mean? I said it means to go suck your father's dick, and then he asked what a dick is, so I just had to push him into the water." She concluded. Looking back at the camera she made a face and started laughing again. "Oh, am I horrible?" She criticized.

"Yes, yes you are." Her friend answered. Alex looked ahead and saw something behind the trees. It was brick stone, something of a tree but larger. Like a little cottage or something. "What's that?" She asked out loud and started walking towards it, knowing her friend would naturally follow.

"It's a house, or a cottage, or a cabin at best," Isabella listed off. The house was like Thomas Kinkaid's Twilight Cottage only three times its size. "It is so beautiful," she said out loud. It was something that looked too heavenly to exist. The way the roofs were arched and how they were so low made it look like something of the early nineteen hundreds. The roof was a dark, bleeding red brick. It was a cross from an Italian Duchess's home to a Medieval Sorceress.

"It is," Alex said in agreement. She came upon it slowly and once at the corner she kneeled down to take a closer look at something. On the side of the house, was a medium sized dragon carved into it. Initials were carved inside it, C.C. + E.E., R.H. + E.M., A.C. + J.W., and a lonely E. M. "Bella, come look at this!" She shouted over to her friend who was quickly at her side.

"Poor E.M.," Bella muttered. "Hmm…" she began to think as she took off her cargo backpack and retrieved a pocket knife out of a patch.

"What are you doing?" Alex exclaimed while letting the camera dangle out of her hand a little. It angled crookedly on Bella's face.

"He's lonely, E.M., everyone has somebody, and there he is by himself. They even put a minus sign by his name." Bella pouted.

"This is someone's property, Bella! You can't just carve something into it."

"Sure I can, no one likes to be alone."

"You don't know that," Alex pointed out. "Maybe E.M. likes to be alone." She concluded with a glare at her best friend. She could have sworn that Bella had gone more than a little odd over the past few weeks. Almost like her old self, again. With the camera held tightly in her hand she watched Bella carve, or scratch rather, the initials B.S. next to the lonely letters. "They're going to think you meant bull shit," Alex commented.

"Let them, I know my intentions are true." Bella stated. Once she was done she walked around the house and up to the front door. The door was as the same color as the roof, it only had the faintest glimpse of red in it but looked more like brown without the sun. Bella started to jerk at the doorknob a few times and finally gave a huff and spoke the obvious. "It's locked."

"What, you thought they would just leave it unlocked so we, two teenagers from Arizona could break in?"

"I was hoping," Bella joked in a quiet voice. She took out her wallet from the cargo book pack and used her old school I.D. to pick the lock.

"What the hell are you doing?" Alex outraged as she stepped closer to Bella. Worried out of her mind that her friend was going through some post traumatic stress disorder she started bitching at her. "You can't break in! This is someone's private property. Their sacred place." Alex tried to explain but Bella showed no signs that she was listening.

"If it was their sacred space, they would be here right now," Bella defended as the door opened. Walking inside, backwards, a cocky grin spread across her face. Alex couldn't stop thinking her best friend, her other half had completely returned to normal after all that has happened. "Come on, this place is abandoned." Looking around at the dark, stuffy vast inside of the cottage like town house she had to agree. In the room on the right there were white sheets over what soon claimed to be medieval, or Greek like furniture. It all looked so old and so fascinating. Bella revealed each and every piece of beauty one by one. After looking at the medium sized fire place and mantle, she reached inside her cargo book bag for yet, another object.

Bella pulled out two white candles and a lighter.

"You were carrying all of this around with us?" Alex asked, appalled that her friend could carry so much for such a long while.

"Sort of," Bella mumbled. She lighted one of the tall, thin candles and then placed it on the golden candle holders a top the mantle. "White, for purity, innocence, and forever. Innocent forever," she babbled on. In her other hand was the second white candle. She handed it to her friend and nodded for her to take it. As Alex's hand grasped the vanilla scented candle, she handed her camera over. Though she remembered her mother's words exactly in her ears: "Don't let Bella take hold of this camera, it cost too much and is in too good of shape to die." Even though Bella was one of the most uncoordinated person she knew, she trusted her. Besides, Alex thought, Bella is a fantastic tennis player… when she doesn't have a partner, and she's cautious. No matter how wild she acts or how carefree she acts, Bella knows how it is to be responsible. We both do.

Holding the camera, Bella took it as an honor to capture Alex on screen. Alex looked like an angel with her golden blonde hair and pale white skin. Her skin as pale as Bella's. Both of them had deep brown eyes, naturally pale skin, and were five foot and six inches tall. They were so alike in every way. Though, in Bella's eyes, Alexandra would always be the angel. Her eccentric and bright colored wearing Angel. Alex looked down at the white candle carefully and lit the candle in her hand before putting it on the candle piece. Taking a long breath, Alex took the camera back.

Bella went back to her cargo back pack and pulled out a true black candle. She took another candle holder off the mantle on a small, round coffee table with different carvings sketched into it. Bella placed the black candle in the middle of the mantle on another candle holder and lit it.

"There, forever in darkness. Like Underworld," Bella noted. "Or The Secret Circle." Bella, lost in her own thought, started walking around the place. She opened and closed cupboards that held nothing of interest or edibility. There was a library but most of the books, at least half of them, they had already read. At the age of twelve, Bella started to read Jane Austen, when she was eleven she read a collection of Shakespeare's novels and before that she had her own treasured collection of Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland series. Alex, on the other hand, took a piece of paper from Bella's sketch book and a colored pencil and made a list of books to read. A lot of historical books that centered around political views, a women's stand for rights, but never was it a romantic novel that Bella held so dearly to her heart.

The basement was more of a boiler room. It was very dark without windows so neither of them went far. Alex didn't want to waster her battery and Bella didn't want to waste a leg by tripping over her feet in the darkness. Walking up stairs, though, Bella became louder than when she was when looking at books or pursuing anything in sight.

Then they went upstairs, Bella immediately went into the master bedroom and looked around in awe. The bed was incredibly huge and across from it, on the east side of the room was a walk in closet the size of the bedroom. Alex still held the camera in her hands and watched Bella walk to the bedside table and smell the bouquet of flowers. Lisithanus flowers in full bloom, they were all sorts of beautiful colors, a rich purple, bright blue, light rosy pink, bleeding red, and pure white. Bella took one of the long stemmed flowers and placed it behind her ear. The bright blue color complimented her in more than one way. She sat on the bed and went through the first drawer of the bedside table.

"Bella, no, no. No, that is someone's personal journal."

"No it isnt, it's a sketchbook," Bella corrected as she angled her head to the right to look at a picture. "Hmm…," she thought to herself. Alex came and sat by her side and looked at the sketch for not that long.

"Shit!" Alex exclaimed as she jumped up from the bed in disgust. She knocked the book right out of Bella's hands as she did. "What the hell was that?"

"That was the dick I want my future lover to have." Bella answered as she looked back at the picture. It was of two people, in a lap dance mode where you could see the guy's dick perfectly clear. He looked like a pro wrestler and Bella couldn't stop thinking about how big it actually is. Nine, ten inches? She thought.

"Come on, Bella, let's go. These people are going to come here any moment," Alex pointed out as she found herself disgusted at who ever lived here. She couldn't wrap her head around anyone getting into that position, and living to tell the tale.

"No they aren't, this is a sex sanctuary," Bella laughed. "Come on, Alex, live a little." Bella went to the closet and starting thumbing through something's. She picked up some laundarie that was torn into bits and pieces, high heels, and plaid boxers. Stepping over all of them, she continued on in the closet. Of course, Alex followed behind to catch it all on camera. Alex took a look at some of the clothes and starting drooling over all of them. She pulled out a soft brown cashmere sweater with tan zebra stripes covering. It was long sleeved of course, because this was Forks, after all. She looked at her friend and saw her eyeing a certain cashmere shirt also. It was a dark green color with black and white roses.

"I love these people," Bella said in a dreamy voice. Alex started to laugh because in her mind her friend looked high and so did Bella without even knowing what the whole joke was. Bella took the shirt up and displayed it against her figure as Alex captured it. "Oh god, it is so damn soft, and pretty. Must. Have." Bella said the last part in her best robotic voice.

"I know, these people must be ri-ich," Alex sang aloud.

"No rich people live in Forks." Bella contradicted as she thumbed through some other fabric. "Though, techniquely this isnt Forks." She adds after some thought about state lines. Smiling to herself, Bella walks out and enters the balcony. "Oh my god," she exclaims with delight as Alex stays in the closet. "Come here, babe." Bella called out for her and Alex did and gasped when she saw the amazing view of the Sul De Luc river.

"Oh my… this is so beautiful," Alex finally managed to breathe out.

"Oh," Bella exclaimed after some silence. "I could definitely see myself here in the future, sitting on a lounge chair with my sketch book in hand and just sketching this scenery over and over again." Alex focused her camera on her friend and watched her smile out on her fantasy.

"Yeah, so could I," she agreed. "You could sketch the scenery and me in a new wardrobe…" She added on in her own fantasy world.

"I love this place," Bella said to no one in particular.

"The Dragon House," Alex said herself and turned the camera off.