If there indeed was a hell, then Aro of the Volturi was absolutely and entirely certain that it had been compressed into a space of 2 cubic inches, and then stuffed into his throat. He mentally cursed Carlisle. One month previously, he had been sorely challenged by this old friend of his-Carlisle claimed that he had no restraint, that he was uncivilized, and would only be able to prove otherwise if he stayed thirsty, eyes black and temper horrid, for one full month. One full month of burning. Well, Aro had had it. He was furious beyond belief with Carlisle for stating the whole thing. However, it had driven him to go hunting, something that he had not done in several human lifetimes. No indeed, he had sat in a throne, waiting for Heidi to deliver tourists to the Great Room. Being outside sicne the Cullen mishap 2 years previously felt odd beyond belief, like speaking after 2 centuries of silence. Then abruptly, a scent washed over him, and he dropped into a hunting crouch. And stopped. FOr, oddly enough, the scent had just a tinge of the vampire scent, fo icy cod sweetness. It was most certainly a mercy that that scent tainted the human smell, for if it hadn't, the person sitting a few blocks away would have most certainly died within seconds. As it was, the scent was still enough to cause Aro to nearly cry in pain from the sweetness. But the vampire scent kept him on guard.
As every vampire, and a few selected and educated humans know(all right, namely Gianna), there are no vampires in Volterra, Italy except for the Volturi. For it is simply not allowed. Rogues cannot just stray into the land of the most powerful, unless they wish to suffer death, by way of ripping and burning. But it was undoubtedly there, the vampire scent, and now Aro stalked toward it, wary. The scent led straight to a huddled lump sitting at the back of an alley.
To be fair to the lump in question, it most certainly wasn't ugly, or lumpy itself. But as it had curled into a ball upon the ground, a thin coat, one of many that it wore, hiding it's face as if to block some terrible vision, it truly did look like a ball.
The lump seemed to stiffen as Aro approached, not daring to breathe. When he heard it take a tentative breath, he was surprised to see it relax immediately, as if the smell of vampire was not at all what it was hiding from.
There was no werewolf smell, simply blood, the smell all around him...
He stood there for a minute, waiting for it to stand, to be polite or respectful in any way, to apologize for being in Volterra and beg for forgiveness and mercy. Which, as any non-Volturi-respecting person may know, is usually the correct protocol, and completely normal. Instead, the lump stayed unmoving, unseeable, too huddled under it's coat, not saying anything or moving, except to breathe deeply, seeming to be glad of the Vampire scent.
"Excuse me?" he asked politely. Niothing happened. "Excuse e?" he said again, a trifle irritated this time, and crouched down to prod the lump with a nearby stick.
"I'm not coming out." said a voice suddenly. "So you can bloody well forget about it. Bloody. Hmm, what a funny word, isn't it?" the voice was probably female, but it was far too cracked to properly tell, as if broken from disuse, or pain.
He abruptly decided that he had had enough of this disrespect and yanked the coat off the lump's face.
"Didn't I bloody well tell you, sir, that I wasn't coming out? And then you go and disturb me? I mean, really?" On a pile of old jackets and trash bags sat a girl. She was almost certainly a girl, though it was a mite hard to tell, since her dirty blonde hair(or perhaps it was simply blonde that had become dirty) was mussed up and raggedy, her jeans dirty and ripped, her long-sleeved t-shirt and multiple jackets rumpled. But the most astonishing part was not finding a teenaged vampire hobo sitting at the side of the road. The most astonishing part was, almost certainly, the eyes. Because they were pure, absolute, black. The circles under them seemed to have decided to entirely abandon their purple quality, and instead were also black. Her skin was far paler than the average vampire's and all of this led Aro to imagine that a ghost was in front of him, a sad looking, irritated, rogue she-ghost. "As if it wasn't bad enough as it was." she ranted. "As if my throat isn't on nearly literal fire, as if I'm not in enough pain to make any normal person pass out, you have to make it a million times worse. You idiot, can't you see I'm tryingnot to smell them? The coat was doing perfectly well, as was the not breathing! And then, what do you say to yourself? 'hey, let's just disturb the thirsty vampire, and make her life miserabler than it already is!' That's not jerkheaded at all!' "
Aro cleared his throat importantly, confused beyond all measure, and fixed a confused gaze on the rumpled girl. "I merely approached." he defended. "Because you happen to be my territory, and because you obviously have not enough respect left to stand when someone approaches."
The girl's bleary, tired, black eyes rolled. She looked intensely annoyed. "When you're in as much pain as i am, and as tired, you would find it quite hard to move too. And not to be rude, but who the hell are you?"
Aro adopted his most impressive look. "I am Aro of the Volturi."
The girls' eyes opened abruptly(she seemed to have been taking a nice little nap while he spoke) at these words. "Well then, you're a leader-person, good and proper. I suppose that I should stand and bow, or salute, but it's really quite impossible, as you probably realize."
"Who on earth are you?" Aro asked. "How old are you? What are you doing here, and why do you look so thirsty?"
The girl tried to stand up, seeming to feel that it was an occasion ofor standing, and then literally fell down, finding standing to be quite impossible "Eh, never mind, I don't seem to be able to stand." she muttered. "But I am Cassie Lengard. I am 14 years old, human age, but I was changed 2 years ago, so I suppose one could say that I was 16. And yes, I do look quite thirsty, don't I? You see, I'm conducting an experiment, in a way, and I would be quite happy to tell you about it. If you'll help me up. For if I'm to die, I'd prefer to die standing...and plus, I'm really very bored."
Driven by his insane curiosity(which throughout the years had led to such things as studying the cuss words of porpoises, losing his eyebrows while conducting experiments, and, several times, waking up in Canada holding an unnaturally large marshmallow, if you really want to know), Aro helped Cassie up, leaning her against the alley wall. "And now can you be so good as to tell me?"
Cassie nodded tiredly, and saluted. "Aye aye, captain. And there's your salute. I'd bow, you know, just sarcastically, but I don't think I can. You see, I have not drunken a single thing in 2 years. 'Drank' used in the euphemistic way, of course."
Aro froze. Utterly froze. "What?" he finally gasped in disbelief once he had remembered how to speak again.
"A tad judgmental, aren't we?" the girl sniffed, her accent shifting back and forth from some sort of English one to a bit of Irish accent, eyes darting round in extreme thirst,. "But it's entirely true, I really haven't. I'm testing my self restraint. And I made a bet with myself. Said I: bet you can't go for 10 years. Said I: bet I can! And so it began, my friend. And so it began."
Aro once again had trouble remember how exactly to move his mouth, but when he did, he was exceeding peeved. Well, to be quite honest, it is really not very hard to hake a vampire peeved when they have gone a month without their food source, but even so..."What type of fool are you?" he stood there for around 5 seconds, frowning in consternation and confusion, and still very thirsty himself, thinking about who this girl must be, how she could have possibly gone that long in that much pain, and when he was going to be able to find an actual human, as at the moment, they were being incredibly irritating, either grouping in these small hordes which were un-attackable, or simply not being around at all, because as every idiot knows, human tourists rarely spend much time outside when it's cold.
"It was horrible, indeed." the girl conceded. "And luckily, there aren't any humans around, sorry. I've kinda been giving off a stay-away-from-me-or-you-die vibe, but-you know, you should really get some self control. Like, at Target. They sell it next to the fish food. Hey!" she brightened, a sudden idea coming to her."Do you think I 'll die if I keep this up?"
"No! You're immortal! It's physically impossible! And-you read my mind. Didn't you?" As incredibly ill tempered as he was, Aro was already beginning to assess this odd girl as a member of the Volturi-because, of course, this is Aro we're talking about, the bipolar one with the irrational power-hungry personality.
"Indeed I did."
"Why wouldn't you mention this?"
"Because I'm tired, and cold, and I didn't even know a vampire could get cold. I'm also bored, in pain, too curious for my own good, and rather filthy. I had no reason to mention it. Furthermore, my limbs ache and burn, I literally cannot move, my throat is on fire, all I've been able to think of for the last 18 months is human blood. I'm utterly miserable, and I've found that to others, I smell like a human, which is incredibly weird. Are we done here?"
"No!" Aro shouted. "I mean, sorry, no."
"That's it. I'm done here. I'm going to sleep." And the girl fell down onto the ground and instantly fell asleep. Aware that he was rapidly destroying his reputation for patience and gentility by the second, Aro knelt down and shook the girl.
"We're not done here! Awake! up! You-" He then helped the girl up, while she muttered about disrespect and downright rudeness.
She then fell down, and took entirely too much amusement out of it, giggling hysterically at her own clumsiness, and confirming his belief that thirst had quite the ability to drive one mad.
"That truly does it." Aro sighed, and simply scooped her up and carried her, finding her to be almost freakishly light. Cassie looked a mite confused.
"Ah, very well. Look, it's a butterfly!" she pointed, and Aro saw a pure white butterfly fly past. Then Cassie took the initiative to once again fall asleep.

It was going to be a long day.