The Twilight Twenty-Five

Prompt #: One

Pen name: themorningafter

Pairing: none/gen

Rating: K

Photos for prompts can be found here:
community[dot]livejournal[dot]com/thetwilight25/13912[dot]html

"It looks like a dragon! No, wait! A lizard! A monster!" Edward yelled, gripping the arms of his wingback chair and half-standing.

"Edward!" Alice complained, waving him off with one small hand. "You aren't allowed to guess. You're not even playing."

"I'm sorry." Edward resettled in his chair, not looking at all apologetic. "I got excited. Besides, I can't read Bella' mind if she doesn't want me to."

I smiled, but didn't look up from my drawing. The sand in the tiny plastic hourglass was rushing to fill the bottom half, but I was faster. Vampires had that advantage, and I fully took advantage, using my speed to draw more that a human could have in one practiced hour. Despite my increased speed and heightened ability to focus, however, I remained as lousy an artist as I was in my human life. Rosalie sat across from me drawing the same thing and probably doing a better job. Emmett and Esme were both leaning over her.

"Loch Ness Monster?" Jasper guessed, squinting unnecessarily at my sheet. "Komodo dragon?" His brow furrowed and he flicked his gaze to Alice, who shrugged at him.

Alice and Edward were barred from these kinds of games and could only look on as cheerleaders. I saw Edward studying Rosalie's drawing and his eyes lit up in recognition.

"Shut it, Edward," I warned, my hand still flying over the sheet. I was trying to recreate a drawing I'd seen hanging in the office of a museum curator in Egypt over fifty years ago. It wasn't working. My brain remembered every single detail, but my hand wouldn't draw them. I growled in frustration.

"Tyrannosaurus rex!" Emmett shouted triumphantly.

"Yes!" Rosalie's hand shot into the air and Emmett high-fived her. High-fiving had been out of fashion for nearly fifty years, but don't try telling that to Emmett.

"A T-Rex?" Jasper said, his tone exasperated. "Bella, is yours dying?"

I looked over at Rosalie's drawing. It was a near perfect sketch, all three dimensional with scales and teeth included. Mine looked like a gecko. One that had been flattened by a semi. Several times over.

"Shut up, Jasper," I sighed. A noise to my left made me turn and I saw Alice and Edward trying very hard to keep from laughing. I glared at them.

"I'm sorry, Bella," Edward managed to choke out before he erupted in peals of brassy laughter. Alice didn't even speak, just fell right over the hysterical edge with my husband.

I looked back at my sketch. It WAS pretty amusing. I cracked a smile, which was apparently the signal for everyone else to let loose. I laughed along with them for while and then I crumpled up my sketch and tossed it away.

Edward knelt next to my chair and placed his hands on my knees. "I'm sorry for laughing," he said, his voice full of mock contrition. "Your T-Rex was very good." He could barely say the words without laughing.

"Oh stop," I said, laughing and running a hand through his hair. "I never claimed to be a good artist." I looked out the window then, contemplating. "Maybe I could take a few art classes, then I could rival Michelangelo over there." I tilted my head at Rose and she smiled.

"It took me almost a hundred years to get that good," she replied, "and tons of studying."

"Studying at the MOMA!" Emmett burst out, unable to contain his pride. He squeezed Rosalie's shoulders with his arm and she rolled her eyes good-naturedly.

"All right, all right, enough ego stroking," Jasper said, reaching for the die on the board. He rolled and moved the piece to a green square.

"Ooh, that means 'difficult,'" Alice said in a taunting kind of voice. Jasper was very competitive, and Alice loved to tease him. It was her way of staying in the game even if she couldn't actually play.

Jasper ignored her and drew a card from the box. He cupped it in his hand so no one could see it and read the word. He cringed theatrically and looked at Edward, who had picked the word from Jasper's mind.

"What do you think, man?"

"That one's tricky," Edward replied, rubbing his long fingers across his chin. I could practically see the ideas working their way through his mind. "It's tricky, but I'll bet Bella can guess it." He smiled at me in an indulgent sort of way.

I smiled back at him, the ass. I couldn't help it. If he thought I could get it, I probably would, and I really wanted to win back that point we'd lost to Emmett.

Jasper nodded and placed his pencil on the paper. He nodded at Rosalie, and she flipped the plastic timer. Before the first grain of sand hit the bottom, Jasper's hand was flying over the paper.

It was a person, or at least the rough silhouette of a person. The person appeared to be female, with long hair and a slightly pointed nose. It took me a second to realize Jasper was drawing me. I smiled, intrigued.

He began drawing what looked like squiggles coming out of my mouth. "Throwing up?" I asked, a little confused. "Vomit?" Jasper shook his head and started drawing something else.

He drew a man in a beret and placed a French flag above the man's head. "French? Speaking French?" Nope, that wasn't it either. I glanced at the hourglass; it was half empty. Such a pessimist.

Next came an Asian woman with the Chinese flag. What do I know about France and China? Jasper began drawing more lines from my mouth, a little urgently this time, making me think of When Harry Met Sally, when poor Sally is drawing "baby talk" and no one knows what it is.

"Language, speech, Mandarin." I was just shouting words now, anything that came to mind, anything that could be even remotely correct. "Um, um, language barrier, many languages." Jasper made the universal hand motion for "close but elaborate" and suddenly it clicked.

I'd taken French in junior high and high school, and living in France for five years soon after my change had solidified the language in my mind. When I'd attended Carnegie Melon with Edward twenty years ago, we'd both majored in Chinese and Asian Studies before jetting off and spending five years traveling China. It was our first adventure alone.

"Fluent!" I shouted, jumping up victoriously before Jasper had even confirmed my guess. Edward jumped up and laughed, bounding over and throwing his arms around me.

"I knew you'd get it," he whispered into my hair and I melted into him as the last grain of sand reached the hourglass's bottom.