Disclaimer: Stephenie Meyer owns Twilight and its characters. I own a Ford Escort '96.
PTB's littlevic and nowforruin, thank you for the beta work!
Beige - my private beta, love you hard!
MujerN and Vantastic - I wouldn't have written this if it weren't for your support.
Esme Cullen
"Family comes first. I never felt guilty before. Why now?" The guilt has been tormenting me for a while.
"The girl has grown on me, that's probably why." I answer my unspoken question out loud.
I stop and kick a pebble into a stream. It belongs there. I look up at the sky, and it's a wonderful sunny day. The birds are chirping and the light breeze is rustling the leaves. The warmth of the sun feels comforting on my hard skin.
The family is in the house.
I'm walking by the stream because I didn't feel like participating in their game's final act.
I'm beginning to doubt who I am, and what we are. The guilt is creeping in, and the feeling is nauseating.
Every now and then, when my children get bored, they bet on things or people. They like to play psychological games. They like social experiments. They like to destroy things. It entertains them.
We have a different sense of time, and even though days sometimes feel like hours, forever is a long time. The boredom gets to us.
He met her at school. She's a nice girl; kind, bright, maybe average-looking, but certainly has a wonderful, charming personality. She is utterly in love with him.
He is doing everything to convince her that he is head over heels with her.
Alice and Rosalie find it incredibly amusing. She's opened her soul to them. In return, they've given her advice and make-overs and have done all they could to assure her he's never been in love like this before.
It's all a game to them.
Jasper's been manipulating her feelings so often I wonder how she's not gone crazy by now. And Emmett's been intimidating her every chance he gets. Actually, he's the only one who's been honest with her, in a way.
The poor child is at the house right now and Edward has her in his room, showing her his CD collection and books – something an average seventeen year old boy would not do. What an average seventeen year old would do is have her in his bed by now.
His refusal to have sex with her should have given her a hint, but the girl is blind with infatuation, even though her instincts probably keep telling her something is off. Edward refuses to sleep with her, because it's too dangerous, and he'd probably kill her, thus ending the game too soon.
He's a good brother. He wants to entertain his siblings for as long as he can, even if it's at his own expense.
I hugged her before I left the house. It was my way of saying goodbye.
When she first saw him, she was immediately taken with him; she told me so herself. Edward hardly noticed her, until he caught a whiff of her scent. Her future was sealed in that moment. She is his singer, and he can't wait to sink his teeth into her neck.
This is what makes it fun for them. His brothers and sisters want to see how long he'll last. They like to see him squirm when she's around – they like to see him fight the thirst.
This is the first time he's run into his singer. I'm sure there'll be more to come. But it's going to take a while. They don't just show up on every corner. Sometimes it takes centuries for your specific singer to be born, and even then, who's to say that in your singer's short life you'll come across them? It has to be at the right time and at the right place. Or, should I say at the wrong time and at the wrong place?
"Oh, again with the guilt!" I grumble, annoyed with myself.
I step into a meadow, and it looks like thick dark red paint was splashed over a green canvas. The sight is truly magnificent. I sit in the middle of it and pluck a flower. I lift it to my face and breathe deeply, the scent too faint for humans to smell. The petals touch my face like the most erotic kisses, and I shiver at the gentle touch.
The red petals look glazed, and a droplet of water hides next to the flower's dark center.
And then suddenly a short scream, muffled by the distance and my son's hand, is carried on the soft warm spring breeze.
Everything is peaceful in the next second. Even the birds are quiet now. Only the stubborn wind is intent on disturbing this sad moment of silence.
I know it's over now. I get up and start walking home feeling lighter and somehow relieved. I pick more flowers as I walk. They'll make a nice arrangement for my seldom used bedroom.
I decide Red Corn Poppy is the flower that'll always remind me of this girl, Bella Swan.
"Yes, it will do," I say to myself.
I wonder what the next singer will be like. Maybe this time a redhead girl? Or a blonde? Maybe taller? Or maybe it will be a man? That should bring some excitement for the children. I can already imagine Jasper and Emmett teasing Edward for the change in his sexual preference.
But it doesn't matter. What matters is that I get over this feeling of guilt. We do our best to kill humans as rarely as we can. We do only what we must, because we are who we are. It's in our essence to hunt them, and the singers, you just can't pass up.
"You cannot!" I loudly confirm to myself and to the birds, shaking my head from side to side.
It's as simple as that. We do our best to move from what we are to what we want to be. We do our best to build our moral grounds, to create our very own ethics of dealing with the world we inhabit. We are unchangeable, permanent. We are superior, and we are reasonable.
The only time we succumb to what we are is when that primeval pull gets too strong for us to fight it, and the strength of it crashes us against the hard, unyielding essence of nature. It is in that moment that our fragile moral ideals crumble into dust.
This is why I lift my eyes up to the skies, and start walking home. My family needs me.
Let me know what you think. Thank you.
Red Corn Poppy has been nominated for an award!
No, seriously, I'm not kidding.
See here: twificpics . com / vampawards / ? page_id=198
Everyone who nominated gets good karma... Oh, what the heck, those of you who didn't get some too.
Sending out good vibes: ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~