Gracie laughed as she leapt elegantly over a fallen tree: slowing only when her brother was no longer behind her. She wandered back the way she had came, a pathway through the forest she so often found herself taking whenever she visited Forks with her family. Passing the same trees she knew so well, she soon found her brother leaning on a large bolder. He smiled crookedly and held up his hands "Fine you win, I can't catch you" he laughed, his green eyes filled with excitement. He had never been very good at finding Gracie, he was a fast runner but he was useless at tracking her down when she didn't want to be found.
They wandered back to the picnic, a celebration of their sixteenth birthday held in the most beautiful place they knew. The meadow was as striking as ever, small and perfectly round, filled with wildflowers – violet, yellow and soft white. The stream nearby bubbled gently as the cool summer breeze swept over the usually dank town of Forks: dancing over the long grass and swaying the flowers soothingly.
As the twins silently laughed at their happy memories in Forks, Gracie took her chance to take off into the forest: closely followed by her brother. "You can't catch me Eddie" she taunted as she changed direction and headed into the darker part of the forest. Edward stumbled on a root and lost sight of his sister; he regained his balance and continued in the opposite direction to Gracie: who seemed unaware that she was now alone. After a while she stopped to gain her breath and whilst wondering why Edward hadn't caught her yet, she could not help but notice the odd silence that surrounded her in a usually noisy forest: something was wrong.
A tall figure emerged from the shadows, dressed in a long grey cloak. He lifted his head and revealed a pair of dead, black eyes. For what seemed like and eternity, Gracie stared into the face of her death, but was not afraid. Everything about the hooded figure seemed to invite her in; his face; his odd smile that looked as if he had just won something; even his smell.
More hooded figures arrived now. They whispered to each other, to fast for the human girl to hear them, but she caught a few words "Is her talent as we thought Eleazar?" Moments passed and then the vampire replied "Yes Aro, her talent is wonderful, she is not aware of it I don't suppose but she is certainly using it as we speak, oh" Eleazar stopped and gazed into the distance. Aro took this pause as his queue to speak "The brother must be nearby; I presume he is also talented? Well we shall just change them both, unless he is useless, in which case it seems about time for a snack!"
Gracie gasped at Aro's remark and as frightened tears filled her eyes: The vampire named Eleazar was taken aback and his eyes suddenly unfocused as Gracie unintentionally forced her thought of desperation for her brother's life into Eleazar's mind. The vampire shook his head too rid himself of this thought but none the less took pity on the human whose brother being elsewhere worked well with a plan of his own: an escape. "I am unsure as to whether or not the boy is talented, I shall stay here and follow the boy, if he is talented I will change him myself, if not I will bring him back to Italy with me" Eleazar exclaimed enthusiastically, he seemed rather happy about his plan being fulfilled earlier than expected and proceeded in following the scent of the boy after a nod from Aro.
Edward slowed to a walk and began to feel uneasy about having not found Gracie yet: the forest had fallen silent and an eerie atmosphere hovered over him. Edward retreated to the last place he had seen Gracie, the sun had almost set and the canopy above had become a cage of tangled branches. Uncertain of which direction he should take, he squinted into the distance until a blood-curdling scream of agony abruptly broke the silence: Edward's head spun round to the direction that Gracie's heightening screams were coming from. He turned the rest of his body to face the source of the screams but out of nowhere a branch had been swung around and with a sickly crunch hit his right arm: causing him to fall to the floor in agony. Blinded by tears of pain, Edward hardly noticed the vampire named Eleazar standing thoughtfully beside him, contemplating whether or not to bite or kill him: both were tempting ideas but the thought of freedom was overwhelming so he simply fled into the night, without even a glance back at the human he had just saved from an untimely death.
Darkness engulfed him, but his sister's shrieks of agony continued to pierce the night as Edward unwillingly succumbed to the numbing of pain that unconsciousness brought.