A kind of change that doesn't involve burning.

One lifetime could be considered enough time to experience what life has to offer. If you're particularly picky, two lifetimes should do the job. Living for over a millennium, on the other hand, becomes dreary and mostly a chore. Imagine seeing and experiencing more than ten generations have. To see the world change and evolve is new and exciting but after a few centuries the advances seem foolish and the pattern of evolution is predictable. The world changes whilst you are still the same. Forever young. To the ultimate fantasy for those who do not experience it. Humans dream of immortality in perpetual youth and hope that by some chance it may happen to them. They say that they would spend their whole existence learning, observing and evolving beyond what their human years would have allowed them. The say they would travel the world and learn all its languages and cultures, maybe even find God. They think of enlightenment as their gateway to happiness.

That is not what enlightenment is.

Enlightenment is, in my experience, the gateway to apathy. I envy them, the humans. They die, and this makes their time more precious than anything in the world. They live so fast and careless, mainly because they only have such little time on this earth. They certainly expire fast. Because of their limited time, they feel more strongly than we do. Everything to them is urgent and potentially life changing. The ability to feel is the main driving force behind every one of their actions. They feel true love and true grief, true fear and true hate. They have no time to waste on debating the nature of their feelings they simply feel. We feel nothing. We are empty shells of who we used to be. To live in a perpetual state of alertness, where there is no sleep, no recognition of temperature, no feeling of the elements on our skin and worst of all no change. The only things we feel are primal; hunger, physical release, our position of the food chain and anger. With time, these disappear as well along with our humanity.

I have been eighteen since the year 800 A.D. I have not changed in over a millennium. The world around me has changed, yet I stayed the same, physically of course. I have aged though. My mind has aged. My ego has aged. My desires have aged and died down, just like the person I used to be has aged and died. I am now too old for the world around me. Even the frustration of being older than dirt yet still perceived as a child by others has died. I just don't care anymore. I have reached a level of apathy that could put a monk to shame. And then the most unexpected thing happened to me. When I was five centuries old I went through a midlife crisis that to this day has left some pretty obvious marks in my behavior.

I blame Corin for my midlife crisis. She came into the guard with the stories of a nomad who has enjoyed the first years of being a newborn. She was turned in a different time and got to explore the decadence of her era. I was human in a deeply catholic society and a newborn in the still and political world of the Volturi. I was a difficult newborn but never got to experience the kind of sin that came with the loss of humanity. By the point I met Corin, my only sins were intimacy out of wedlock and murder. She told stories of what the humans are like and the mistakes they make. She grew up in a different time than I did. To her, almost all the things that were a sin in my time were common occurrences. She lived past being dead. She felt alive.

Imagine being old enough to know better but young enough to not give a shit. I went through this phase where I was so bored with my own life that I took matters into my own hands and went out there to find something that would pique my interest. I've never asked Aro for anything until this and he granted me the freedom of going out to look for something I enjoyed.

I didn't find what I was looking for but on the way, I found alcohol, drugs, and all the other vices that form a truly vile person. It felt, and still to this day feels, like a choice. I chose who I wanted to be. I was still pretty empty but I had all these other things now to make up for all the things I couldn't be. Women were another vice that I picked up along the way. They filled up my free time but after a few decades that desire died down. There was nothing more that enticed me. All that was left of my midlife crisis was the alcohol, gambling, drugs, indulgences and the ability to say I have seen everything that screwing around can offer. I went back to normal but with a new outlook on immortality. I realized that being dead meant that morals no longer apply. This part of our existence has no judgment, no sin, no limits and no looking back. This knowledge opened more doors than I could count, enough to keep you hanging on to your existence, even after millennia. I've discovered that there is appeal in depravity and dystopia.

My sister did not take well to my behavior at all. I guess some people are content with their existence. She puts up with me simply because we've been there for each other since our conception. Apart from her obvious sadistic tendencies, she is content. It might also have to do with the fact that she's always been such an over-achiever that staying Aro's favorite is enough to occupy her time. She and I are different in this sense. She creates a purpose for herself whilst I settle for simply being there. In all irony, despite what people believe, she is the good twin. She stayed the same Jane that I've known since birth. I, on the other hand, have strayed so far away from who I used to be that the only recollection of that time that ever comes to me is from my sister's stories.

I guess she's the only thing reminding me that I was once human and she reminds me often. Possibly from the fear that one-day I'll end up being a stranger to her. She already has a hard time recognizing me in comparison to who I used to be. It only takes step off the ledge to fall, and she fears that the smallest thing could mean a leap in the wrong direction for me.

So, thats it for my first chapter ever. I hope you enjoyed it and please let me know if I should continue.

Allie