Fandom: Twilight
Characters/Pairings: Aro/ Sulpicia
Author's Note: Aro and Sulpicia are perhaps the most unpopular Volturi couple which, of course, makes me want to write about them. Each vignette is going to be approximately 500 words long, and I'm going to try and put them in some sort of chronological order. Because of the length, I think I'll be able to update at least once a week (said the author hopefully).
.:dream:.
Sulpicia has never dreamed, not even as a child. Sleep is oblivion, death in miniature, nothing more. When little Terentius stumbles into her room, mumbling about the ghosts and monsters that his nightmares have promised him, she coos sweet, older-sister comfort into his ear and allows him to press his chilly feet against her shins as he dozes beside her, without understanding.
Then, when she is sixteen (a tentative young lady and a definite beauty), everything goes topsy-turvy and he begins appearing. She'd like to believe that her night-time visitor is an illusion conjured up by her imagination, but she has none. By that logic, he must be real.
She does not know what to think of him. At first, he is a shadow, inhabiting the corners of her room, coming and going with the moon. The watery light does strange things to his skin—it shimmers like quartz, not quite distracting her sleepy thoughts from the fact that his irises are crimson.
She could scream, she supposes, and everyone would hear but nobody would believe. Instead, she lies still. The next morning, there is a tiny red flower on the pillow beside her. She takes it between long fingers and tucks it into her hair.
The night-creature seems to take this as a sign of consent. He sits near her and takes her hand, his eyes looking out into the middle distance. Sulpicia does not know what he is searching for, but her questions come out jumbled by sleep and he merely smiles and whispers something reassuring. The words are too quick and quiet to hear.
After a few months of this, she finds a cherry-bright ribbon beside her. It is clear to her now; if she accepts the scrap of silk, her visitor will return. It would be foolish to keep it, she knows, but the sensation of his cool fingertips against the curve of her palm is intoxicating. She loops the ribbon around her wrist and wonders why it echoes the colour of blood so well.
He brushes his lips over her eyelids now, and flutters innocent caresses over her collarbones. They do not speak, because she is supposed to be pretending that this is a dream.
On the last night (somewhere between her seventeenth and eighteenth birthday), he slips a thin chain around her neck. The pendant is a single stone, vivid as a pomegranate seed. She does not feign sleep this time.
"My name is Aro. Will you come with me?" The man who is not quite human extends a hand, and beautiful Sulpicia takes it.
Aro is a bit of a creep, watching Sulpicia sleep. Ah well, it's a time-honored vampire tradition. Let me know what you think about this, and any ideas you have for future vignettes.