A/N: I am not Steph, no matter how cool that would be, and so far I own nothing but the title. And maybe this particular storyline. But thats all, I swear.
..and I know you've all read this a million times in other stories, but we writers really do like reviews, and the more reviews I get, the more I write.. it spurs me on!
I have a pretty good feeling about this one. I think its going to be lengthy.. let me know in your reviews whether you prefer shorter or longer chapters..
So... it was a sunny 31 degrees celcius, beautiful bright blue sunny sky. My skin had a glossy pearly sheen to it as it always did in direct sunlight. To humans, I looked radiant, glowing even. I loved the sun, or at least I tried to tell myself that. I don't tan, but neither does the rest of my family. See, we are Vampire. Momma, Daddy, Gran, Pa, Aunt Alice, Uncle Jazz, Aunt Rose, Uncle Em... They all sparkle in the sunlight. Kind of like when you shine a torch on a faceted diamond. But not me. I was different. I can go where I want, when I want, within reason.
Yeah, right.
I need protection everywhere I go. I haven't spent a moment on my own since the day I was born. The only person I don't mind watching over me, is My Jake.
We are a rare kind of vampire. We are a family, not a coven. And we don't drink human blood; or at least, we try not to. Remind me to tell you a funny story about when Uncle Jazz and I went hunting, one day. It's funny, I promise...
So anyway, we drink animal blood. Daddy likes Mountain Lion, of which there are zilch around here. Momma likes what daddy likes. I like Kangaroo right now, but mostly I just eat what's available.
I'm a hybrid – A half-n-half. Kind of like a pizza; a half human, half vampire, hold the onion kind of pizza. A Renesmee-Carlie-Cullen-but-if-you're-nice-i'll-let-you-call-me-Nessie kind of pizza. Momma was still human when she and daddy conceived me. Daddy says he tried really hard to talk Momma out of having me, because I was hurting her so much, and very likely to kill her, but he always swears that he doesn't regret that she wouldn't budge on her decision. He and Momma love me, I know they do.
Then there's my extended family. My Jacob, Leah and Seth. They are shapeshifters, or wolves. MY Wolves. MY Protectors. There were a lot more of them, I've met them once or twice, but then we moved here, to Australia and we'd had to say goodbye to most of our friends. I'm still not sure why Jake, Leah and Seth came with us, actually.
Jake would never let anything happen to me though. He is very good at his job; protecting me. I guess he takes it pretty seriously, because it's extremely rare for him to leave my side. This was one of those rare times, because as I look around me now, he is nowhere to be seen. In fact, I hadn't seen him all morning, and the sun was now high in the sky, so it must be going on noon.
Despite the gorgeous weather, I sat solemnly on my bed, staring at the grey that was my bedroom wall. I had a huge wall of double glazed glass windows (not that the double glazing would stop anything if they wanted to get to me) and three walls that just looked blergh and dreary, painted grey. Emotionally, I felt a very similar shade of grey slowly fogging up my mind. This was my own personal Hell.
Ok, so I deserved it. I was banished. Sentenced to an eternity of boredom in my bedroom.
I knew it was for my own protection and that I had already done the wrong thing, but hey, what's a girl to do, you know?
Gran had designed this amazing house for us, with massive glass walls, hidden beneath the canopy of the trees, far away from direct sunlight and prying human eyes. Here, in this isolated space in 'sunny Australia', humans rarely came close to our hidey hole, and when they did their natural instinct for self preservation usually told them to run away, as fast as they could. Not that their legs could outrun even me, and I was the slowest of all of them, if one of us decided on a change of diet. Not that we would. That would undo all of Pa's hard work.
Right now though, I didn't care. I could hear the human, and I just wanted to go outside, to play, to frolic, to do whatever normal people do on a day like this, but it was useless. As long as there was someone or something out there, someone we didn't know, I was banished to the interior, and sometimes, I even had the 'privilege' of hiding in the wine cellar. That was usually pretty fun, considering vamps don't drink the usual beverages, but I can. Leah and I got stuck into a bottle in the wine cellar a few weeks ago. We had a giggly afternoon. That ended in disaster when daddy realised what we'd been up to.
I needed to hunt. Jacob had to be around somewhere, or Leah even. Leah and I actually got along pretty well now, since we were both 'freaks of nature'. She used to hate me, but she says that I don't have the same stench as the vamps do, and that to her, I actually smell pretty nice, which is good, I think. Apparently, now that she has gotten to know me better over the last few years, being friends with me is much easier, and she seems to have mellowed out a lot too.
So. Here Jakey Jakey. Here boy! Where are you? I laughed mentally at my cheeky humour.
Where was the boy? It's so unlike him to be missing in action. I hope it's nothing too serious. I tried 'channeling' him. All I got was a slight hum, which I recognised as my mothers mental voice, and then Aunt Alice who was agonising over the color pairings of her clothes in her wardrobe again.
Daddy can't read momma's mind, but I can. I was very smug about it too. We discovered last year, when I reached full maturity (7 Human Years, 17 Nessie Years) that my gift had reached its full potential. I had just blown out the candles on the massive cake that Aunt Alice got me, always the one to prepare a rip-roaring party. She had flown in a gathering of our friends on the family jet (all vamps, of course) to help me celebrate. I made a wish, and the next thing I knew, I was jumping up and down, clapping my hands like a school kid, shouting "I love it momma, thank you thank you thank you!" Then we realised that she hadn't actually said anything. We looked at each other, then at daddy, then momma turned to Eleazar, and I turned to Jacob. I know the shock on my face mirrored the shock on his.
***
"Renesmee, sweetheart, what?" momma said.
"The ring? That you and daddy got me. Of course I love it. It's beautiful. Thank You!" I grinned at momma. She had said that it was the same as the heart on her bracelet, and that daddy's grandmother had owned it. Of course it was different, beautiful, exquisite, and sparkly. All of the things that represented my family.
"I haven't given that to you yet," momma said, bluntly. She had a glazed look in her eyes, like she was here, in this room with us, but her mind wasn't.
"Yes, you did, momma. You said it just now. You were wondering if I would like it". Jacob squeezed my shoulder lightly. I glanced up at him, and he looked... worried? How odd!
"No, Renesmee. I thought it."
Oh.
The crowd parted, and, too quickly for human eyes, momma and daddy were in front of me.
"Carlisle, could we, ah, borrow you, for a sec?" Jacob asked Pa, quietly. It had taken me a second longer than usual to realise, but it would seem that I had just read mommas mind, which seemed unlikely, since nobody else could. But she said so herself. She thought it.
Pa asked me to accompany him to his study. I followed quietly, while the others stayed behind and spoke with some of the guests. I know momma was eager to speak with Eleazar, because I had heard her thinking it. This was going to take some getting used to.
I took up my usual position, in the soft chair usually reserved for me. I was, after all, half human, and couldn't sit still for as long as the vamps could, so providing me with a comfortable chair was necessary. I spent a lot of time in Pa's study, reading his big medical books, passing the time. I also had ample tests done on me in here, due to the rapid nature of my growth, so I was familiar with the routine.
"What happened, Nessie?" asked Pa.
"I – I'm not really sure, to be honest, Pa. One minute the room was silent, the next, I could hear people, but their lips weren't moving. I could hear momma mostly, but I could also hear Aunt Rose like a whirring noise in the background," I said, in silent amazement.
"Nessie, what were you doing when this happened?"
"Blowing out my candles, making a wish, standing around the table, thinking about how amazing it was that everybody was here tonight with me..." Pa cut me off.
"What did you wish for, sweetheart?"
"Um, I don't think I'm supposed to tell you Pa, or it won't come true," I said. I could feel the corners of my lips tugging upwards into a cheeky grin. The same cheeky grin that daddy gives to momma sometimes.
"Was it anything to do with your gift, Renesmee?"
"NO! Of course not! It was completely innocent! I wished for a horse! Like all seven year old girls, I want a horse," I said, hurt that Pa would think I would wish for something so selfish. "Only, I don't want to ride it. I want to drain it," I giggled. Pa laughed.
I hope she's fine. I couldn't live without her, surely if there was something the matter with her, it wouldn't be her gift that was affected.
I could hear Jacob's mental voice debating internally about what it was that was causing my gift to 'play up' like this. Normally, I only had to place a hand on somebody's face and I could project my thoughts and emotions into them. It was really easy to show people what I meant that way, so things I saw didn't get misinterpreted. I preferred to speak that way, but if a human saw me do it, I'd be locked up in a mental facility.
"Knock knock," a deep voice said softly.
"Come in, Jacob," I said.
"Nessie, I just wanted to let you know that some of the guests are leaving. Eleazar is going to stick around to have a chat with you shortly, when Carlisle lets you out of here, okay?" Jacob eyed me curiously. He opened his mouth to say something, then closed it again.
"Jake, I'm fine. As it so happens, I can hear peoples thoughts, telepathically. There's nothing wrong with me, is there Pa?" I said, before he could hesitate anymore. I looked to Grandpa Carlisle for his approval.
"Not that I can see, everything looks fine to me. You should have stopped growing now, and you're technically 17 years old now, so you'll be considered an adult. Other than that, it looks like you've gained an extra gift. Nothing to worry about at all," he grinned.
"So there," I said, poking out my tongue like a child. "Just, try to control your thoughts around me, will you? I don't need to know about your thoughts about the female population around here. Warn Seth, too. I don't want to know. I'll talk to daddy about it and see if he can give me some pointers on how he handles the mind reading stuff." I pushed Jacob out the door, following closely behind him. I had shocked him, obviously. He was never normally this quiet, but he did a superb job of keeping his thoughts to himself.
We walked down the staircase and glanced around. The room was much emptier now, but was just as loud as it was before. The voices were getting louder in my head, and there was more of them than before.
Momma and daddy were standing with Eleazar and his mate, Carmen. All four were looking at me expectantly. We walked to them, always at my normal vampire speed, unless there are humans amongst us, and wrapped my arms around momma in a gentle hug. Eleazar grasped my hand.
"Yes, she is a special one, isn't she?" He mumbled, more to himself than to anybody else. Aunt Alice and Aunt Rose joined us then. They both had worried looks on their faces, and everyone was looking expectantly at Aunt Alice.
"What?" she asked, bewildered. "You know I can't 'see' her!" she said, then grinned. "Or the dog," she added as an afterthought, looking at Jacob. Aunt Alice had always been blind when it came to Jacob and I because we were technically 'breeds' which shouldn't exist. As was she, however she could still 'see' humans and vampires when they made decisions to do something, because they were a species that she was familiar with.
Jacob looked to Eleazor. "What is it?" he asked.
"She is very rare..." he started to say.
"Of course she's rare! There's only one other like her that we know of, and maybe a few more if Joachim wasn't stopped by the Volturi," Aunt Rosalie spat.
"Let him finish," daddy said, silencing her with a glare.
"As I began, she is very rare. No other has been known to be able to transmit thoughts and feelings by a touch to the face, yet she can. We all know that Jasper is able to control emotions, but that's the closest we've ever gotten to a similarity," he said, looking at me.
"Please go on," daddy said.
Eleazor nodded briefly before turning back to me. "Of course, she already knows all of this. Her mother has an impenetrable shield, which up until now, we thought nobody could get through, but as it turns out, Renesmee can."
Momma nodded for him to go on.
"But now, she reads minds also, like her father. That much is obvious. There is nothing wrong with her gifts, they have just come to full power now that she is of age." Eleazor finished, matter-of-factly.
"So, is the change permanent?" Jacob asked. Until now, he had stood silently at the edge of our small gathering, just listening.
"Yes, Jacob." Eleazar wrinkled his nose ever so slightly whenever he spoke to our wolves. They smelt differently to the full vamps than they did to me.
***
So that was how we came to discover that I wasn't sick, not dying, not changing, not ageing, just a fully grown hybrid Nessie with a knack for reading minds and transporting feelings and emotions into others. Cool, huh?
I still needed to hunt, and I could still only hear my mother's mental voice.
So anyway, where is he?
Review please!
