"DISCLAIMER: None of Twilight etc. is mine. None of Browning's work is mine. And, sadly, none of Laura's [stellar] work is mine [and none is included because I'm able to write nearly as good as she can :)].
""I saw, in gradual vision through my tears,
The sweet, sad years, the melancholy years,
Those of my own life, who by turns had flung
A shadow across me."
-Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Sonnets of the Portuguese I
Laura had reached Elizabeth Barrett Browning's Sonnets of the Portuguese by the time that her plane touched down in Forks Airport.
She was glad that the plane trip was almost over and she could close her poetry anthology; honestly, Laura didn't want to read anything by the blissfully married Mrs. Browning. She was twenty-seven, and she had never even been in love.
Sure, she had tried boyfriends; she had tried dates; she had tried dying her hair blonde and then black. The men she wanted just never wanted her back.
Last year, Laura had decided to let her hair stay its natural dull brown. She stopped trying.
She still had two more years to finish her dual PhD in Literary Studies and Creative Writing, after all. She figured that she could start trying again afterwards. She had put too much effort into her dissertation to get distracted from it now—or, at least, to get unproductively distracted from it now. Laura was actually planning on ignoring her dissertation all summer, as she worked to write a book of poems worth publishing. She was excited, at least, to live in Forks, the country's capital of rain. She hoped Forks would give her an endless string of indoor writing days. Of course, there would be some chores; she would be living with the sister of her dissertation advisor, who owned a small farm nearby Forks, in a reservation which Laura remembered as "Lapush." To the family of her advisor, Laura couldn't seem antisocial, only focused.
The plane finally stopped rolling along the ground, and Laura grabbed her carry-on suitcase from the shelf above her seat. She had only brought the small, roll-along suitcase and a purse, knowing that she could buy clothes and what other sparse possessions she needed when she arrived. She didn't need much; there would be no one to impress, here.
She walked outside the airport, inhaling deeply and enjoying the freshness of the air. The sky was filled with large, grey clouds. It was strangely quiet. There were no taxis here, no shuttle buses, no subways to take Laura to her advisor's sister's house and family. Laura felt uneasy as she reflected that she only knew one person, as the sister of someone she knew. This was no New York City.
But it was quiet, and Laura reveled in the silence during the long walk to her temporary home, in this risky and rural place where Google Maps was to be her only acquaintance.
