Chapter 1 – Trinity.

This was just plain weird. I have never felt anything like it before, and hopefully never again. The pain was excruciating, more than red hot pokers shoved on every available centimetre of my skin, more than fire raging through my veins, more than any words can ever come close to describing. Screaming did no good, I screamed for the beautiful strangers to kill me, I was dying anyway, just kill me quicker, less painfully. I had nothing to live for, no family, nothing. I would have rather been on my old hospital bed with the other pain. That pain was muffled, no way near as harsh as this new pain. The last sane thought I can remember was the breathtakingly gorgeous doctor setting me down in his enormous house and leaning into my neck.

I cannot remember how long the burning lasted, it could have been weeks, months, years, for all I knew, but then I noticed something significant. The pain was getting hotter, much too hot, until it finally peaked, at the most hot, painful feeling I had ever experienced. This carried on, for a long time. I had no possible way of knowing how long I lay there, all I could see was black. Then something changed. I could hear. I could feel pressure on my still-burning arm.

'This is something new, Carlisle' said a caring, unfamiliar voice. Carlisle, I thought, the beautiful doctor's name.

'I don't understand,' said Carlisle, with a hint of perplexity in his usually calm tone. 'This has never happened before, it cannot be normal'. I'm not normal, well yeah, he got that one right. I listened intently, and could hear the ticking of a clock. Tick, tick, tick, tick, it was soothing in a way; I blocked everything else out of my mind and just concentrated on the ticking. It felt like a million ticks later when something began to happen.

The burning began to cease, just in my fingertips and toes, just minutely, but the change was there. The change advanced, spread through my whole hands and feet, until my arms and legs were free from the burning I had been enduring for the past ten centuries, it felt. Just my torso and head were still raging with fire, then my heartbeat intensified, like a bird fluttering its tiny wings. Then the burning stopped-for a second anyway, then my throat was on fire. A different fire than the burning that had just stopped, more urgent, needy.

I could hear so much more clearly now. I could hear, with perfect clarity, the humming bird sat on a tree 50 metres from my ears. I then heard Carlisle's voice:

'She's done.' And then six footsteps entering the room. I could practically taste the anticipation in the room, hear the excitement.

And then I opened my eyes.