The Brazilian: Revelation
by Edu Cafe
Chapter 1
Edward, Renesmee and I had moved to Seattle about six months after the showdown with the Volturi at the meadows near Forks. The fall had come bringing along the clouds that cloaked our immortality from the gaze of the common population.
I had graduated from high school by late spring, and spent the summer listening to family tales from the Cullen's wide scope of past experiences. It didn't even occur to me, up to that point, how little I knew about their past, and about how they occupied themselves 24 hours a day, since all of the "kids" had learnt everything anyone can possibly learn, having spent decades pretending to be high schoolers.
It turns out they were skilled in many crafts, adept in many art forms, knowledgeable in many subjects. I could listen to them all my life (and that is a very long time) and never reach the end of it.
But Carlisle used to tell me there are always new things to learn, even for them.
"Otherwise, wouldn't eternity be so boring?" He said with that kindest of all smile of his.
Carlisle was so kind, that eventually it hit me that his supernatural talent was his huge, refined, powerful and pure kindness. And that opened up a whole new perspective for me, because he wasn't so much able to touch vampires, except to enhance it in the ones that already had that inclination within their souls (yes, Edward, vampires do have souls) in some degree. It was humans that he could really touch and transform.
"Vampires, like any other living beings, have a mission in the world, a purpose of their own. And, most of the time, it involves the human realm. Our family has chosen to be a positive influence in human affairs, unlike most of our kind." Carlisle explained, with his ever soothing voice.
"Then why does Edward think he doesn't have a soul? If we can be a positive presence in the world, make good deeds and spread love, like you and Esme do, isn't that something only someone that has a soul could do?" I asked.
"Edward doesn't allow himself to hear me talk about this. Even when I think about it he shuts himself down. He is too much attached to the part of us that he considers to be demoniac. The killing instinct."
"Oh, Carlisle, but you and your family don't kill human beings!"
"Our family." He corrected me, bringing a smile to my face.
Perhaps brooding over his own failed attempts at releasing Edward from his inner pain, Carlisle made a long pause before speaking again.
"I think Edward never got over his past."
With that remark, I turned silent.
Carlisle thought that was the cue to end the conversation, at least for now. I had to digest everything he said, which I thought was actually the most important thing any of my new family members had ever told me.
But before he left to go to the hospital, he added with a soft smile:
"Although I think yours and Renesmee's arrival in his life is changing the way he views these things."
Carlisle always had a way to bring hope to people around him. And I loved him for that.