I appreciate any feedback! I hope that you guys enjoy this chapter; please let me know if things go too quickly or slowly.
Prologue (Cont'd) / Bella
The boy is Elliot.
He's Evelyn's twin, and it couldn't possibly be more glaring. Both their heads are lush with bold copper-red curls. But Evelyn's locks are more maintained, more pinup, while his fly in messy tufts. The green on the rim of Evelyn's eyes are in the center of his, and the friendly dimples on his cheeks are lopsided on the left as opposed to Evelyn's even ones. His body is long and leonine, whereas hers is petite and brings a breathtaking bird to mind. Yet their differences complement each other, and there is no doubt in my mind that if I had seen beautiful Evelyn walking down the street with the attractive boy, I'd know they were twins.
"Hello," I say shyly to him.
"Hi, there," he responds in kind, albeit much more confidently. I'm at ease at his demeanor, and he pulls Evelyn close and plants a sloppy kiss on her temple before ruffling her hair. She squawks in indignation, readjusting the elegant ringlets.
"Elliot," she begins, amused, "This is Bella. Is that really the first impression you want to be making?"
He pokes his tongue out at her, shameless, and turns to me. "It's nice to meet you, Bella. Dinner's ready, if you want it. Mom put a beef stew on the slow cooker earlier this morning and it's gonna be great. I suppose you two stragglers can join us, too." With that, he beckons me to come with him and races downstairs.
I look to Evelyn and Theo for permission, but they just smirk, and Evelyn flings herself out the glass doors in my room, her cornflower shirt billowing behind her like bluebird wings. Theo opts to take the same route as Elliot, and I hear Evelyn beckon me from below. "Come on, Bella! We won't bite you."
I hesitate, then leap from the open window and onto the warm sand.
No, not onto the sand— onto a glass table, one foot giving way and bringing me to my knees and the other sloshing water out of the crystal glass it tips over. My misplaced touchdown sends the girl to my right gasping, and the boy to my left glowering.
Like a phantom limb, I can feel the heat that would have rushed to my face.
"Clumsy," tuts the woman seated at the forefront of the table, and as I glance up to meet her face, the apology dies on my tongue. She's easily the most beautiful person I've ever met; more so than any of the Cullens and any of the Bennetts as she sits with the regality of a queen. Her lips are full, her features sharp, her neck tall. Her hair is a deep chocolate color and stands in thick, kinked coils, and her skin, milky and smooth, I can easily imagine as a rich shade of caramel in her earlier life. Her eyes are unaltered by Elliott's gift; they are liquid honey and glowing with warm, playful amusement, tilted by high cheekbones into almond-shaped mischief.
I know immediately that she is Rehema, the head of the family.
"I'm so sorry," I find the words, trip over them, and she chuckles.
"I was teasing you. Please, sit down and eat with us. I'll get you another glass, Violet."
I glance down and yelp as I yank my foot out of the drink, and the somnolent girl looks up at me then to the older woman and murmurs her thanks. I catch her eye and apologize again.
"It's okay," she hums. Her voice is ethereal, sharp contrast to Rehema's succulent tone and my panicked stutter. "Henry, can you pass me the napkins?"
The glaring boy across from her softens visibly and steadily hands them to her with a gentle, "You're alright?"
The girl, who I have to assume is Violet, hums again, taking the napkins from Henry with ghost-like fingers as I gingerly step off the table. Henry leans forward with a leering smile that is all too unfriendly— and it is directed at me.
"You could have hurt her."
"Henry," Violet chastises gently as my lingering mortification grows. "You know that's not true. A little water never hurt anyone..."
"Except you," Elliot muses, "what with the Titanic and all."
Violet clicks her tongue reflectively and Henry's stare feels even hotter on my back.
"I really am sorry," I mumble, suddenly feeling hopelessly out of place as Theo guides me to the seat beside Rehema's. The action forces the dark-haired boy already seated there to move down one space, and with Rehema and Theo already seated at the short ends of the table, my added seat throws the placement off-balance while everyone maneuvers to accommodate. "Sorry," I repeat this time to the dark-haired boy, and to my surprise, he offers an understanding smile and ruffles my hair with one large hand.
I take the moment to study the coven and they do the same. Henry, having been the only one outwardly hostile so far, smirks derisively at me and digs into his food, occasionally reaching across the table to place chunks of meat onto Violet's dish. In the seat diagonal to me, Evelyn starts chattering animatedly as she introduces her surrogate family.
"Well," she chirps, "There's Henry and Violet for you, world's oddest oddballs."
Henry doesn't even look up from his food, but the smallest smile creeps onto his face at Evelyn's words. Violet, on the other hand, darts her curious glance to me and I realize just how lovely she is— and newfound confusion sparks at her relationship with Henry.
The amber in her eyes weave with a blue deeper than even Theo's, so vivid they take on an indigo hue. They're glassy, as though she's looking straight through me, as though she knows something I don't. Her fair hair layers neatly to her shoulders, a clean braid arching like a headband to tuck the shorter strands away. Yet there is a fragility about her that I can't quite place: something that makes her body whisper like a ghost in quivering breaths. My gaze turns to Henry, with his hair so black it looks blue, with silver welded to gold in his irises, with a cocky twist in his lips. Evelyn said the pair was mated, and I don't doubt it from the way his gaze seems to melt each time her lilting voice sings him a question.
It doesn't stop me from glancing inquisitively at Evelyn, who chuckles.
"Don't mind Henry. He's just being like that. He's lucky Violet even stays with him."
Violet protests more passionately than I would have assumed her to be capable of while Henry's eyes harden again into a finely-sharpened glare that swears Evelyn's murder. The redhead, for her part, doesn't shrivel away, but purses her lips innocently and leans into Elliot's shoulder.
And then Henry is ignoring everything else but Violet as he tidies her braid, and Evelyn is warbling to me again.
"You know Elliot and Theo; this is, for all intents and purposes, our mother, Rehema."
The twinkling-eyed woman raises her glass to me and takes a long sip while Evelyn nods at the boy sitting next to me, the one who ruffled my hair. "Nathaniel." She slings her arm around the girl directly beside her, "and Amelie."
Amelie breaks into a pearly grin, using one hand to wave at me and the other to return Evelyn's half-hug. While still breathtakingly beautiful, she isn't as conventionally, outwardly so as her sisters or mother; where Violet's eyes are the indigo of a sunset sky, Amelie's are a gold knife slicing into black ice. Where Evelyn's hair is ripe strawberries on a summer day, Amelie's is the faded flax of a snow leopard hunting for her meal. Where Rehema's poise is a strong, proud aspen, Amelie's is the relaxed branches of an evergreen laden with ice. Where they are Rosalie, Amelie is Alice.
But then she opens her mouth, and I freeze.
Then Violet's lullaby, Evelyn's warble, Rehema's purr, they all sound like snow crunching under boots when Amelie croons like healing water over moss-covered stones, or the whisper of a breeze through a poppy field. Each timbre of her voice seems octaves apart, ready to break into tears or laughter or siren song. She takes the empty space outside my ears and replaces it with an tangible softness in the few moments it takes her to say, "Hey there, Bella."
"Hi," I respond stupidly, my own voice the shrieking of a child in comparison.
"Amelie's a silvertongue," the voice beside me pierces. Despite its cascading vampire notes and the baritone fullness of it, it's almost difficult to listen to after Amelie. I angle my head up, up to Nathaniel as he chews thoughtfully at the tip of his fork. And as I take a good look at him, I realize he may well be the most handsome of the Bennett men. Classic, dark curls falling over gray-gold eyes, as if he'd run his hand through the locks in a futile attempt to keep them back. His chiseled jawline shifts when he tilts his lips upward into a smile, and though he's not overwhelmingly Herculean, he's tall and muscle-bound. The softness in his gaze assures me he is nothing more than a gentle giant.
"Silvertongue?" I repeat, and he grunts in reply.
"For persuasion," he adds, and I understand. Amelie could likely talk me off a cliff and I'd comply with a smile on my face. I feel oddly comforted by this— it's clear I'm on her good side with the way she joins Evelyn in her sprightly aria to introduce me to the final member of the Bennett family, Johnny.
He's tall and bulky in ways the other males are not, a happy sparkle in the sea green swirls of his irises. His hair, the same sandy swatch as the beach outside, is cut to a wavy surfer style. He flicks it out of his eyes, then flattens it down on his forehead, then salutes me with two fingers in greeting.
"Hey, Bella," he thrums. There is a childish coloring to his voice, one laced with cheerful naivete. Feeling awkward, I nod at him and focus my attention back onto my food.
There are too many utensils flanking my plate, and choosing one with which to eat the aromatic stew Rehema prepared feels like choosing the wire to cut to defuse a bomb. But a soft nudge under the table catches my attention, and I look up where Elliot sits across from me, discreetly twirling a round, deep-bowled spoon in his long fingers. He doesn't look at me, instead choosing to throw me a meaningful glance from the corner of his eye, but the message is clear. I mimic him, even though the others at the table don't seem to care about which spoon to use or whether to put their napkins on their lap— Rehema, in all her elegant perfection, seems to be the only one with impeccable manners as the rest of the table engages in hearty conversation.
Evelyn and Amelie are debating the pros of a Europe overseas trip versus a U.S. road trip, while Nathaniel and Violet chat quietly about their schoolwork. Henry, as standoffish as he seems to be, occupies himself with poking fun at a distressed Johnny, almost like an older brother tormenting his younger brother. Theo seems to be blind to everyone else but Rehema as he accounts his day to her in great detail— he is a college professor, apparently, and Rehema's beautiful eyes tilt upward in laughter when he tells her of his students glueing all his teaching materials to the wall.
"So."
I jump when I hear Elliot's voice— it has the same tune to it as Evelyn's but deeper and smoother. I realize quickly that I probably look a little pathetic watching, red-eyed, as the others banter and play.
"Yes?" I squawk gracelessly.
"Evie says you know the Cullens, huh?"
I'm a little struck by the opening, and a pang of sadness courses through me. How could he have known? Sensing my confusion, he explains that his sister can give and take thoughts through touch, and I shudder involuntarily at the idea that Evelyn might have told the rest of her family about how pathetic I was. Reasonably, she couldn't have known about my pining; still, what would these good people think of me, knowing that I was stupid enough to believe someone like Edward would want me?
Elliot's ankle bumps against mine again, and I jump in surprise, turning to look at his endless legs through the glass of the table. "She didn't tell me much," he says softly, "Just that you knew them."
I'm grateful both for his reassurance and the rest of the family studiously ignoring us for the illusion of privacy. I'm stunned, further still, by the contrast between Elliot and his sister that wouldn't be obvious through appearance. He seemed to be perfectly happy to tease and play with his siblings earlier, as Evelyn does now, but the casual mellowness he exudes now wraps around me like a safety blanket. I quickly realize my leg is still touching his and jerk away, the spot where his bare ankle had occupied searing with unfamiliar warmth.
My eyes dart around and eventually, I meet Violet's haunting gaze when it flits from Nathaniel to me. She is still staring through me, eyes wide and glassy, before she focuses her attention onto Elliot— who, I've noticed, seems to be burning where he sits, brimming with what seems to be the same glow I felt.
Then Violet's eyes, so unearthly and sweet, sharpen in surprise, before she tips her head back and releases an exuberant laugh.
Forgive me for the wait. Honestly, my motivation has been totally shot to write anything, but I kind of missed this story. For those of you who are wondering, yes, Elliot is Bella's love interest (which is probably a mistake, as I'm bound to mess up and spell his name "Elliott Bennet" at one point). Honestly, New Moon screwed with me pretty badly, and I want Bella to have closure with Edward in a way that she deserves.
I hope you enjoyed the Bennetts and their dynamic; they're pretty much my children at this point. I want you to get to know them, and Elliot, before the confrontation. Reviews keep me going, and I'd love to hear what you think!
