"Alright, where are we going?" I asked morosely as we walked through a field on the Cullen property.
"Alaska," Edward replied promptly, smiling at my tone. "We have friends there."
"How are we getting there? Because if you say that we're walking, I will murder you in your sleep."
"Carlisle owns a helicopter and a license. And as for your plans on vampire-slaughter, you're not going to get a lot of times when Edward is asleep…" Alice said.
"Bella?" Edward asked. I had stopped dead. Well, not as literally stopped dead as it would have been if one of them had done it, but you get the picture.
"Hey Edward, did you change her while we weren't looking? Because she doesn't look so good," Emmett joked. Edward silenced him with a glare.
"Flying," I said weakly.
"Yes," Edward said carefully.
"With Carlisle piloting."
"That too."
"Carlisle's flying…" I paused, and they all watched me nervously. "It wouldn't happen to be like your driving?"
Edward's face was just about serious in the face of his siblings' laughter.
"Uh… He'll go easy with you as a passenger," he said, but he didn't sound so sure. Emmett snorted with laughter.
"He will?" he asked. My heart-rate picked up, and Edward glared at him.
"Probably," Edward said.
"Probably?" I asked.
"We think," Edward said, almost as a question.
"Guess," Emmett added.
"Hope," Edward said. His dead-pan expression was beginning to fail.
Not for long.
"YOU HOPE???!!!" I yelled. The two brothers looked shocked, as if I'd slapped them. Maybe I should have done that, except that it probably would have hurt me more than either of them.
Alice sniggered. I turned on her, and her face fell as she backed away.
"What's going to happen?" I asked her in a carefully calm voice. Aeroplanes I do – helicopters, I most probably don't. Helicopters driven by vampires – what do you think?
Alice's eyes were screwed up.
"Tell me," I warned. She kept silent, so I turned to gauge Edward's reaction – he would know. But his marble face was expressionless. I could feel my anger starting to slide, so I stormed off.
"Bit more to the left," he shouted after me.
-----------
I sat in the helicopter and shut my eyes. They'd given me earmuffs, although apparently they didn't need them. I felt a tap on my shoulder, and took them off. Everyone was laughing, so assumedly Edward (who had tapped me) had been calling for a while.
"I said, you don't need to put those on until we actually start the engine up," he said kindly. Everyone else seemed to find it all absolutely hilarious. I put my shoulders back and looked down my nose at them. The fact that we were all sitting down helped, but I still had problems with the angles. Once again, they all laughed at silly, short, little Bella.
"I don't know what you're laughing about, Alice," I told her, which only made them laugh harder. Carlisle looked at us all bemusedly as he got in.
"Right… We're about to get going."
I replaced my earmuffs and assumed crash position.
Laughter filled my ears, accompanied by a dull roar.
"Hey, Bella," said my earmuffs. I sat up quickly, eyes wide, to another bout of laughter, and saw that the Cullens were wearing earmuffs, with little microphones attached.
"It's impossible to hear without radio contact," Carlisle explained, handing me a little microphoney thing too. I was momentarily grateful, until I realised that it was Carlisle who had handed it to me. As in, Carlisle who was driving!
"Keep your eyes on the road," I commanded, panicked, as soon as Edward had helped me fit my microphone on. Everyone laughed again, to my displeasure. "Or the sky, or clouds, or whatever."
"I'm not going to crash into anything, Bella. Even if I do this." He swerved about a bit. Up and down, and…
Edward had the presence of mind to remove the microphone, to save everyone's sensitive ears.
Mostly, the rest of the trip passed as if we were just talking somewhere in the Cullen household. Except for a couple of incidents.
The first was when we were just flying along, and suddenly the windows were filled with whiteness.
It took me a while to figure out that it was only a cloud. I was screaming so loud that I couldn't even hear the wild laughter that I assumed was booming around me.
After that I went into a sulk which eventually, after a short lull in the conversation, turned into sleep, which eventually turned into the second incident.
While I was asleep, it would seem that the conversation ebbed and flowed without me, culminating in Carlisle forgetting that I was in the helicopter. He was halfway through the second loop-the-loop when I reminded him. He stopped and we hovered there for a moment to apologise.
When we were halfway through a loop-the-loop. We were upside down.
"Right, that's it," I said when I had recovered my voice. "I'm out of here. You can have your stupid skiing trip without me."
I was about to storm out of the helicopter, when I realised that I was about to storm out of a helicopter.
"Take me back," I told Carlisle grumpily as I crossed my arms and pouted.
"Oh, but we're closer to Alaska than Forks," Esme pointed out.
"Feel free to take the trip back though – we'll just be getting off in about five minutes anyway," Emmett said, putting his hands behind his head.
"In Alaska." Suddenly I remembered something Edward had said ages ago. "Hang on, these friends of yours in Alaska… they aren't… oh, but they would be…"
"Would be what?" Edward asked.
"Vampires?"
"Yeah, they are," Esme said softly. Alice chuckled when she realised what I was about to say.
"They are… like you, aren't they? Non-human eating wise, anyway?" I asked carefully.
"What do you mean, Bella?" Edward asked sarcastically. "I mean, why wouldn't we take you skiing with a bunch of vampires hungry for your blood? All the more fun things to protect you from."
I rolled my eyes, and the dull roar that I'd become accustomed to over the course of the flight faded away.
"Something wrong, Bella?" Alice asked. "You look like a stunned mullet."
"Oh, the noise of the blades. I feel like I've been dunking my head, ears included, in water and I've just taken it out." Edward turned to me curiously.
"Please don't tell me that you dunk your head, ears included, in water on a regular basis. I have enough trouble saving you from yourself without you trying to drown yourself as well."
I squinted aggressively at him.
"So Bella, into the breach with you," Emmett said, smiling evilly as he got out.
"What's that supposed to mean?"
"You're about to meet the first set of vampires that don't want to kill you and aren't Cullens," Carlisle said, helping me out. "Good luck."
A/N: Not entirely sure if flying from Forks to Alaska via helicopter is exactly viable, or if there are any sort of customs related people that Carlisle should have been in radio contact with. If you are a helicopter enthusiast with knowledge of American geography, please forgive me if this is implausible. Just remember that you're reading a story about vampires.