Disclaimer: I don't own twilight but i do own Rachel.

First Encounters

After taking one last glance; just to make sure that there was definitely no-one near enough to see what I was going to do next, I closed my eyes and concentrated.

I willed myself to hear things far off into the distance and to be able to see things that were miles ahead of me. I loved using my gift; the feeling of freedom I experienced every time I did, was amazing. I had to focus on the energy I carried inside me and manipulate it to suit my needs. At that moment I needed it to enhance my sight and my hearing so I manipulated it to perfect my eyes and ears. I felt the familiar tingling sensations shoot through my head as the necessary adjustments were being made. This was the part I didn't enjoy; I hated the uncomfortable feeling I got as the energy travelled through me, but it was a small price to pay.

When I reopened my eyes I saw the world differently; I could see everything more vividly and I could zoom in on individual ants in the grass a few feet away. The most amazing change though was the change in the things I could hear; I could hear everything.

My appearance was altered as well; if people were to look at me then, they would have seen a girl of average height and build, looking to be about 15, with long, brown hair; standing in the middle of some rich person's garden wearing long flare jeans and a long sleeved, tight fitting, navy shirt. When all seemed normal they would have proceeded to look more closely at my feature; that's when they would have noticed my piercing yellow eyes that seemed to look straight through them. They may also have noticed that my ears were elongated and pointy like those of an elf.

No-one came however, so no-one saw any of that.

After testing my sight for a couple of minutes by focusing on certain points in the distance, I decided to fix my hearing so that I didn't have a constant background buzz of noise. This was the challenging part…

I had to cut the noises down until I was only picking up the sound of voices. I forced myself to ignore anything but the sound of people talking to each other. I could relax and take in the sounds of the Earth at another time; right at that moment I needed to work out where I was.

I cut the sounds down until I was only listening for the echo of voices and there was suddenly an eerie silence on all sides.

'Strange,' I thought to myself, 'this must mean that the house is miles away from any town, which doesn't make sense because the lovely homeowners must have somewhere to go to eat.'

It was after this thought that I realised I could in fact hear someone; I just hadn't picked up on it because it was a solitary voice and I had been expecting to hear the roar of over 30 voices trying to get through to me at once. I tried to pinpoint the exact location of the voice; (I mean one person was better that none) and realised that it was coming from the rear of the house.

'Guess that driveway they have doesn't go anywhere after all.'

I was still contemplating that, when I realised that the voice was coming to me from the other side of the dense sea of trees at the back of the property!

"Well that's just great!" I hissed under my breath.

I now had to go on a little orienteering expedition through the woods. Well I wanted to get out of here and this seemed to be the only way, so I decided I had better get started. I stepped towards the thinner trees on the outskirts of the woods and swallowed; trying to get rid of the lump of fear that was securely lodged in my throat.

In the time it took me to hesitate; the clouds that, up until that moment had been shrouding the moon, cleared and bright moonlight filtered down, turning everything a creepy luminescent colour. The light played with my perception, giving the trees sneering faces and snaking roots; the forest was alive. At the same time, a wolf howled in the distance, chilling me right down to my bones. Then the clouds rolled in again and the moment had passed; I was once again facing a dark and dank, but regular wood. Unfortunately I was shaken and even less sure of myself than before, but I had to find the owner of the voice if I was ever going to get out of here.

I summoned all of my remaining courage and took my first step into the woods, bringing myself one step closer to the stranger whose voice I was following and one step further away from the comfort of some kind of shelter.

'Get a grip! You can't afford to think like this, you need to find out where you are and then get as far away from anything non-human as possible.' My mind scolded me.

I crept apprehensively through the darkness; edging from tree to tree, while at the same time casting nervous glances around. I had the distinct impression that someone was following me but it was probably just my imagination running wild after all the scares I'd had that night. All the while I was moving I was focusing on the voice, making sure that I was going in the right direction; the last thing I wanted was to get lost in the middle of this place.

An owl hooted in a near by tree and I nearly had a heart attack, I jumped back and tripped over a tangle of tree roots; landing on backside before realising what it was. I felt so embarrassed that my face must have been an interesting shade of red. After picking myself back up off the floor, I starting moving again; cursing the stupid bird under my breath.

The voice got clearer as I progressed further into the woods and I worked out that it belonged to a male of maybe 20; he seemed to be giving instructions to someone but I couldn't tell who that was, because they were totally silent. It was the instructions that unnerved me; I was almost positive that he was giving a lesson on how to fight; the last thing I wanted, other than being lost was to end up in a fight with what sounded like an experienced fighter.

After the owner of the voice had completed his explanation there was a sudden silence and I panicked because I had lost my means of guidance. I had no reason to panic though because moments after the voice stopped I heard a deafening roar; like that of two boulders colliding and I could easily tell what direction I needed to be heading in. I heard the voice again then.

"Ok good now try it again but this time think about what you're doing, instead of acting on instinct."

I started to wonder whether these words and the noise I had heard just a couple of minutes before had anything to do with perfecting fighting skills; but then my mind interrupted my thought process.

'Who in their right mind would be out in the middle of nowhere, practicing their fighting skills at this time in the morning? Unless…'

I pushed that thought aside, there was no way that these people could be the vampires that inhabited the house; they were far away, in some town, entertaining themselves; right?

Before I had time to ponder that properly, the trees started thinning up ahead and I felt extremely relieved to be out of the suffocating darkness I had become accustomed to while travelling through the woods. As I approached the edge of the dank, dangerous expanse I could tell from the sound of the man's voice that he still had no idea that I was there, so I decided to watch the events. I snuck closer and peeked out from behind some thick bushes; using my enhanced eyesight to see what was going on.

I was looking out on a clearing the size of two, maybe three baseball pitches; the moon was out from behind the clouds again and as it illuminated the ground I noticed everything else…

I realised that I had fatally misjudged the amount of people I would be meeting; if people was the right word. In total there were 8 vampires and 10 werewolves gathered together on either side of a very obvious and very invisible divide. But something wasn't right; other than the fact that technically neither of these should exist; everything I knew about vampires and werewolves told me that they were mortal (immortal) enemies. They should be ripping each other apart but instead the wolves seemed to be watching and learning from the vampires.

Now that I had taken all of this in, I thought it would be a good idea to look more closely at everyone here, because the nagging feeling of recognition I'd been experiencing since I had arrived was now so strong it was almost unbearable. First I focused on the one whose voice I had been following; he was tall and reasonably well muscled, he had quite long, blonde, fly-away hair and eyes the colour of topaz… wait, topaz? That couldn't be right. I double checked, and sure enough this stranger had topaz eyes. At the moment he was instructing another member of his family on the proper way to fight a new born. This other member was very tall and extremely well muscled; he had short, dark, curly hair and topaz eyes. That made two with topaz eyes.

'I wonder…'

I looked at the group together and sure enough, they all had the same, beautiful coloured eyes. All except one; she had deep brown eyes that seemed very observant. It seemed that in my earlier assessment I had jumped to conclusions; on that half of the divide there were in fact 7 vampires and one human girl…

It was then that realisation hit me… I did know these people!

That was my last chapter for a while because i did promise to make the chapters longer. Unfortunately that means i won't be updating as often.
Hope you like it.

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Thanks
xxx