I wonder if this terrible thirst will ever become less? I thought as I traipsed back into the f orest for another round of hunting, not five hours after my last one. If it didn't, I thought I was going to tire of this life pretty quickly. I wonder how Carlisle does it? He works as a doctor, and shifts must be longer that five or six hours, and the whole time he has to resist the smell. How ever does he do it?

I didn't even think when I attacked that human man a few days ago. It must get less bad over time. It was a little better than when I first became a vampire, even though it was marginally. I'd had to feed every five hours at a stretch, but now it was more comfortable to go that long.

But still, it was only a week ago, so it mustn't take decades… Maybe decades to reach his level of perfection, but what's the point of all that effort for just one lifetime? Why not just avoid humans, and enjoy being so powerful without harming or interfering with them?

I wonder how long our lifetime will be? I considered this thought for a moment or two, but came up short. I didn't ever seem to tire, or become weak as long as I fed… but I must be aging, mustn't I? What if I didn't age?

What if I stayed like this forever? What if I didn't have to die? If only I could see the past, as well as the future, I'd be able to tell how old Carlisle was. I looked into Carlisle's future once again, attempting to see his age, or anything about his transformation.

As I concentrated on Carlisle and information about him, a vision flickered into place.

Carlisle was sitting in a large room, probably a study of some kind. The west wall was solely used for one, gigantic bookcase, and the opposing wall was made entirely of glass. Every house that Carlisle and Esme would own in the next hundred years would have the same glass sheets on the east side, I knew that now.

The two walls not covered by the glass or the bookcase were covered in pictures, pictures of many colours and variety, pictures of different format and texture, just covering the walls. One was of four godly looking men, one of which I realised with a jolt was actually Carlisle.

Another was of a grimy looking city, with buildings close together and grimy looking. The caption under it read:

London

1665

1665? Why would Carlisle have a picture of London in 1665? He couldn't have been living then, could he? That was…two hundred and fifty six years ago! For some reason I knew that at this point in time it was 1921. I was shocked by the speed of which my mind was able to calculate this sum, yet not totally surprised, because everything else seemed to move so fast in this life, why not my brain, too?

I looked to see if there was a caption on the colourful painting of Carlisle and the three other godly men, and there was.

It said something in Latin, my brain told me, though I had never seen or heard this strange language before in my short existence. The date on it said:

1700

Seventeen hundred?

Ok, so Carlisle was that old…wow…so vampires never died, unless they did die, but had a really long life span, never got tired, were beautiful, strong and fast? Was there any downside to our seemingly endless lives…or existences actually, you could hardly call them lives.

So our only vice was having to feed quite often, and I was still assuming that the need to feed grew less and less frequent as the years passed by, at least I was hoping it did, otherwise an eternity of living would get very annoying if I had to feed every six hours.

And it didn't look like, well unless Carlisle was minus 233 when he was changed, I'm guessing that he hasn't aged one tiny bit. He didn't look a day over 23, which he wasn't.

So he was 23. It still alarmed me that I knew this from a small vision.

How did I suddenly know all of this when I just thought about it in a vision or the vision gave me what I wanted?

Why couldn't I do that with my past? I mean ,technically, I could only see the future, but when I'd wanted to see Carlisle's past, my vision gave it right to me. I guess there is actually no evidence of my existence, anywhere.

It would be so much easier to work things out. For instance, I have no idea what happened to me, why I was against that immensely long, wide wall when I woke up, who changed me or anything at all. I didn't even know how old I was…did I?

So I am mature enough not to be a child, I know that. So I must be over at least 16 or 17, despite my height, but I didn't look young enough to be the age my small height suggested. I thought back to how I had remembered my name, and to see if anything more would come through the barrier it had come through.

Family? A sister? No. A grandparent? No. My mother? No. Ok, so I wasn't going to get anything done by trying to remember my family. So my age… I'll concentrate on my age really carefully…

Nineteen. Could I be nineteen? I was incredibly small, but as I'd thought before, I looked too mature to be a child, and too mature to be still growing as well. So, I was nineteen. It was a new piece of information to add to my ever-growing pile.

I now had at least eleven pieces of information; opposed to the nine I'd had earlier today, which was a small improvement.

My vision ended, as did my train of thought, and I unnecessarily blinked another time, disorientated after such concentration on the pictures in the background of the vision. Seeing Carlisle at his house, though, had made me think of another think that I needed: a home. I didn't need anything comfortable, for my being so much like a rock, pretty much everything I touched or sat on seemed like a soft surface.

So maybe not a house, house, but somewhere I could go back to in between my hunts and do something at. The clearing that I had been stationed at the last few days was not exactly somewhere where no one would ever come, as the unfortunate man who had come walking here had made clear to me.

So maybe a cave? I obviously couldn't buy an actual house, for I had no money at all, so a cave would have to do.

Where would one be most likely to find a cave? In the mountains probably, though I'd have to go somewhere obscure so that no one would find me there. I remembered the mountain range that I'd seen before, and decided that it would be where I would go.

Another of those bubbles of excitement I'd felt before crept up my throat at the thought of being able to decorate the cave, and I had an urge to squeal. I began to think of all the things I could do in the cave and what sorts of plants I could use to make it look nice, and as soon as that thought crept into my head, I couldn't hold back the excited squeals that came from my mouth as I began to jump up and down, flapping my hands.

I shot off at top speed in the direction of the mountain range I'd remembered from before, the exhilaration from the run only making me more excited than before. I propelled forward, taking longer and longer strides, becoming keener and keener to get to my destination as I reminded myself that I could shaped the rock as I wanted, so I could probably furnish the cave, too.

As I went up the mountain side, I had to keep reminding myself to be careful not to be seen shooting up the edge of a mountain from a distance, for I was sure it would give humans a shock, even if they couldn't identify exactly what I was.

There seemed to be a crevice at a section of the mountain that would surely be dangerous for any human to attempt to go. I headed up that way, hoping to find some form of abandoned call channelled into the cliff side from constant wind, or maybe an old river, but none such things came up.

As I was about to give up hope and search a different place of the mountain, a small hole in a dried up river bed's path was brought to my attention. A turned back a ran towards it, looking down through it.

I was thrilled to find that it went down into a sort of hollowed out cave, I assumed that the water that was long gone had done it. I widened the entrance a little a dropped myself through it, surprising myself by landing nimbly, wondering if I would ever get used to the fact that I was indestructible and graceful now.

I looked around once I had landed, and was elated to see that it was very spacious with not a too high ceiling, but it was higher than me by a few inches.

I smiled hugely and began to squeal again.

X x X

Four hours later

X x X

I was still grinning.

My wonderful house was now decked out with a full set of every type of stone furniture you could imagine, all my size. I had three couches, all on different walls, each one with a different colour of woven bracken on, but all three complementing each other fabulously.

I had been a little confused at first how to put two pieces of rock together, but I had gotten the hang of it after a couple of goes, and had also found plenty of bracken on the sheltered side of the hill, and had woven it together with some long grass I'd found and fused it into the stone. I'd done this three times with three different colours of bracken I'd found, of course I had to have some differences in colouration and decoration in my house.

The trick with the rock was to just thwack it together really hard and kind of mould around the massive crack it made.

I had a small table and I had a big table.

The small table was made of a darker type of stone I'd found, but proved harder to put pieces together, so I decided to stick to the other stone in future. My big table was relatively long, fairly wide and was the centrepiece of my cave, even though it didn't take up a whole load of space. I had also made a box sort of thing, but it didn't have a lid. It was more of a crate, though I didn't own anything to put in it, though I hoped that soon, I would.

I'd put that in the corner of my room, and after a bit of shaping it with my hands, the wall was the perfect shape to fit my box in, and I had put it into it's place with a contented giggle and another squeal.

I made a bed as well, not because I needed it, but because I thought that it fitted the room, and also because I needed something to put into the far corner. I didn't make it have any posts or separate pieces, it would have been too complicated. I just got a lump of rectangular rock, rounded the edges a little and made a little crease to signify where the mattress would be of a normal bed.

I knew that I didn't need it, but I thought that the attention to detail was fun, so I weaved little pillows as well, both in the green bracken that I'd found while making the couches.

I hadn't realised that all that time I had gone by because I'd been having so much fun, so when I began to feel a little thirsty again and jumped up out of my little hole, a was quite shocked to see that it was already getting more cloudy and that the sun was already starting to retreat to the west.

Will there be any animals around on a mountain?

I wondered as I stood outside my cave entrance, wondering which direction to go in. I closed my eyes another time and spanned out my senses as I was so used to doing now, only after a few days. I couldn't really smell much, only a few faint aromas but they seemed to be coming from somewhere farther away, so I assumed that they were down the mountain.

As I ran, I wondered yet again how long it would be until I could be in any range of humans without having to attack them.

I knew it was possible, with Carlisle as my example, I just had no idea how long it would take. I had no idea how long it had taken Carlisle to perfect his skills, for he'd had over 250 years to do so, which meant that it could take that long, somewhere in the middle or any time between that.

It wasn't exactly a useful time frame for reference to, so I decided to focus on the other vampires in his new family.

Edward had been a vampire for three years now, but that was all the information that I held on him.

What about Esme?

She had shown no need to attack the minister at the wedding that I had seen, unless I hadn't seen it, but still, she hadn't. I wonder if I could tell how far in the future after her change that would be? I could start at finding when her change was to take place, and then I could work forward from there.

I replayed the vision of her being brought to the morgue in my mind, but no date came to mind. I decided to search the future again for Esme, but more recent future and details.

As soon as I thought of her straight after her transformation, a vision covered my eyes.

Esme was sitting in a chair in a grand room with Carlisle sitting opposite her, on a couch. Her eyes weren't as glowing red as they were before, but they were still a fairly bright colour, so she must not have been a vampire more than five or six days at this point. I searched for a time, or a date of this happening, and finally, I got what I was looking for.

Esme is going to be changed on the 14th August 1921.

Her transformation will last three days until 17th August at nightfall.

I knew then that the day of which I was having a vision of was the 24th August. I wasn't far off, because I said five or six days after her transformation, and this was seven.

The vision abruptly flickered and brought me back to the present day. I searched for anything close to the marriage, and was caught up in another vision that swept over my sight.

Esme was standing by a full-length mirror that I immediately envied, in the dress that I had seen her wearing at the wedding, talking to Edward.

"Do you think I'll be able to do it, Edward?" she said in quite a hollow voice, and I was worried that she was talking about getting married, but then I realised that the worry was something quite different.

"Of course you will, Esme, we've done plenty of tests haven't we? They all went perfectly fine, did they not?" he replied in a calming tone. I wondered why Carlisle wasn't there, then I realised that Esme was wearing her wedding dress and that Carlisle couldn't see it.

"Ok. I'm fine. I'll be calm. I'm fine." She repeated over to herself more than to Edward.

"Esme, you're worrying. Sometimes, I think you forget I can read your thoughts. You won't attack the minister. You are completely safe. He won't find it odd that your eyes are amber. He won't be suspicious as to why we are the only three people there. He will turn up, I will remember to catch your bouquet even though a bridesmaid is meant to do that," he chuckled slightly at that, "and I don't mind about walking you up the isle, and it won't look odd because I'm posing as your brother, remember? Did I cover everything?"

She gave a weak laugh and nodded while Edward smiled at her. I remembered my mission to find out dates, and found out that it was half an hour before the wedding ceremony would begin. The date was 27th September 1922.

That would mean that Esme had been a vampire for one year and one month. Her eyes were a strange amber colour, not the red that I had, nor the gold that both Carlisle and Edward had, but a strange mix of both, but more gold than they were red.

I understood what Edward meant by tests, and assumed that as Esme had successfully completed them, it meant that it was just safe for her to be around humans now.

When Edward led her out of the door whispering encouragements into her ear, I felt my respect for this man grow. He was alone, though Carlisle and Esme had found each other now, and that must make him feel a little uncomfortable.

Even so, he wasn't dwelling on that at all, and was going out of his way to help them on their day, what with leading Esme up the isle, being the ring bearer, being the maid of honour, best man, bridesmaids and bridegrooms all at the same time and being really sweet to Esme and encouraging her as well as having trust in her.

As usual, though I'd have thought I'd be used to it by now, I was disorientated when the vision ended.

If it was 1921 this year, what season was it now? The vision was fairly clear of Esme's change, so I guess that means that it's fairly soon.

What was the weather like now? I couldn't really tell the temperature, but the sun had come out a few times, but I wasn't sure how many because I had been in my cave all day.

Then I remembered what I had originally set out to do when I had left my cave: Hunt

So I knew that I would take me at least on year to be able to be around humans without having to attack, even though I would still have a certain difficulty a month or so after that. Carlisle seemed to be immune to the presence of humans, and Edward seemed a little reluctant to be around them, but not as much as Esme. Maybe this was because he was older than her… so if restraint grew with time, maybe I wouldn't have to feed so much?

I hope so.