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In a distant place, on a date unknown.
Trees. They blew and wind howled, a storm, a pathetic fallacy of myself.
Soil.
Raindrops.
Lightning. Or was I the lightning? I felt so charged, as if my very being was at one with the central energy of the earth. I wasn't singular anymore, I felt like I was eveything and nothing at the same time. I was a disintegration of molecules and yet I knew I had to still be me, still whole, somehow. And always I felt him beside me, his hand in mine. Clenched to the point of pain but comforting.
Pain. It was unbearable, ravenous for my screams, yet its hunger was never sated.
Darkness.
Pain. It has no mercy yet with each moment I feel it my body grows to endure it, enjoy it. Pain begins to develop flavours and differences, sharp, aching, rolling through me. Each is different and each exerts a new form of torture.
Concrete.
City lights.
Alley.
Fire.
Darkness. My eternal friend.
This had been the cycle my body had run through.
Time was distorted to a point that seconds felt like hours and hours felt like split moments. Everything was fracturing, causing me to jump repetitively, or at least that's all my mind could comprehend beyond the agony.
My body was in a constant flux of numb peace and electric sparks. In the times when I was paralysed in a new scene, I would feel nothing. Not even a breeze on my face but then the electricity would pulse again, and I would fall off the stable dimension of time and space into a place too obscure to belong in the physical world. There we burned but he never made a sound. He took it all and still he held my hand, offering whatever reprieve he could.
Every limb raged with fire that threatened to leave me as nothing but ashes, blackened, and scarred
With every jump I had one short moment of recognition before the energy started to build and everything I knew became muddled.
My breathing was panting now as we lay in dim sunlight, trees surrounding us while my body rested in the forest debris. All I could do was lie in my broken state, the acidic tears building but never pouring down my face as I watched the clouds race through the sky. I could feel nothing as if my whole body was in that state of numbness before pins and needles. Nothing but the pressure of his presence beside me. I couldn't see him and sometimes I wondered if he was really there, but in moments like these his presence was so strong I knew he was real.
My ears were filled with a faint buzzing like static ran through the air around me, though I could hear sounds that distorted and changed from nearly silent to crystal clear. It was as if my head was being repeatedly taking in and out of water.
Be strong, Kvetina. Endure this. The voice in my head was soft but pained, strong but comforting.
A spike shot through me and my paralysis lifted enough for my screams to burst free. I knew they did because my throat ripped at their force, but somehow my ears registered nothing but silence. Was I deaf to my own pain, or was my body so broken that my voice no longer made sound?
A crack sounded somewhere close by but I could do nothing but lie helplessly in the dirt while its creator neared me. My body thrashed against my will, although I could feel nothing that caused it. The paralysis was back. I was nothing physical, just my mind although I knew my body existed as a solid object in this place.
As I fought the unknown, my movements caused black spots to form across my eyes damaging my vision.
"Sarelle?" A soft voice tickled my now functioning eardrums, piercing the static.
Another convulsion rocked my body, but this time I wasn't allowed to break my own bones, instead a force held me to the ground while my tendons strained.
"My dear child. It will end. I promise you it will end," the voice said. My eyes cleared to see golden eyes looking down at me with a halo of blonde hair sitting atop a perfect face. The compassion in his eyes told me that I knew this man but my muddled mind would give me no hint of his name.
"How will I tell him that an end is coming? He's so happy right now. You both are. I hope Emmett and he aren't nearby. It would destroy him to see this. How will I keep this from him?" His eyes searched mine, and I felt sparks fly where his hand tried to touch mine. The current running on my skin wouldn't allow him to, and I hated that it was denying me some comfort of caring contact in this time.
My spine arched yet again but this time it felt like the fire burst from my chest and flowed like lava around my body. The man's face showed shock and torment as I felt myself fade yet again to the place that had no name.
When the eternal darkness finally disintegrated, I gazed upon cracked ceiling and dirt covered walls. It was no place I recognised, but it had to hold something I knew. That was the only pattern I could find in this madness. I found comfort in the fact my mind was clear enough to find some kind of sequence.
Scuttling spiders echoed in my ears and aged wood creaking drifted into my consciousness.
My body had been given a rest-bite from the agony before returning to my blazing pyre.
When will this end, his voice sounded weak and I wished I could answer him, wherever he was tethered to me in time.
The tingle crept up on me in a slow and sick fashion.
Here we go again, he grumbled. A sense of sarcastic humour still present even after everything.
This pain was never ending, eternal, and all consuming. It turned me to ash then back to flesh just to make me burn again. All the while my body jumped through time and space at a rate that stunned me. The tingle never left my body, and it kept me numbed to the outside world, only able to feel the hellfire that was encased by my body.
Jumps blurred together but clear spots occupied my mind now and then. I remembered a emerald green forest and thick damp air. The damp leaves had cooled my skin until I left again, to fall into another place and release my screams into the air. I couldn't stop them even if I tried. They tore at my throat but the pain was negligible.
The jumps flashed in quick succession, my screams fuelling the electricity as the fire raced faster than it had since it started. Never was I granted oblivion again, no break of darkness from the disorientation. Slowly memories began to return and with them some semblance of control. At least that was something positive, my mind and memories were safe. I didn't ever want to lose them, although I was glad that the most recent memories were still hazy and unclear.
My veins boiled and rushed as the tingle licked at their walls. After a while the electricity broke the skin, bursting out of me like my screams.
Like a stone skipping across the surface of a lake I bounced through time. I recognised brief glimpses of the places I landed in. The forest in England where I buried my parents. Next, the formation of the meadow in Forks, decimated as the tingle beat like a dying heart. Each pulse coming slower than the its predecessor. Now as the tingle started to subside, I could handle the pain. I could control the screams; they faded to whimpers over time and finally left me completely.
The flow of electricity waned, stuttering like water from a hose until eventually, like in times of drought, it stopped.
I lay still, empty, solid. I felt rejuvenated. Like the tingle had burnt away.
I was reborn.
And still I felt his hand in mine.
For a long moment we lay beside each other staring up at the clouds. They lay thick across the sky, no sliver of blue to be seen. A crow shouted as it flew above us, alerting the surrounding forest to our sudden appearance. Tall damp grass cocooned around us filling my nose with the smell of soil and fresh rain.
In what felt like forever I turned to look at Aslo beside me. He, like me, hadn't moved. Somehow my limbs felt foreign to me, like the numbness after a long slumber.
"Aslo?" I said, although my voice was just a whisper. Again it felt disjointed. Like my voice was readjusting to this new timbre rather than the screams.
He turned his head towards me, his eyes the darkened colour of maple syrup. He was hungry yet he stayed here – in control and calm.
"Moje Kventina," he smiled as his hand squeezed mine.
"Are you OK?" I asked, looking over him as I rose from our overgrown bed.
He rose with me, releasing my hand to run his own through his hair. "I think so." He paused for a moment. "What was that?"
I sighed as I thought back on what we had gone through. It felt like death, yet here we were. "I have no idea." The memories were still filing themselves away, trying to find the right order and the right places, but I knew they felt familiar, like déjà vu.
"How much can you remember?" I asked.
He focussed on a far off place, his forehead creasing a he thought. "I remember the Volturi and Volterra. And chaos. Sparks everywhere and you at the centre of it all… there was a flash and I remember holding onto you. And then it was like I was standing in a hurricane or a tornado, but it was more than that. Like it wasn't wind but electricity. Everywhere. And I just knew I had to hold on. Somehow."
As he spoke I heard no pain and I hoped it wasn't a mask. He had followed me selflessly and I couldn't bare the thought he had suffered because of it.
"How do you feel now?"
"Different." He cocked his head to the side, "but I don't know how."
On the surface he looked the same to me but there was something in his reaction that was wholly different. It was like he was more grounded, or more contained. The wildness that had always took over after we jumped together wasn't there. It was like before the tingle sent his vampiric nature into hyperactivity, but not this time.
"I think there was a moment, and this might be bullshit, but I think after the flash there was this energy that built and built to the point it was too much. Like if you shook a coke bottle with the lid on. But then I just let go and I don't know what happened but from then on it was like that tingling just flowed through." He was animated as he talked and I saw the man I'd called companion for all these years. Maybe he was different, but he was still him. From his deep mahogany hair to the wry smile in his eyes.
I smiled in relief and it seemed to spur him on. He stood swiftly, turning to look at where we had ended up. I followed suit, scanning the space.
"So where do you think we are or is when a better question?" he asked, scratching the back of his head as he sifted through the possibilities.
I knew the answer to the first question instantly but subtle differences left me guessing as to the second.
"It's the meadow in Forks," I said as I looked at the near perfect circle around us.
For a moment I wondered if we just had just formed the meadow. Could it have been possible we had just jumped back to my first day as a vampire? The theory didn't last long. The meadow was just a beautiful as ever. Grass formed a blanket stretching out across its expanse, not like the mud and churned up earth that had been there when I first formed it.
As we walked through the meadow the clouds shifted, letting sunlight filter through. I glanced at Aslo as he looked for clues as to why we ended up here. His flawless skin had broken out into a fantastical glimmer, as if millions of sparkling diamonds were embedded into it. I looked down at my own. Rainbows danced on my skin, like colours shining on cream silk.
We walked separately through the meadow. I took everything in, the smell of the grass and sweet floral high notes from the plants. There was a fresh smell of spring that made the air seem clean, cleared of the duskier smell of the forest.
My eyes passed around the perfectly circular edge, the dark gloom of the surrounding trees making it seem like an alternate world. With that thought my mind started to churn, rifling through what had happened.
For a fleeting instant I thought of the Cullens. They had lived here once. It was where Edward and Bella had met. I breathed deeply, searching for their familiar scents but if they had ever lived here their mark had long since vanished. I stifled the disappointment before it could grow to be any more than discontent.
My eyes sought the old oak tree at the far side of the meadow. The grass gave me longing brushes as if saying its own hello while I walked. When I had jumped here when I changed, I had carved a cross into its surface.
I walked towards the tree, passing through a pretty patch of bluebells and daisies. The sun shone down on me, warming my skin while a light breeze made my hair flutter behind me. I bent to pick one of the violet flowers that hid in the shadows at the edge of the meadow.
I twirled it in my fingers, looking at how the petals formed an intricate starburst, like an explosion of sugared blues and mauves reaching out to sunlight.
"Knautia arvensis," I said and Aslo turned, staring down at the delicate flower in my hand.
"I always just called it 'pretty purple flower'" I smiled up at Aslo as he chuckled. "I'd come here every year and plant one for my parents."
I looked around us at the spray of flowers. They were woven into the grass, stretching towards the sunlight. "I didn't plant these." I said as pieces started to fit together.
"So maybe we're here before you started planting them?"
"Possibly, but I don't think so." I paused, examining the tree before me. It's winding, gnarled surface was gently bathed in a green hue from the sunlight filtering down through the leafy canopy. But no matter where I looked there was no cross. No sign of any influence other than nature itself.
"What are you saying, Sarelle?" Aslo asked warily.
"I don't think this is our world."
"You can't be serious." He laughed but it haltered abruptly when he saw my face.
"For what I remember of my change, I landed in a forest near London on the same day my parents went missing." I tried not to think of that day and Aslo didn't push me to elaborate. "After that jump I came here. The tingle, my gift, was still raw so I destroyed whatever was here, creating this clearing."
"OK, so maybe we're here some time between you creating it and coming back to plant flowers?" Aslo queried, watching be with sceptics eyes.
"But that's the thing. When I created it I carved a cross into this tree. In memory of my parents. But look, Aslo, there's no cross."
"No cross, and alternate worlds is a big leap, Sarelle."
"I know, but maybe if I could jump back to the day of my parents death we could see…" I bit my tongue. I didn't think I could watch myself kill them. And I certainly didn't want to repeat history. "Maybe they never died, Aslo."
"If they never died, Sarelle. Then maybe you never jumped. And if you never jumped then you wouldn't be here."
"But I would be if this wasn't my world. If two worlds existed with all the same possibilities but one crucial difference, then maybe we've hopped between them?"
"I know there's a lot of things in this world that people might struggle to understand, but even as a vampire I find it hard to believe in alternate realities, kvetina." He sighed heavily
"I understand, but something is different."
"So let's find out. Like you said if you jump back to the days after your parents went missing maybe we can figure out what's happened."
I nodded and grasped his hand in mine. I didn't know what to expect after what we had been through.
I breathed deeply, thinking back to when I first learnt to control the tingle. It had been hard at first but gradually I learnt to find that other part of myself.
As I stood now it was like learning all over again. I pushed aside the fear of the previous jump. It would only stand in the way. I searched deeper, looking for the buzz that seemed to be always humming under the surface.
But all I could feel was Aslo's hand in mine and all I could hear was the rustling of the leaves and swishing of the grass. When the breeze ran over my skin no tingle followed. There was just me and a creeping hollow feeling in the pit of my stomach.
"I don't think I can," I stuttered.
"What do you mean?"
"I can't feel it anymore."
"Maybe if we just give it time. You've been through a lot. You might just need to recharge."
"I'm not a battery, Aslo." I snapped as panic started to set in. When I was human, I had wanted nothing more the be rid of that feeling of restlessness and as a young vampire it had been a constant irritation. But with time I had gotten used to it, even enjoyed having that safety blanket of sorts. No matter the situation I had an escape plan, a secret weapon. Now the silence was deafening.
A/N: Thanks for reading!
