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Though Athanasia and myself had avoided coming into contact with any other vampires during our nearly two centuries of isolation together, our little trio seemed to attract more attention.
It was thanks to this first encounter that we figured out that Oktai too was gifted. It was around time of his transformation, as his senses were a little more heightened than ours. He heard them coming before we did. Luckily his urge to protect Athy kicked in subconsciously and he was able to somehow mask her human attributes from them somehow.
Although I'd tried to tap the rhythm of her heart against her waist as I held her close, I knew it wouldn't help for long. But I needn't have worried. Oktai managed to hide both the sound of her heartbeat and the glow of her blood under her skin from them.
His shield turned out to be very useful. We could now interact with other vampires for a decent amount of time without them becoming any the wiser to Athanasia's true nature. The fact that he could seemingly hide certain things from detection made me wonder if we would be able to travel back to my homeland without alerting the Volturi. I had wanted to show my daughter the land of my birth ever since she was born.
We spent another century or so in Siberia living in near isolation and each training up our respective powers. Since birds were my speciality, I'd come to perfect my transformation into a golden eagle, which helped us to scout out an area before we moved without looking too out of place.
Athy on the other hand had developed her hypnosis to the point that if Oktai's shield failed, she could convince any passing vampires to forget completely what they had witnessed. This meant that we would no longer have to dispose of anyone after the five we'd already been forced to burn due to my paranoia. However, she could not convince someone who had completely made up their mind. Thankfully, adding the threat of death usually made someone's mind easy to change.
Oktai's shield was very selective, but effective. I believed and hoped that it had potential to deceive and withhold choice information from Aro himself. I'd trained him to be able to project it further than just to Athy. He'd been able to completely stop me from being influenced by Athanasia's hypnosis, proving to me that it were the senses that his shield deceived. However, he had to know exactly what he needed to hide, for example, he could only block Athy's power if he knew prior to her using it, what she was going to try and make me do. At least now I knew how he'd hidden himself from us all those years ago. He'd obeyed his mother's last wishes and been able to hide when his life depended on it.
Athanasia had rarely asked about her father in all these years, but I came to the realisation that now, honesty was the best policy when it came to stopping your child from running away and doing anything reckless. So I told them of my life with my former coven.
I was well aware that the only reason Aro had let me leave without a fight was my absolute certainty at the time that I would return. If he had known that I would abandon him, he would have used Charmion to keep me there without a doubt. That is why I could not risk Athy going there without a gameplan. When the time was right for her to meet Caius, it would have to be together and with a well thought-out plan to hide certain rebelliatory thoughts from Aro.
It must have been around the time of the 1700s when we made our way to Europe, deciding to remain in Central Asia for the time being thanks to the protection offered by its isolation and remoteness.
Europe at the time was more extravagant than any of us could imagine. If I thought that the Volturi were eccentric a millennium ago then I was certainly mistaken by today's standards.
Being an enthusiast for the dramatic, Athanasia adored the culture of the time, relishing in the fashion and arts. Diving straight into the powdered wigs adorned with fruits and huge dresses to match, she enjoyed playing the role of a damsel in distress to lure in her prey.
Even though I was from this part of the continent, having not lived here for seven hundred years and I felt just as big a culture shock as Oktai, who had never left the steppes. Even my homeland was nothing like the pagan land I grew up in. The godforsaken religion imported by the Romans prevailed, dividing the population on whose variation was the most righteous, but I decided to approach it this time with an open mind.
We arrived to the former site of my hometown at the start of winter, observing from the hills how the humans in the little village that now resided here placed a gigantic fir tree in the centre of the village square and decorated it. Children laughed as they threw snowballs at each other as they ran through the streets to the chagrin of their parents.
Descending into the village, I felt a strange mix of emotions. Whilst some of the forests I walked as a child had been felled to accommodate the new architecture, to my surprise, much of it remained. Crossing the threshold into the settlement, I heard snippets of conversation as people went about their daily lives. Even the language of the locals had not changed too significantly since my time, as strange as some of the colloquialisms sounded.
Tracing the steps that my body seemed to know so well, I felt more human than I ever had. Vulnerable. My eyes stung as if trying to release tears as my family walked through the main street of the town. Approaching the fir tree, I wondered what it was commemorating. For it stood pretty much in the spot that fifteen hundred years before had witnessed the murder of my human family.
That's when a friendly looking middle-aged man, dressed in black approached us with a smile on his face.
"Bore da (good day), my children, from where do you travel?" the man articulated, holding out his hand for one of us to shake. I took it and began to acquire the modern Welsh language.
"Oh, just from Ireland," I began tentatively, "but we have some relatives from this part of Wales, and were wanting to come and visit." Any trepidation that was on the man's face had all but disappeared.
"Well, of course you must stay for a while, I hope you're not just passing through!" he implored, evidently taken in by our visual charm. What a pity, someone so willing to invite vampires into their town would not last long should the wrong ones pass through.
"That's very kind of you, sir, but we do not wish to intrude," I apologised, not sure if I could even handle the psychological burden of staying here for any longer. However, Athanasia reached for the man's hand and convinced him to let us stay with him.
The man introduced himself as the priest of the parish, by the name of Bryn. His wife Cerys was the local florist, her shop abundant with wistful aromas of the forest. Their little girls, Rhoswen and Angharad enjoyed experimenting with Athy's hair who played along exuberantly with their games of hairdresser. Their youngest child, Dafydd, however, was perpetually uneasy when any of our coven were around. Perhaps his age made him more attuned into his instincts.
Laughing off Dafydd's odd behaviour (which apparently was a regular occurence as he frequently took a disliking to plenty of well-to-do people), the Reverand and his wife urged us to stay for the whole Christmas period. We agreed, wanting to integrate ourselves into this close-knit society, but knowing our residence here would have to be as transient and brief as possible.
The others both picked up the language quickly, much to the appreciation of Reverand Bryn and his family and we soon became the talk of the town. Unfortunately, Oktai sometimes had a hard time controlling his hunger and would have to leave to go on "a midnight walk to clear his mind" every so often, in order to not break our earlier established no-feeding-inside-the-village policy.
When Christmas morning came, we celebrated with the village, singing their carols and partaking in their tradition of a feast (although Oktai and I had to pay the price afterwards). The winter provided us with the perfect opportunity to live a somewhat normal life amongst the humans.
Although most people were initially surprised to see someone of Oktai's appearance in the vicinity, not even to mention his red eyes, they welcomed him with open arms. For the people living on the land of my family over a millennium afterwards, I could not ask for more acceptance. Maybe humanity was truly heading in the direction of embracing the unknown. The sense of nostalgia came flooding back, but made my heart ache somehow even more.
As Boxing Day morning arrived, we stood in the town centre, next to the tree, as snowflakes fell upon our skin, only melting upon contact with Athanasia. I told them now of my human life and they listened intently, understanding how much it meant personally to be back in my native country and was thankful for their open-mindedness and tolerance of my self-indulgent wishes to return to my home town.
Thanking Reverand Bryn and his family for their charity, Cerys handed Athanasia and I a bouquet of snowdrops each that she and the girls had picked fresh from the forest. This final reminder of my human life was enough to force my body to change to allow me to cry. The venomous tears burned, but the relief they brought me was just as much as the warmth that now flooded my heart.
Against every wish I had to stay here, we turned to leave, returning the farewells of the villagers. Despite his previous animosity, even little Dafydd waved us off as we departed.
As the nineteenth century melted into the twentieth, we decided to move further north in Europe. We decided to stay close enough to civilization to be aware of any goings-on in the vicinity, but far enough to not be in the path of any nomads.
We managed somehow, choosing to live in the forests of frosty Scandinavia. Settling here was a perfect idea, as we could keep a close eye on human developments whilst masquerading as the folkloric Huldra. However, the rate at which technology developed surprised us all. The closest town to our forest blossomed from a rural nomansland into a thriving winter city adorned with tall glass mountains and metal horses.
No doubt, huge cultural change was afoot, and the introduction of communicative technology was certainly a step-up for the humans.
Athanasia had known about her father for many years now, but never sensed it was the right time to ask. Maybe now that we had become accustomed to Europe, she felt comfortable to discuss him.
"Mum," she addressed me one day when Oktai was out on an errand, with a tone I knew could mean only one thing. "I think I'm ready to meet dad."
I inhaled sharply, over-stimulating my thirst at the same time, causing a coughing fit. Maybe the tension made me more anxious to eat. However, when I turned to answer her, I tried to hide all signs of opposition. Of course, she'd try it when he wasn't around. Hearing my stories of the Volturi, Oktai was more opposed to returning than I, and she knew it. Athanasia too, recognised the pull I felt to that place and how I tried so desparately to avoid it.
"Okay, we can go to see him, Athy," I answered with as neutrally as I could manage, knowing cooperation was the only way. If I disagreed, she'd only force me to agree through using my wish to see Caius again as bait, and then we'd be going in blind.
"I know we'll all have to go together mum, don't worry," she tried to reassure, "I'll tell Oktai if you want, that's how much I care."
"Too right you'll be the one to tell him, you'll give the poor thing an anneurism! And of course, and we'll need a plan, we'll need to be careful of what we show them," I worried, thinking of the powers that the Volturi held in their arsenal, and only imagining who they could have recruited in the time of my absence.
"I've wanted to meet him for centuries, but I don't think I can put this off anymore. I know they're dangerous, but I need to meet him. It's unfair on him that I've spent so much time with you and so little with him," she continued.
"I thank you for respecting my worries."
"But I've decided that now is the time," she definitively announced. I knew that we had to go back. I didn't want to. Aro would never let us go. Of course getting his hands on such a unique creature as Athanasia, would be the pride of his collection. Oktai's selective shield was also a tempting power too. But how could I deny my daughter the opportunity to meet her father? Especially after she had been patient for a thousand years.
Knowing that we would be walking into a life sentence, I did not dispute.
So we began to plot exactly which thoughts we would mask from them. We eventually settled on a few of our thoughts of our treasonous conversations, all of our scheming, as well as the existence of both Athanasia's and Oktai's powers. If they thought their intimidation had no effect on us, they'd be doubly harsh.
It was spring of 2007 when we decided to move. I had tried not to terrify my family about what lay ahead, but I warned them that we would never be able to travel as freely as we had before ever again. Although the thought seemed to have permeated Oktai, a nomad by nature even in his human life, Athy was more enthusiastic than ever to spend time with her father and he was prepared to make that sacrifice for her.
We travelled non-stop, save for letting Athy rest, deciding to make a detour to Saint-Petersburg to shop for some natural-looking human clothes that could cover Oktai and I enough in the sunlight of southern Europe, but that looked presentable and professional at the same time.
Of course Athanasia looked stunning in everything she wore. Neither I nor Oktai could give an unbiased opinion as she was the light of both of our lives. She eventually settled on a lacy, but modest dark blue vintage dress which let every aspect of her beauty shine through, hopefully increasing her hypnotic pull. Because she didn't react the same way to sunlight as us, she was quite content with showing some skin.
On the other hand, Oktai settled with some skinny jeans and a hooded jacket, accompanied by sunglasses which hid the redness in his eyes.
I chose a long baggy black dress that covered most of my skin, but added a glass diamond-encrusted belt around my waist so I didn't look so out of place against the fashion of the era.
We set off to Italy with determination and our plan in mind (though not for long if Oktai's powers were to be successful). A very repressed part of me could not be more relieved by our decision to return to Volterra.
Please don't hate the shield of plot convenience))) I hope you enjoyed this chapter, thanks for reading this far!
I've decided to upload every Saturday from now on, just to make sure the chapters are good enough and because of time constraints.