Thank you all so much for your feedback! I was pleasantly surprised by the reviews you've left for me. When writing this story, I often have writer's block or I'll decide to start over, mostly because Alice's storyline has very little development and I'm kind of improvising, but for whatever reason this chapter in particular was very easy to write. The past two chapters have taken me a while to write because they're pretty much trial and error, and I'm balancing updating this story and Solstice, but I was able to write this one surprisingly quickly. That's also why this chapter is a bit longer than usual.
I was unfortunately awoken from my joyful stupor by distant footsteps approaching me. I stood up from the two drained bodies at my feet and examined my surroundings quickly. All I could see was tall trees surrounding me until I saw a branch quiver.
I instantly tensed, ready to attack whatever emerged from the woods, but a tall man launched himself from the trees and pinned me down before I got the chance. His face was twisted into an angry snarl.
"W-what do you want? Who are you?" My voice was unsteady and fearful, though it still chimed through the forest beautifully.
"That's not important, newborn." He said it with disgust.
"Why are you here? And why...why am I a vampire?"
"What? How do you know that?" The man was suddenly surprised by my question.
"Why am I a vampire?" I said it with anger this time. I was getting impatient.
"It's a bit complicated, dear. Let's just say that your little protector surprised me."
"Protector?" What protector? Who was he talking about?
He chuckled, an evil sound from the depths of his throat. "You don't remember anything, do you? Well I suppose you aren't much use to me now."
I furrowed my brow in confusion. Something changed in the images in my brain, and I started smiling. It was of me, launching the man off of me. I was stronger than him.
I kicked my feet up, realizing how little effort it caused me, and catapulted him into the trees in front of me. A couple of visions revealed him killing me, and though those images ranged in detail and likelihood, I didn't want to risk it, so I ran into the forest in the opposite direction. He was going to be down for a couple of seconds, but that was enough for me to get ahead of him.
After an hour of running through the endless forest, the visions of the man catching up to me vanished and I let myself come to a stop. I was mentally exhausted, but no premonition showed me sleeping, so I assumed that I didn't need any sleep. My body did feel surprisingly strong, especially considering the exertion I had just experienced. I sat down on a fallen tree and took a deep breath, allowing myself a mental break to make sense of things.
Who was that man? And why was he mad? Did he know me? And what did he mean when he said that I didn't remember? Remember what? Maybe it was something about my "protector". There were very little visions of him in my future, and any that were present were so faded that I couldn't make out any details. Then, I remembered something.
If I could predict the future accurately, how didn't I see that man come? Maybe it was because I was so focused on Jasper. Or he made such a sudden decision to visit me that the vision was only there for a second. It just didn't make sense. This whole premonition thing was hit or miss, and quite unpredictable, ironically.
I sighed and laid down on the log, staring into the deep sky, and I let out a small sob. This was all so much, so fast. I had no idea what would happen in the future, even with my visions. They changed so frequently, and most of them were so blurred that they were no use. It was extremely frustrating.
I fell into a daze, focusing on all of my visions to let myself fully understand the most likely of them. I was relieved to see that the lovely image of Jasper was completely clear, and hopefully that meant that I was almost certainly going to have a future with him. Some of the other clear images weren't so hopeful, though. Many of them involved me being lost and alone for centuries, hunting humans and becoming sick with guilt after realizing the meaning of all of the lives I had ended. They almost always ended in a purposeful death, after a millenium of misery.
I decided that I didn't want that for myself. I didn't want to become overcome with guilt and sadness and loneliness, so much that it took over my existence. I wanted to be with Jasper, happy and perfect. Most of my future guilt was going to come from dead humans, I realized. Maybe that previous vision, of a dead deer, was my better future.
My throat's ache had been growing since yesterday's hunt, and now it was agonizing. The invisible hands squeezed my throat tight. I sighed and stood up from the log, breathing in deeply to try and catch a scent.
A herd of four deer, seven miles West. And a man, twelve miles North. Though the deer were much closer, I was nearly choked by the man's scent. I remembered the horrid visions of my possible future loneliness, though, and ran West.
I arrived in moments, draining the deer without a second thought. Their blood was still satisfying, but my aching throat was still begging for a taste of the man. I knew that if I was going to resist the human's scent, I was going to have to have a lot more than four deer.
This time, I tried to rely on my premonitions to catch a scent. It was slightly slower, because a lot of them involved me drinking the man, but with some painful patience I saw a bear somewhere South. I ran towards the smell and drank the animal dry, loosening the hands' grip.
Depicting Alice's control over her premonitions was especially difficult in the last chapter, but now she is getting more accustomed to it, so it was a bit easier to describe it here. How did you guys like her encounter with James? Though no one mentioned any details, I believe James mentioned a brief meeting of him and Alice after he killed the asylum worker who turned her, so I thought I'd add it to her story. We also see that during Twilight, Jasper is much less used to the "vegetarian" lifestyle that his family lives, but him and Alice go to the Cullens around the same time and Alice never has much trouble. So perhaps Alice had a premonition of that future diet and had trained herself early on in her transformation, and her less optimistic visions of a human diet helped motivate her even though she was a newborn. This detail was pretty much completely made up, but I thought that it made more sense to have Alice train herself earlier. Let me know what you think of Alice's experiences so far!
