Chapter Four-Coincidence
Carlisle had hunted before he set off for the Hospital that day, and Esme had gone with him, so all of us "kids" went hunting that night, Jacob and Renesmee included. They still kept up their old tradition of seeing who could make the largest kill. We didn't have the time to travel far from town tonight, so we all chased a particularly large herd of deer.
As we were closing in, I caught a hint of a slightly-less-objectionable scent. Something tastier than deer, yet less desirable than human blood. Mountain lion, and more than one of them. Without thinking, I turned from the distasteful deer, and chased the lions instead. I saw, and smelt Edward ahead of me, also chasing his favorite meal. He would always be the fastest.
When we returned to the clearing the deer had been in, we saw only Jacob and Renesmee still there, standing next to the river with the little whirlpool swirling in it. Everyone else seemed to have disappeared.
"What-" I began
"At the same time as us, really?" asked Edward, answering Jacob and Nessie's thoughts. I rolled my eyes. Some of Edwards's mannerisms seemed to be rubbing off on me.
"Apparently all of our siblings ran off after some other prey at the same time as we did" Edward explained, having obviously caught my eye-roll.
"The exact same time?"
"So it appears"
"Huh" was my unimaginative reply. My brain had switched into overdrive, trying to figure it out. Since it was Edward and my favorite prey that made us switch course, perhaps the others also smelt something of appeal to them. They hadn't smelled the mountain lions, because I would have noticed them if they had, but I knew Emmett would do just about anything for a fight with a grizzly. Rose would chase after Emmett, and I knew she didn't like deer. Alice hadn't indicated any definite preferences, but she did prefer carnivores in general to herbivores. Jasper, on the other hand, worried me. I recalled Edward once telling me that Jasper had difficulty differentiating between the different "flavors", as Edward had described it, of blood. It all smelled the same to him, and he had no favorites. Unless he had developed one, the only scent I could think of that would definitely call him away suddenly would be Human.
Alice wouldn't let Jazz do that though… She'd see it coming. And if there had been a human close enough for Jasper to smell while we were hunting, we all would have smelt them. Besides, even Jasper preferred carnivore to herbivore. My thoughts were interrupted by Rosalie and Emmett returning to the scene, Rosalie, chewing Emmett out for letting a grizzly bear tear the new shirt she had just gotten him. Emmett was weakly arguing back, trying to defend himself. I thought he would probably have a better chance of reasoning with an irritated grizzly than of winning an argument with Rose.
"So you found a grizzly at the exact moment we were going to attack the deer?" asked Edward.
"Yes," snapped Rosalie
"And we wasted it, didn't we Rose? C'mon, you know you had fun!" he added, in an attempt to cheer Rosalie up.
"What a coincidence," I replied uneasily. It didn't seem like much of a coincidence.
Edward seemed to be thinking along the same lines, as his expression all-too-clearly spoke to me.
"There is something peculiar happening" he decided, as Alice and Jasper came into view. To my relief, Jasper's eyes were still bright gold. Then I was ashamed of myself for even supposing such a thing. Jasper hadn't slipped up, hadn't—to my knowledge—even come close in the past thirteen years.
"Let me guess, you smelled something delicious and chased it?" I asked them. Alice grinned.
"How was the mountain lion?" she asked
"Great" I replied, narrowing my eyes in confusion.
"No, I can't see anything, Edward. I have no idea why. Maybe it really is just a coincidence" Alice said preempting Edward's question.
"Not even at all?"
"Nothing."
"hmmm"
Well, we decided it was a coincidence, as Alice is usually right, and she declared it was a coincidence, therefore, it must be. At least there was a definite chance that it very well could be a coincidence.