[Edit: 5 Sept 2021]
"Nessie, you remember Leah?"
The numskull actually came. I wrinkle my nose, or at least I think I do – a large portion of my muscles are unresponsive and the others feel like shredded cheese.
He brought his mate. To see me. Under any other circumstances I would have stalked away, grumbled and barred my teeth. She smells like Pine Cones and toffee, a tinge of blood, and Jacob. A great part of me wants to rip her throat out, the other wishes she'd rip out mine. After all, we are both monsters.
Coolness settles over my skin, light as a feather, but unmistakably the pressure of fingertips. Human in that there are no claws. Preternatural in their temperature and gentleness despite the hard-crust of her deceptively human skin. Certainly half a vampire. Half is not enough though. Somewhere in my mind's eye I see the clearing encircled in wolves and vampires. The other Halfling, so strange and deadly, but our saving grace.
I wish I could pull away from the child's hand, at the very least under the pretence that I do not enjoy her gentleness. It's more than I've gotten from anyone else.
The little hand moves to my forehead, her fingers are pinpricks, feather light, like goose pimples. "Leah... yes,"
Why? She sounds like any other child on the reservation – young, unsure, excited. The tell-tale innocence of a voice too high, too curious. My gut twists and I'm nearly crying with the vain effort to move away from her. I can't. It's impossible.
"Look," she demurs.
I'm outside. Looking, engaged, but separate from myself a few feet away. I'm leaning against a tree, or rather, the other me is. She stares into the trees. Seth comes up to her and she ruffles his hair. Laughs, the sound raw and low, as honest as I've ever heard it.
She's standing beside Jacob, eyes hard, mouth set in a harsh line and fists tucked against her sides. Her knuckles are white, and her heartbeat, steady and slow, can be heard all the way from the house. Daddy takes my hand, "Privacy, little one." I nod.
She's screaming and stomping her feet in the woods, scaring butterflies from flowers, forcing insects to buzz away in irritation as tears streak her cheeks. I stay hidden, too scared to move.
Her wolf stares back at me, large and furry, a grey angry mountain next to the curious squirrels in the trees. Her tongue hangs out, her legs shaking from running to keep up with Jacob. I want to sink my hands into her fur, but her glare warns me off. I whisper, "Friend, not food," and grin in delight when Jacob noses my cheek.
She turns her back on Esme, grandma, and walks away. Grandma catches my frown, "Now now, sweet child, all in their own time."
Her wolf jumps up and down, trying to capture fireflies in her jaws.
She laughs and clutches her sides as Jacob struggles to untangle himself from sea weed. My own are hidden behind my hand.
"Leah," the child whispers and removes her hand from my cheek.
It's then that I realise that my cheeks were wet. Crying. I'm crying with the watermark of Jacob's ugly face, the motherly concern in Esme's eyes, branded into the recesses of my mind. Faces and expressions I wasn't aware I'd forgotten or missed, times I don't remember, things I never did.
A gift. A heart wrenching, painful…but beautiful gift.
"I thought she might be able to cheer you up." Jacob is saying somewhere beyond the blurriness of my world, he pats my head and normally I'd try to bite the hand off but between struggling to breathe and the impossibility of movement I allow it to pass. Just this once damn it. "Nessie has a way of seeing people,"
I turn my eyes bleary towards where they are, two malformed splotches of colour, light and dark, big and small, toffee and coffee.
Colour. My every cell thirsts for it. Greens and blues and browns and pinks. I cling to the fading images like they might save me from drowning, might chase away the fears and insecurities and pain.
My lips move, no sound emerges.
"It is okay, Leah," the girl whispers – birds wings and falling rain – and her hand rests on my cheek again.
Is she going to show me something else? I'd take anything, any colour, any person, any time as long as I could see. I try to strain toward her touch, try to force her gift, her curse, her whatever to activate, to wash over me and colour in all the blanks.
"You'll get better," her hand begins to slip away and I panic, tears gathering in my eyes again and spilling over. "Sure,"
Then there he is, Sam, his arms wrapped around Emily, they are talking to the pack - words and sounds and things I don't understand. Charlie eating a doughnut, face covered in white powder. All of them, my family. Alive, bright, colourful, my chest aches with the tangibility of it.
She shows me the vampires next. I could hardly care if she spewed back the entire hour of some god awful child's program. The Cullens stand around a piano, Edward's fingers move over the ivory keys, a light tap-tap-tap that somehow translates into dustmotes and daydreams and stray rays of sunlight. Esme and Carlisle are locked in each other's arms, statues of affection caught in time. Jacob and Seth crowd close to Bella, tall and dark and large next to her short, fair, and slight, they grin from ear to ear as they joke at Emmet's expense. Charlie shifts awkwardly when Rose offers him a glass of red wine, her eyes much the same colour.
Renesme removes her hand and in its place settles emptiness.
I never thought I'd even contemplate this – I don't want the blood sucker to leave.