Disclaimer: I do not own Twilight.

"I am Kierra Avilon, and this is my sister Gwendolyn. Millenia ago, we lived in Ireland in a small village surrounded by forest with our sister. We don't know exactly how old we are—between seven and ten thousand. We were never human–our entire village knew what we were. Nature spirits—changelings. I was always persuasive–I could convince others that I was someone else, no matter what. Gwendolyn would spend all of her time in the forest. She could commune with the wild animals that lived everywhere, and she preferred their company to that of humans. When we were six years old, a vampire found us on the banks of a river. Not knowing that we were more than human, he bit us, but our blood was…different. He did not finish draining us, and so we changed. Our sister didn't survive the attack.

"When we woke, everything was new. We were the only spirits of our kind to ever exist, and the only non-humans to ever be transformed into vampires. Because of our otherworldly abilities, we are not like other vampires. We can eat human food. We can sleep. We only need to drink blood once or twice every year. Our gifts were also enhanced. Now, I can physically become anybody that I want to, and I can affect others too. Gwendolyn can become any animal on Earth, real or imagined. Show them?"

The other girl–Gwendolyn–nodded and leaped forward, shifting into a beautiful white lizard with two huge wings.

"She can't breathe fire, if you were wondering," Kierra added. Gwendolyn shifted back and rolled her eyes at her sister. Bella noticed that her black cloak was unfazed by the transformation, which must be part of her magic.

"We are telepathically linked, so whatever she sees, I do too–if she wants me to. That is how we became so good at finding secrets. She would change into a spider and spin her web in a dark corner, and from there we would hear everything.

"About three thousand years ago, Aro found us. The Volturi were a smaller coven then, though still larger than normal–Aro, Caius, Marcus, Athenodora. Sulpicia and Didyme joined a little later. Aro saw our power, and he decided to try and win us over. He acted like a father to us, and we believed him when he said he loved us."

"I do love you," Aro muttered.

"Like you loved Didyme?"

That shut him up. Marcus stiffened.

"What does Didyme have to do with anything?" he asked.

"Everything," Kierra whispered. "Didyme was so good to us. She would tell us stories–we had already heard every bedtime story on Earth, so she made new ones up for us. She had a gift to make people happy. A simple gift, and yet so precious, because for the first time in thousands of years, we felt like we belonged.

"Then Didyme died, and everything fell apart. We'd always been prisoners in the castle. Aro never let us leave. Twice a year, he would bring us each a human to drink, but we didn't want them. He brought us young women, teenagers, people with lives still ahead of them and families who would miss them. Add that to the fact that we were vegetarian before the Volturi found us, and it was almost unbearable."

The vampires in the clearing were enraptured, caught completely in Kierra's story. Bella saw more than a few people throw disgusted looks at Aro.

"Where once she had been happy to communicate silently, now Gwendolyn was terrified to even do that. Until the twins came along, she refused to communicate with anyone except for me unless she was forced to, for fear that she would say the wrong thing and be punished. When Didyme died, we realised that even family was no match for Aro's ambition and cruelty.

"Our imprisonment was even crueller when one takes into account the fact that we are nature spirits. We need the wild to be happy, and yet we were locked in this castle, banned from seeing the sun. It got a little more bearable when Aro turned Alec and Jane into vampires."

Jane blinked, caught off guard. "Wait, what did we do?"

"Jane, every one of our friends died under a century after we turned. You were the first people who we truly considered friends, and we both felt so awful about keeping the secret of your turning from you, and about the things that you were forced to do. For three thousand years, we have been prisoners of the Volturi, and it hasn't felt anything like a family since Didyme's murder." She fixed an icy glare on Aro. "Which brings us on to our next point. It was June in 1000 BC, and we should have been asleep, but we don't need nearly as much sleep as human children. Gwendolyn decided that she wanted to go downstairs and be with Didyme, so she shifted into a cat and leaped out of the window. She found Didyme sitting in the library, and of course Didyme instantly recognised her. She knew that we didn't like our tower, though, and she had mentioned her intent to leave the Volturi multiple times. We planned to go with her and Marcus when they left, but for tonight, we were still in Volterra. Didyme promised not to tell anyone about seeing Gwendolyn, and began to tell her another story. We both remember it–it was about two princesses locked in a tower. We never found out how it ended.

"At that point, both Didyme and Gwendolyn heard Aro approaching. Didyme pressed one finger to her lips and turned to the door. When her back was turned, Gwendolyn changed into a spider and hid in a corner. Nobody in the Volturi knew that she could turn into anything other than mammals, for most gifts work oddly on us. Even now, Edward, I'm guessing that you can't pick up more than vague impressions."

Edward nodded once, but didn't speak.

"So nobody would have suspected a thing. Aro came into the room, and she greeted him. He was acting oddly, and finally he said something that would haunt us both for a long time.

'Everyone else is out tonight,' he said. Didyme wasn't sure what he meant, but she brushed it off.

'Yes, we are alone. Would you like to play a game, like when we were children?' she replied.

'Didyme,' Aro said to her. 'I can't let you take Marcus.'

"At that point, I think Didyme realised something was wrong.

'Aro, it's my choice,' she said. 'Marcus wants to come with me, and so do the twins. What is so wrong with that?'

'Their gifts are too valuable to lose.'

"Here, she began to get upset. 'It's not fair,' she told him. 'You keep the twins as prisoners, and with this little display, I'm starting to think I am not much better off.'

Aro looked disappointed, and he said something then. 'I wish you hadn't made this necessary.'

That was the last thing she heard before she died."

AN

So, if you hadn't guessed, the difference between this and Reunited is that in this one, it was Saoirse who died, and in Reunited these two didn't survive. Review!