la belle dame sans merci | carlisle cullen

66

Minerva had been insufferable lately. It was a fact she was incredibly aware of. Trying to make small talk or even hold a conversation with her was like pulling teeth. The simple matter was that Minerva was quite tired of talking. It was never far from mind how nice it had been when she took a couple years off from it. Her voice had sounded quite foreign to her when she started putting it to regular use again.

As the only person Minerva spent any time with, Bella got the brunt of the mood swings. It was hard to say exactly what Bella must think of her though it could probably be boiled down to 'moody, eccentric occultist.' Some days Minerva couldn't bring herself to say anything more than absolutely necessary, others she hardly took a pause. Sometimes it would split and half way through the day the woman's demeanour would change, as if something had just been realized.

Often it had. Minerva would grow anxious in her silence and strive to fill it, asking meaningless question after meaningless question to keep it at bay. She'd forgotten to play her part. Just because she was so far removed from the normal didn't mean she could just be a freak: that was the Cullen's department.

On the reverse, some days she would start out trying to distract herself from her cloudy thoughts only to grow weary of the conversation. It wasn't like she could talk about much of importance with Bella.

Every question she could have possibly asked about Bella's personal life had been asked. Minerva was well aware of the family dynamic, Bella's parentification at a young age, Renee's mental absence and Charlie's physical absence. Minerva could probably ace an exam given on Bella's history. If Bella were given an exam on her, however, Bella would safely secure the bonus points for putting her name down and probably learn more from the questions than she had from conversation.

Music, arts and literature could only take them so far. Sometimes Minerva would be half way through a lecture about how The Who changed music forever or how Modernism was a blight on literature, only to realize Bella was just nodding politely.

Minerva always thought she was world class at being normal but she was beginning to second guess that. The issue was that Minerva hadn't spent any real extended time with a normal person in a long time. With the obvious exception excluded, anyway. Even when she thought Carlisle was normal, he wasn't. He'd known. Even for all the hiding she did, she could still talk to him without much second thought. Bella was quite the opposite. Everything Minerva said was calculated, careful. Even a quarter of the things Minerva had confided in Carlisle would permanently disfigure Bella's already contorted reality.

It was the whiplash of her behaviour that made Minerva impulsively offer that they go to Port Angeles together. Bella happened to mention she needed to get a dress for "a wedding she was being dragged to." The girl had looked a little baffled by the offer but it soon turned to a shy smile and she accepted it, only after Minerva insisted that she needed one too.

Of course, Minerva had several dresses so it was a pretty bold faced lie. It was hard not to be a hoarder when you had everlasting life. The thousands she paid for storage lockers around the country were a testament to her own hoarding habit. She'd learned pretty quickly that if you let something go for even a second, you'd never find it again. It was a deeply sentimental part of her. that required she keep a little slice of every life she'd lived. The issue came that she didn't know which lockers had which things and she didn't relish in the idea of a cross country trip trying to figure it out.

A cross state trip with Bella for a dress was preferable in comparison. The dresses she had at home were mostly summer dresses. She preferred long skirts but found herself without one formal enough for the occasion.

The car ride had been mostly quiet with the exception of Bella commenting on her curfew. "Your dad knows you're with me, right?" Minerva had replied to the nine O'clock deadline with a slight scoff.