On the cusp: An Alisper story

Chapter 2 - First Sight

The rain hammered on the overhead awning with a cacophony of sound. In the three seconds Jasper and I stood just outside the cafe door, I counted 756 raindrops bouncing off the plastic. Rain was one of my favourite things. There were so many raindrops to count connecting with so many different things, making so many different noises, depending on the material they hit. It was almost magical. Definitely musical. I pitied the humans who could never truly appreciate the beauty of the rain.

I looked up at Jasper. His head was tipped down to stare intently at me. He looked hungry. His eyes had the barest ring of red around the iris. The tiniest shiver ran through me at the memory of what I'd Seen when that hunger would change later on when we were alone in an abandoned warehouse. Not missing a thing, his eyebrows twitched down, a questioning worry. I smiled up reassuringly.

The lights from the diner window were making a halo out of his curly blond hair. Along his jaw and neck the crescent moons of uncountable bite marks made a hatched pattern as if he was wearing a tall lace ruff.

His full lips were pressed together tightly to hold himself in check against the scent of the humans wafting from the diner. He held his body tense as a tightly strung bow, but his nostrils flared as he drank in the forbidden perfume. I'd already Seen that one day he'll get to the point where the scent of human blood wouldn't cause him so much pain. But that day was far, far off.

He looked just as I'd seen him in the first vision I'd ever had. First vision. More like first memory. Jaz's face was the first thing I could ever remember. Even though it ached in the heart that I had never experienced beating to not know where I came from, to know if I had a family out there that missed me, that might be looking for me, I wouldn't change having Jaz's face as the first thing I saw when I woke up alone and confused, and oh so ravenously hungry. Knowing he was my future stilled me in that crucial moment when the terror of waking up overcame me. I wanted to scream and tear out my hair from the enormity of overwhelming sensation that I was onslaught with as soon as I opened my eyes. Then all of that immediately faded into white noise as I saw Jasper's face as I was seeing him now in flesh and blood. His name echoed in my mind.
As his face faded from my Sight, the wind shifted and brought me the most succulent smell. I didn't know it was human blood, only that my every instinct told me to follow the scent and devour whatever was making the saliva pool in my mouth until I was sated. Just as I was tensed to leap into a fury of action, the second vision cleared away all of my senses.

Out the front doors and down the steps of a grand white mansion that stood proudly amongst six ancient cedars came a family. I didn't know how I knew what a family was. Or how I identified that these people identified themselves as such since they all looked vastly different from each other. Yet the way they walked down the steps together, bantering and casually touching shoulders or holding hands, they were a unit that would fight to the last to defend each other. A unit I knew Jasper and I belonged to.
Out the front doors of the grand white mansion that stood proudly amongst the ancient cedars came a family. Again I didn't know how I knew what a family was. Or how I identified that these people identified themselves as such. They all looked vastly different from each other. Yet the way they walked down the steps together, bantering and casually touching shoulders or holding hands, they were a unit that would fight to the last to defend each other. The Cullens. Their individual names came to me as flash pops of light. Carlisle. Esme. Edward. Rosalie. Emmet. Jasper and I belonged with them. Were already one with them. They just didn't know yet.

The picture changed into one of the same family, still as statues, amongst the trees of a rich forest. In the meadow ahead of them was a large herd of serenely grazing deer. At an unseen signal the group moved as one, each swiftly taking down two to three deer. But no nursing mothers or fawns. As they began to drink, the consuming thirst that I could faintly feel even here in this vision that took over my senses until I was all but senseless, a thirst that made me claw at my throat, was slaked as I watched the family drink. I opened my eyes with understanding.

That knowledge kept me lying in the dirty gully where I woke up, steeling myself against the urge to run, pounce and drink, drink, drink.

I turned my focus to the rain that pounded down on me as I lay there. Seeing the black roiling clouds through the distorted lens of each raindrop as it fell toward me, was when I discovered I knew how to count. I couldn't remember how I'd learned. Only that I could. I lay and probed the blankness of my mind while another part continued on counting raindrops, then began to count the raindrops as they fell on different surfaces. Concrete. Dirt. Grass. Puddles. Leaves. Skin. Face. The words came as soon as I needed them. But my mind was only full of what I could observe in the present moment - and there was so much around me to take in - or the words that rose from the black well of my mind to label what I saw.

Jasper. Jaz. My destiny. His face rose in my memory with his name. Within my chest love swelled so strongly I thought my breastbone would break from the expansion. I sighed with the knowledge that he was on his way to me. I didn't know where we would meet. It was enough to know we would.

The sound of a small animal scurrying over wet ground in the distant wood had me running. My eyes catalogued every sight and sound as I passed. Far off to my right was a large, grey concrete building, looming over the area. It's small, dark windows watched the world like a spider's many-faceted eyes. A driveway snaked off over a distant rise, in the opposite direction I was running. Nonetheless, the wind brought the delicious scent to me again. I kept the knowledge of The Cullens firmly in my mind and bore down on the rabbit ahead of me in the underbrush.

After clearing the wood of every creature for a mile around I started on my journey. They were the first steps to the man who stood before me. "Jasper," I'd whispered to the breeze, willing it to take my plea that he hurry to me.