Writer in the Dark - J. HALE

29 - ᴛᴏ ʀᴇᴍɪɴɪꜱᴇ

ATHENA SAT at home, amongst the mess of papers and books that cascaded over her coffee table as Eric had just left. She had been helping him with some Chemistry work, to begin with, but the focus soon dropped and the two of them got to talking. He told her all about Angela and she listened intently, hanging onto every word and all the emotion behind them. She found the conversation so fascinating. To learn what Eric thought about Angela and how happy they were together, how he saw some sort of future there. Her ideas of the future were far different to the ones that he had and she found herself, once again, jealous of a mortal. Mortals didn't have endless time on the planet as she did, they could take the days one at a time yet the idea of a happier, funnier future always hid in the background. She did not, and had not, ever experienced that - that she could remember anyway. Athena had never once longed to turn grey-haired and final be at some sort of peace wherever it happened yet now, as she stared out of the largest window in her living room, the thought became somewhat prominent in her mind. She finally understood Rosalie and chuckled to herself at how late that revelation had come.

It wasn't that she wanted children, well her own biological children anyway, she more wanted the certainty that this would one day come to an end. And as morbid as she knew that thought to be, she couldn't help but fixate on it for a while. Then the loneliness came. It came with such great swoops that felt vaguely familiar to her, yet finding her body feeling such a way came as an unrecognised surprise. Athena hadn't got close enough to anyone in a long while, the last time was probably when she was in Greece, may many moons ago. By not talking to anyone in schools or outside of schools, she never truly felt lonely, Which to even she was off. She had her books, all the characters that lived between the pages. She had her plants and her love for the heavenly wildlife. People just didn't really affect her that much back then. She just floated, missing only one person in her life really. Billy. But now she had billy at the end of a short walk and she had friends in the world back to and a few mortals. The only thing she did not have, was the vampire family that made her feel like she belonged somewhere. A belonging that came with an understanding, loving bond with every meer of that household, some more than others. But he... He was a different type of bond...

Athena stood, shaking that last guilt wracking and heartbreaking thought from her mind as she strode across the room, letting her sporadic gaze find some sort of distraction to focus on. Her eyes, for whatever reason, were drawn to one of the only hats she owned - she didn't have the head for hats according to a popular model a few years ago. She slowly drew her hands across the worn fabric, using a reluctant hand to lift the hat from the rack and onto her head. She smiled at herself in the mirror, hoping that seeing a speck of happiness would kick start the feeling that she found appeared when she let her mind delve too deeply into thought. She grimaced, wondering if her smile always looked so forced and fake.

She had had enough of sitting in her misery hours ago. So, she pulled on her boots over her fluffy socks and grabbed her keys as well as a jacket then headed out of the door - making sure it was locked tightly behind her. She wasn't stupid enough to leave her door open, even if she did forget to close an upstairs window once in a while.

She walked for a while, pausing to hunt a divinely smelling animal at the mouth of a river. She followed that river for miles, watching the water trickle down the rocks. She smiled as the greenery that lay at its sides swung in the soft breeze, scattering a gentle mist of earthy tones into the air that claimed her mind to a manageable point. Her created sense of calm found itself abolished as that flash of red, which had only become more frequent, darted between the furthest trees in the distance. Athena this time wasted no time and she ran after the red flash, seeing it again and again until she was eventually forced to stop due to a loss of her. She listened intently for thoughts in the vicinity and found that of a few hikers, not a vampire with a vengeance.

With a defeated sigh, she turned back around and began to walk again - hoping that she would find something that could let her know where she was. She thought it was probably best to tell Sam about Victoria now, not that she worried Bella with such a thing. She turned a corner and suddenly she got her bearings again. She wandered down a marked path, feet crushing against fallen leaves that not many people would have stepped on before her.

As she wove out of the way of a snail that slowly made its way across the path, Athen stumped into a very potent sense of familiarity. It did not take her long to realise where she was. With the slightest happiness in her walk, she stepped off the marked back and flowed the winding gaps between bushes all the way up a hill. The hill with the rope swing that had bought such joy and admiration to her existence.

Reminiscing became an odd thing for her a few years ago. Having had so many different experiences in her resistance, she didn't find herself reminiscing as much as though she ought to be. She of course always blocked the bad things that happened to her over the years which fueled her protectiveness over innocent mortals but one would have thought that she would think about the good things often. Like in a daydream during a boring science class that she had already taken fifty times over. She thought about some good things, of course she did she was somewhat human after all. Other than those rare occasions, there weren't many times that she thought about the joys of the past. Today, however, was different.

She reminisced every single little detail of all the seconds that she had spent up here, whether that was alone with a good book or whether it was with the vampire that she could not even bear to say the name of quite yet. She slowly made her way to the rope swing and sat down, putting one of her hands in her pocket and the other on the rope. She swung back and forth a few times, watching the sight in front of her with such intensity. Then that intently broke when something clicked against her finger. She pulled the Cullen Crest ring from her pocket and frowned at the fact that she had forgotten all about it.

She went to put it back on her finger then paused, her thoughts finally catching up with her actions. Instead, she undid the clasp on her plain crystal necklace and put the ring on there. It felt wrong to wear it as a ring, somehow it didn't feel as awful to wear it on her necklace. Once she had reclasped the necklace, she mindlessly reached in her pocket for her phone. Athena started to swing back and forth as she clicked his phone number, finding herself surprised that even rang, Having thought the number was disconnected, she found herself even more shocked when his voicemail started to ring in her ears. She stopped swinging instantly and just listened, hanging on to every short word that he spoke. She hadn't heard his voice in months and it worked to calm her somewhat, even if the voice itself was muffled and distorted because of the broken speaker on her phone. Phones did not bode well in the joys of hunting vampires.

"Sorry, I didn't expect to actually get a voicemail," she trailed off, fighting the lump in her throat that had formed at the sound of his voice. "I don't quite know why I'm apologizing really, I guess I just wanted to hear your voice more than I thought I did," she trialled off, taking a deep breath of chilled air. . "Every day I wonder where you are, if you are okay. I just wish, I wish with my entire soul that I run into you again. Soon, hopefully. Please let it be soon, I don't-"

"I don't know whether I can live like this anymore. I'm just so sick of immortality, it's the same thing every single day and now with you and everyone else gone there's nothing exciting going on. I just- I need something different and I don't know where to go to find it. I should have gone with you. Billy was sick and I didn't want to take you away from your family but I-" she stopped, finally hearing herself. "Lucifer, I actually sound insane. I'll stop talking now."

And she hung up, finally letting something else attached to him go. Just like after the cliff jumping. He wasn't fully gone from her heart but she would say that he was halfway gone. Even if it would be a reluctant admittal.