Still In Bloom ↠ Twilight ✓

44 ; take me home

Here's the thing: Growing up in Washington means you're accustomed to a certain amount of people. Or more specifically, a certain way people look and act. Forks isn't the poster child for diversity, Wallace has always known this, but maybe not as starkly until now.

The Denali's while foreign in their company were not so different than what you'd expect them to look like, minus Eleazar and Carmen. Wallace knows Rosalie, and he's sure if he sunk his fangs into the likes of Lauren Mallory she'd come out looking similar to Kate. It's in the farther countries or continents, the ones that Wallace has only ever learned about, that the differences begin to show.

Darker skin, wider noses, broader shoulders, and rich accents. These make of the cases for those of the Amazon's, Zafrina and Senna. Beautiful woman, with skin a dark mahogany that stretches over deeply ingrained lean muscle and scarlet eyes that seem more prone to tracking than watching. Their clothing is simple, made to cover up their intimates with bright red feathers and chunky beads. Blades of vines and grass bent at their whim to form over their breasts and the inside of their legs. No doubt, working for two reasons - one being modesty, the second for camouflage.

Opposite the room remains the Egyptian coven, made up of four members. The older is a man, Amun, and he sits stockily honorary, but with a certain air about him that demains respect or vengeance if he doesn't receive it. Beside him, his mate Kebi is tamer, clinging subtly to his side as she watches with wide eyes. Beside them, more lively but still withdrawn, is another woman. She's younger than the first, if Wallace remembers correctly her name is Tia, and she is mated to the youngest of the coven. From the way he's introduced himself to everyone, regardless of Amun's scolding, he's named Benjamin. It's obvious from the moment you meet him, that he is truly the leader of the coven if only ruled by Amun's wisdom by circumstances alone.

Veran, naturally, glides to him on instinct.

Beside them, are two other covens. The Irish coven is the most eye-catching, and Wallace has no doubt it's because their hair is a collection of shocking reds and oranges. Siobhan, the woman leader, is a kind but disciplined woman. The kind of woman who Wallace would dread having as a high school teacher if he were still able to go. Liam, her mate, is reserved, more there to assess than to converse, and judging by the way his woman counterparts move around him, and fill up his empty spaces, it's not just because he's on foreign land. Maggie is the last of the Irish coven, but no less of the light. If she and Benjamin were to be compared, you'd find little to contradict between both of them. But where Benjamin is wild, almost manic in his moments of insight and friendliness, Maggie is gentler. Less overwhelming but no less adamant. It reminds Wallace of Shelby and Daniel, two different mindsets on how to go about a problem.

The last coven, if it can even be called such a thing, is the assembly of Mary, Randall, Peter, and Charlotte. Charlotte is a bright hazel haired woman who's haircut reminds Wallace of Alice's no-fuss pixie-cut style. Peter is auburn-haired, it's sharp and curls around his ears, and matches the darkness of his heavy-set eyebrows. Mary and Randall are eclectic, where Mary is a flurry of coiled black hair, and Randall a collection of too much hair, in the forms of a wildly cut beard and unraveling straight hair down to his shoulders. They're friends of Jasper's, called upon earlier before Alice and Jasper had retreated.

Despite there being four of them, each of them is scarred across the arms in a way Wallace only remembers seeing on Jasper, but he can feel that their stories will differ. Where Jasper holds tension in his body, Peter and Charlotte seem more at ease. Like cougars lounging on a tree, ready but waiting. Jasper never seems to wait in the same place, or maybe, he never allows himself to.

Either way, Wallace sits amongst the people he could've only dreamed of meeting, or hadn't even had the imagination to think he would. It's funny how life works, and that's not the first time Wallace has thought such a thing.