SOMEWHERE ONLY WE KNOW ➻ DEMETRI VOLTURI

V E N T I Q U A T T R O

The next day, Cecilia was outside with Emmett, hunting bears. Demetri was away as well, hunting a couple of cities away and would probably return later than necessary, to offer her some private time with her family.

"Remember when you let me sleigh down a slope which resulted in a broken arm?" Cecilia asked Emmett, looking at him with a smirk.

He looked back at her with obvious surprise. "You remember that?" he asked and she nodded in confirmation. "Damn, I had hoped you'd forgotten that. You know, since all mortal memories are so vague."

It was true. Whenever Cecilia tried to bring to her mind one of her mortal memories it was always as though she was looking at the outside world with the wrong glasses, making everything twisted and distorted. Most of the times it caused a headache, but Cecilia found the memories too precious to have them just be forgotten.

"I think it's about time we get even, don't you?" Cecilia asked, raising a single daring eyebrow.

Emmett had the decency to actually look slightly frigthened. "Living with the Volturi has made you spiteful."

"Only yesterday you called me emotionless zombie."

"Potato, potato."

"Friends as well as Shakespeare?"

"A man of all times."

"Right."

Turning away from Emmett, Cecilia focused her attention on their surroundings. They'd been walking in the forest for at least half an hour now, neither of them catching anything except for painful burns from the other person. She was determined to have the first animal.

Just as she heard the snapping of a twig followed by the fast heartbeat and the smell of deer, Emmett darted past her. Not allowing him such an easy win, she started her pursuit. Faster than the human eye could catch and more graceful than any being could manage, she ran from one place to another. Still, she was nowhere near as fast as Emmett, who had longer legs and more muscles and with a pout on her face she watched as he snapped the deer's neck.

Not giving him the satisfaction of lingering to watch, Cecilia used her senses to find another animal. Opting for a calmer approach, she observed a mountain lion near a cave from behind a tree. Right as she took a step forward, two young cubs strode out of the cave, their eyes still a milky white colour and their mewling soft and needy. She held her breath, knowing she didn't need the oxygen anyway, and watched the scene in front of her unfold.

Once the mother had herded the cubs back in the cub, grabbing both of them by their scruff and carrying them off with the tiredness only a mother could posses, Cecilia ran away in search of another meal. It didn't take her long to find a deer, completely unaware of the danger following it. She snapped the animal's neck quickly and drained it of blood, before dumping the left-over body in a nearby ravine.

"Have you ever killed a human?"

Cecilia jolted from shock, turning around to look at Emmett accusingly. She'd been so absorbed with the sight of the deer in the depth of the greenery, that she hadn't even heard him near her.

"I haven't," she replied, crossing her arms in front of her chest. "Have you?"

"Yeah, many years ago," Emmett said, shrugging. "Just after I turned. But good for you that you were never tempted in Volterra."

After more than ten years, Cecilia was able to withhold herself whenever the Volturi organised one of their sightseeing tours around the castle, but in the beginning she would leave the castle for a couple of hours, only returning once the mess was cleaned by the lower guards. Looking up at Emmett, she squinted at the sun. "It wasn't always easy."