The First Drop Of Rain

Chapter Fifty One

Edward's POV

I felt a smile creep onto my face as the fuzzy edges of Ara's mind pulled her in and out of sleep while I gathered pillows from her window seat. Then, like a whisper, her mind called out in an unfamiliar voice. "Little bird" it had said. "... almost got you." The voice wavered in and out at the edge of her mind, taunting me forward.

"I'm fine." Ara mumbled, half asleep, and threw her head to the side as if she was looking around.

"You nearly weren't." The voice demanded back in her head. I stared at her as she huffed, my hand gently closing around her leg as I piled pillows beneath it.

"Ara?" I asked as I moved forward to sit on the bed next to her, cupping her face and plunging into her mind.

I was standing in the woods, Arabella next to me rather than the perspective I was looking through. Something felt off, and in front of me stood a vampire with waist length red hair and eyes that indicated the halfway point between a human and animal diet. I was astonished by the appearance of this vampire that was stowed away in Ara's mind, because she looked so much like Ara. The mystery girl was undoubtedly older than Arabella, but other than that and the glaring truth of difference in mortality, they were irrefutably similar. She had the same round face and full lips, the figures were slightly different where Ara was more of an athletic build, this woman had a full figure. I could see the evidence that in her human life she would have played some kind of sport, but it wasn't entirely clear what sport that was with just a glance.

I continued my assessment of this vampire with careful eyes, noting the hue of her hair and the planes of her face. So many things were similar and familiar, but it felt so foreign to me. The biggest shock to the system came when her eyes turned directly towards me, not the general area I would be, but exactly me. Our eyes locked and her lip curled slightly, she could really see me. "Who is this that's always poking around and pushing me out?" The vampire girl growled. "I'm not in the mood for it tonight." She waved her hand at me like she was sweeping me off a screen, like I was just a line of text that one could hit backspace on. I felt the sensation of hands pushing on a part of my consciousness that I wasn't even aware was in charge of my gift.

Suddenly, I wasn't in Arabella's mind anymore, the door to it had been shuttered off to me like a closed sign was switched on. For the first time since the day I met her, her mind was silent to me. The terror that realization struck in my chest would have stopped my heart had it not done so itself nearly a hundred years ago. I stroked her cheek, willing her to come forward, the panic wracking in my voice as it finally burst out of me in what could only be described as a sob. "Arabella!" I said, her name fragile and shattering on my lips. "You're not dreaming!" I choked out, no longer caring if her dad could hear me. All that mattered was if she could. "You aren't asleep!"

"What..." her voice trailed off and her arms jerked slightly in the air like she was searching for something. "Blessing." She mumbled as her hand found mine. She clung desperately to it, her knuckles turning white as she gasped. I didn't know what to do, I grabbed my phone from my back pocket and clicked Carlisle's name. The faint ringing that was emitted while I stared at her face felt as hollow and empty as her mind made me feel in this moment.

On the third ring he picked up. In a matter of seconds I was relaying what I knew, which wasn't much. "She's not sleeping, she's not dreaming, and I can't hear her thoughts." I could feel the prickling burn behind my eyes of the need to cry, but the very existence that brought me to knowing Arabella also brought me to having no tears to shed at the agony of her absence.

"Edward." Carlisle's voice came through strong and clear, his calming tone drawing my mind back from catastrophe. "Edward focus."

"What do I do?" I whispered, each word pulled from the holes that had been burnt in my heart.