Mangez · bien, · riez · souvent, · et · aimez · beaucoup.

I circled the house, feeling painfully detached from all the excitement.  Even Jacob stayed inside, leaving me out in the woods with only Seth for company.  I was growing increasingly bored and very lonesome, but there was no way I’d leave my little brother alone with all the bloodsuckers hanging around.  And Seth refuses to leave the range of the alpha.  Suck-up.

This is getting to me be too much.

Seth, have you heard from Jacob?

No, he hasn’t phased in a really long time.  I guess he’s with Renesmee.

Stupid baby.

Maybe, if I got a little closer to the house, I’d manage to catch his eye and let him know I’m waiting.  Of course, Jacob had been pretty clear about the fact that he didn’t plan on going home, exactly, but a break from the Cullens and their friends would mean a lot now that the heat’s died down.  At least it would to me.  There were still plenty of leeches hanging around even though all the hooded ones went away awhile ago, but at least these bloodsuckers are now indebted to our pack and had to be nice.  Hmph.

As I set off towards the clearing where the giant white house sat, I heard Seth’s voice hesitantly.

I, uh, wouldn’t get your hopes up about leaving with Jacob like you planned.  He’s not going to go far away from Renesmee anytime soon.

Of course!  Damn it!

I didn’t respond, but I knew that he’d hear that my thoughts were in agreement.  It’s true; Jacob thought of nothing else – at least when he was in his wolf form.   Despite the fact that his mind-voice was silent when he went as a human (as he tended to with his precious bloodsuckers) I couldn’t imagine him thinking of too much else.  It was always Nessie this, Nessie that.  Nessie looks so pretty in the new dress Grandma Esme got her.  Nessie loves it when I go hunting with her.

It was enough to make somebody sick.  And that somebody was me.

Of course, it didn’t make the Cullens sick; they thought it was precious.  Well, they did once they’d gotten used to the idea.  Huh.  Easy for them to think.  They all had somebody.  Bella and Edward had each other, and were still acting as disgustingly newly-wedded as ever even though they were parents.  The fortune teller and the tall blonde boy were always talking quietly and holding hands.  The jock and the stupid blonde were the worst; always making out in some corner or other.  Though Carlisle and Esme weren’t as prone as the teenagers to public displays of affection, the affection was obviously there.

It was like salt in a wound every time I walked through the door.  Which is why I tried to avoid it as much as possible.

Don’t be like that, Leah.  Your time will come.

Shut the hell up, Seth.

Already in a bad mood, I didn’t have time for my little brother’s attempts at sympathy.

Suddenly, the vamp-stink hit my nostrils like a frying pan to the forehead.  I could hear Seth snicker at my observation.

Nice analogy, sis.

I didn’t reply.  Ugh.  What happened to shutting up?

I hadn’t realized how close I’d gotten to the house, but there it was, right in front of me.  It was unmistakable; not only by how far out in the woods it was but by how many expensive, obviously fast cars were parked outside.  Evidently, the vamps don’t even rent crap cars when they’re visiting friends.  Living for a long time and not having to buy food or air conditioning tends to make people pretty rich.  Unlike feeding a pack of wolves, which tends to make you poor as dirt.  Especially if you were poor as dirt prior to the arrival of the wolves.

Leah, c’mon.  They’re not all that bad.  Give them a chance.

This argument in favor of the leeches was the last straw.  Especially after I’d already told him once to shut up.  It struck me then, I didn’t really have to listen to him; I could always phase.  And I was hungry, too.  If I had to eat one more elk or other raw, dead thing, I would hurl.  That was it.  I was going back to humanity.

Stepping behind the trees even though nobody was around, I allowed myself to phase easily back into human form and pulled on the t-shirt and shorts I had with me.

Okay, time to go find Jacob.  Or food.  Whatever.

By the time I got back to the house,  some of the vampires had departed.  That made it a little bit easier.  The sun was beginning to peek through the trees, so I didn’t expect to see any of them outside, though.

I was pleasantly surprised at how dry my clothes had gotten.  Despite the wrinkles, I might have looked halfway normal.

I saw a face at the window, but it wasn’t Jacob.  It was Edward – stupid mind reader.  He would have come to politely ask if I needed anything else, of course.  As though the fact that I was wearing his mom’s clothes wasn’t bad enough.  But let him come.  I didn’t care.

“Hello, Leah,” he greeted me.

I shrugged back a little.

“I’ve come to find Jacob,” I said, my voice sounding sharper than I meant.  Edward looked as though he’d already known that (obviously).

“Of course.  He’s inside with Renesmee and the others.  Please, come in.  Unless it offends you, of course.”

I had already been very rude, and it was like Jacob had told me earlier: you know things are bad when you start feeling guilty for being rude to vampires.

Apparently things were bad.

“Okay.”

I wasn’t sure why I was agreeing to this.  The house smelled even ranker than it had the last time I’d been here.  Yeah, evidently that was possible.  For a second I was afraid somebody would be mean, but once I thought about it I was sure they’d all be just a nice as Edward.  Hmph.  Like I even cared.

“Jacob and Seth were eating some pizza earlier.  I think the delivery boy struggled to find our house,” Edward joked.  “But the leftovers are in the refrigerator.  Help yourself if you’re hungry.”

Of course he knew I was hungry.

I scanned the living room, looking for Jacob.  It looked like a college frat house in the wee hours of the morning – like tons of guests had been there and the activity was just dying down.  Except there wasn’t a lot of beer and people passed out all over the place.

I heard Edward snicker –I was glad he appreciated my analogies as much as Seth did.

“Hey Leah – is that you?”

Finally, the voice I’d been waiting for.

“Yeah, hey Jacob,” I said, trying to smile but actually grimacing awkwardly.

“You look really nice,” he said, clearly trying to be polite just because he knew I’d tried.  Renesmee sat in the crook of Jacob’s arm, playing with his ever-lengthening hair.

“Hi Leah,” she said pleasantly.  I smiled even more awkwardly, knowing that this genius kid probably knew as well as any of them how uncomfortable I was.

“How have you guys been?” I asked, mostly to break the silence.

“We’re great!” Jacob exclaimed, forgetting (as usual) to be sensitive about my single-ness when he was around the object of his own imprinting.  “Nessie got this huge elk when we were hunting today.  He didn’t even know what hit him!  Hey – do you wanna see?  Nessie, show Leah your kill.”

Renesmee started to stretch out her hand, but I shook my head and backed up.

“I’m really about ready to go, Jacob,” I told him, trying to sound apologetic and probably failing.  “Seth won’t leave until you do, so I was wondering if you would want to head on…?”

“Well, I…” Jacob seemed as though the idea of leaving hadn’t occurred to him yet.  “I guess it’ll be Nessie’s bed time pretty soon anyway.  Just give me a minute or two, and I’ll be ready.”

“Fine,” I replied.  Jacob went back to talking quietly to his Nessie, and I could hear her giggle.  How could I be so jealous of a half-wit and a toddler?

Absorbed as I was in my thoughts, I would have thought that nothing apart from leaving and finding some food could have improved my mood.  And even that would have been a stretch.  It had been days since I’d gotten a warm shower and even longer since I’d had something normal, like a burger and fries.  I felt gross, hungry, and extremely alone.

Not wanting to be surrounded by the smell of the sofa cushions, I leaned up against the wall and went back to my childhood game of people-watching.  I had always tried to figure out what they were thinking, how they were feeling.  It had always made me feel somehow powerful – like I knew something they didn’t know I knew.  If that makes any sense.

There were a couple of people talking in the corner.  The nomad and the Alaskan girl I can never remember the name of.  Ugh.  They were bent over a map, pointing things out and laughing and telling stories.  Ignoring the lump in my throat, I looked around for others.

There was Bella, who was deep in a conversation of some kind of philosophy with her father-in-law, Carlisle.  Only vampires would talk philosophy after a party.  I guess that’s the kind of thing you do to kill time when you never sleep.  Edward, having returned from welcoming me in, went back to refereeing the arm-wrestling match between Emmett and Jasper.  I saw a few billfolds on the table – apparently Tanya and Eleazar were betting on the match.  In the opposite corner, Alice was catching up with Esme and Rosalie.  None of them were crying as much as I thought they should, but maybe vamps don’t do that.

Finally, the only one who was alone sat at the kitchen table looking through magazines.  I couldn’t see his face from where I sitting, but I could tell it was the other half-breed from the clearing.  Come to think, from where I’d stood in rank, I never really saw him then, either.  I suddenly felt a little bad for him, alone like that.  Evidently his aunt had already left, and without introducing him properly.  Nice aunt.

Out of some kind of curiosity and my own weird pity, I decided to approach him.  I walked cautiously around the table, and he looked up.  I saw his eyes sparkle in the weird neon kitchen light.

Before I knew it, tears were running down my face.

The boy – Nahuel – stood silently and took my hands.  His calloused palms didn’t feel cold or warm, but they wrapped around mine completely.  It felt like an embrace.

“You’re the wolf-girl,” he said softly, his eyes intense but somehow confused.

“And you’re half-vampire,” I replied, my voice cracking.

“Why am I so drawn to you?” he demanded, not releasing my hands.  For a moment, I was worried that I had upset him.

“I think it’s this stupid thing we do… us wolves, I mean.  It’s called imprinting.  And I think I just did it to you.”

Nahuel’s eyes widened with fascination.

“You feel it too, then.  This wonder, this awe…  Why are you crying, wolf-girl?”

“It’s Leah,” I said, burying my head in his muscled shoulder.  “And I’m just really, really happy.”

He stroked my hair, and I could feel him quietly lift me up and move me to the couch.  He didn’t smell as bad as the others did; in fact, he really might not have smelled at all.  I think the burn was just caught in my nose from spending so much time in the house.

The lightness in my stomach felt weird compared to the thickness in my throat.  Ordinarily the combination would have nauseated me, but now it was exhilarating.  Apart from those sensations, all I could feel were Nahuel’s hands combing through my hair and his chest rise a falling as he breathed.

When I looked up from my awkward position in his lap, I noticed that the entire room had turned and was watching us.  I blushed a little, squeezing Nahuel’s hand more tightly.

“Leah…” Jacob said softly, his voice trailing off.  His expression was one of incredulity, and his eyes looked like they might have been tearing up, too.

“Don’t do that, Jake,” I pleaded, laughing a little through my own tears.  “This is crazy enough without you getting all weird and emotional too.”

“What’s happened?” Carlisle asked softly.  Bella, in that high-pitched, impossibly-fast vamp-speak, explained the situation.  I was certain that Jacob had told her all about the concept of imprinting even before she had seen it in action with her own daughter.

“What do I do now?” Nahuel asked me breathlessly.

“You stay with me forever,” I replied quietly, my eyes locking with his.  Leaning down, he kissed me softly on the lips.

“I think I can manage that.”

Current Mood:

accomplished

So, she told me, she had decided to stop feeling it at all.  A revolutionary concept, in my opinion.  What's stopping us, really?  It can be scrapped - more easily than you'd think.  It's a thing you bring on yourself, after all.  Shamelessly break the lengthy silences!  Freaking tell him you're not interested.  That's not a crime, last time I checked.

And that's my happy word-of-wisdom for today. :)  Isn't it great?  I came back, too, by the way.  It's a great thing when you have a minute of the day to do what you want.

So I'm planning to learn violin and Italian this summer.  It would be a great plus, too, if I could get a job, but that's still in the works...

The title lyric is from P!nk's "Cuz I Can".  Good song, amazing album!

Heehee.  Another song-line intro. :)  I'm liking this.  I think it's pretty lame when people use them as their statuses on Facebook, but this is working for me.

I get to eat Italian food tonight!  Whee!  I like Italian food.  I think I shall learn that language after German.  Haha it's so lame how I plan to learn all these languages and yet completely suck at anything linguistic but French.  And that's just because it's natural to me.

People think I'm BSing up the whole French thing, but that's so not true!  You know, if I could elect to feel at home in America and accept that way of life, it would be a hell of a lot easier.  Just join the status quo, go with the flow, get a white-collar job and run myself into the ground with the masquerade of a peaceful suburban life.  Clearly, just thinking of that makes me angry.

I'm hanving a hard time of unwinding from today.  I'm hungry, which never bodes well.  And it was just a pretty stressful day.  Good thing I get to party the weekend away. :P

Current Mood:

groggy

It's just a thursday afternoon, and I'm sitting around listening to Jimmy Buffett.  This music speaks to my soul - is that weird? lol.  It has a really melodious, happy exterior, but at the core it's the story of an unfulfilled dreamer who wants to be at home everywhere but just can't make it happen.  That came out a lot deeper than it was supposed to - haha.  But either way, It gets me. :)  And I want tons more of his albums than I have.  He really is a genre of his own, with enough music to compile a whole genre.

I've been drawing sooo much.  And like my writing, it always seems to center around characters from books.  I've got all these cool pictures of Inkheart characters, and no scanner with which to put them on deviantart. ><  Because I think that somebody would think they're as neat as I do.  Especially if I could color them up in photoshop.

Like my interpretation of Dustfinger for instance - it says that he has three scars on his face, but I don't agree with the way that the movie make-up artists interpreted them.  It's not like the book was specific, but you have to think about how he got them.  Basta carved them into his face, and we all know how much of an egomaniac he is.  And he always carves his name into things to show where he's been.  So, I think the scar on Dustfinger's face should be in the shape of a lopsided 'B'.  Eh? Eh?

It's also pretty clear to me that the love-triangle of Inkheart each represent an element.  Obviously, Dustfinger is fire (lol), and from his little water/fire trick, it becomes clear that Roxane is water.  The quote "When they love, they love passionately..." kind of gives it away. =^^=  And then, Basta is wood/forest etc.  Forest life needs water to survive, but fire defeats it.  Then, water is fairly indifferent to forest but they share an interesting connection.  And water and fire are opposites, with mutual necessity.

Current Mood:

artistic

I was trying to like make up a rap in French about Wednesday like "ohhh c'est mercredi, c'est ca que je dis" but it was just getting weirder by the second.  So I gave it up. lol.

Oh!  And I found out that my literary luuuuver survives. teehee.  :D

I'm tired, cuz I've worried kind of a lot today.  But what can you do?  I mean, I think I just need sleep, but I haven't been falling asleep all the time this week, like I usually do, so maybe it's not that I'm tired.  I might instead blame it on disenchantment or l'ennui, if you will.  But either way, I would like to curl up with a Bible and an iPod and go to sleep.  Yeah, that's what I do.

I took a quiz on Blogthings.  I love taking surveys and quizzes and filling stuff out about myself. lol.  I liked the blanks on standardized tests where you had to fill out your name and all that fun stuff.  Maybe it's because I'm an egomaniac and I assume everybody wants to know all about me.  Well, this quiz says I need a blue car - hahaha.  the one that I drive now is blue-green.  So I guess I'm doing pretty well.

So yeah.  I think I'm gonna go to sleep now, and save Inkspell for another day.  Although I want to read it now - it's so amaaaazzzzing.  Although I admittedly want to read it in the orginal German.  I'm going to try to learn German. hahaha yeah it's gonna be interesting.

Current Mood:

tired

I had one slice of pizza for lunch along with one of those Fuze drinks.  They look appealing, but don't give in.  It's lies.  They taste kind of like Pez candy with an aftertaste of chemicals.  Yeah... maybe I'll try their Pina Colada one.  But after the strawberry melon one I had today, I'm none too eager.

So I'm reading Inkspell right now, and you should probably stop reading this entry if you fear spoilers, because I'm about to go off on some kind of massive rant...  Okay, everybody knows I love villains, obviously, and I think they might have just killed my favorite villain off.  Basta, of course.  I'm pizzed at the author because basically she left him in a BURNING MILL and then went back to the two madly-in-love protagonists.  Yeah - not okay.  One of them is like, thirteen anyway.  The other is like sixteen, but I'm sorry, that's still a little wrong.  At least it is in my world.  I don't know... maybe I'm just a little bitter because I was a dork when I was thirteen.

WAS, okay?  Oh, and spoilers over, BTW.

I'm in the middle of like fifty stories right now.  I've pretty much given up on organization and have just decided to write whatever I feel like.  But the problem is, I'm not writing really at all right now.  I wrote like three pages of Basta-drabble and was tempted to just delete, but I decided to hang on to them.  What the heck.

I'm gonna go find some fooood.  And maybe do something constructive.  Who knows.

Current Location:	home
Current Mood:	hungry