Every move...

Chris watched from the shadows as Ava strolled down the sidewalk towards the car park where they had agreed to meet. Unlike most people around, she didn't stop to pour over the contents of shop windows; she simply glanced and continued to walk. The rest of the Tuesday afternoon crowd were not so unusual as Ava. She wove in and out of them at a leisurely pace as she made her way along the high street, occasionally having to make a quick sidestep to avoid walking into a woman who had just stopped dead at the sight of a hand bag or an unchecked child running rings around the pram of its younger sibling. She carried a bag that contained what he assumed she had originally come to town to procure.

As far as she knew, she was alone, aside from the general milling crowds and would be until he and Becca arrived from their house to meet her shortly. She wouldn't have seen Chris in the dark alleyway she now passed even if she had looked. He kept himself hidden from her and everyone else. Yet he still stayed in the shade where possible. This was not abnormal for a vampire such as him. It was a condition of their existence that they keep said existance a secret and sunlight tended to make that hard what with the way it made them look like they had jumped into a vat of tiny diamonds and got them embedded into every square inch of their skin. Still, this was Forks and a light misting of water was descending from the grey curtain that blocked out the sun and blue sky from horizon to horizon. Chris now used the shadows because his abilities had a limited range and he didn't want someone watching from afar to notice him.

Being seen following Ava would not be a huge help to his job. He and Becca were in Forks under the orders of the Volturi to protect Ava. The Volturi watched pupils who displayed an unusual grasp of anything in school in case it turned out that they had potential for power if changed. Though the vast majority of these pupils turned out to just be intelligent, Ava was one of those pupils which did show potential-potential to control the speed of time around her. Needless to say, she was wanted in the guard as soon as she was old enough. However, for that to happen, she had to live to be old enough for reasonable changing and it was Chris and Becca's job to protect her from any and all danger. They had to keep her in sight of at least one of them at all times which was usually very easy since they'd made friends with her and she visited them a lot. Sometimes though, the job required plain old tracking and if he were seen doing that, she wouldn't be visiting anymore and their job would get that much harder. This was why they made a point to spend as much time with Ava as normal friends as they possibly could and so when they saw that she was going into town from a tree near her house, they just so happened to ring up asking if she wanted to do something.

Today they were going to the cinema together to see some new vampire movie called Dracula's Vengeance 2 of all things and it was as one of the lesser tracks of Chris' consciousness thought about this yet again that there was the roar of a loud engine and their car came flying round the corner. This was a sight that many of the inhabitants of Forks had complained about at first, but since the police had never seen the car travelling above the limit and concluded the people of Forks just weren't used to cars like that, they had settled down and accepted the Blackstones as another eccentric, rich family living in the area and bringing colour to their community. The world around Chris crumbled to dust and swirled round him for a split second before reforming into the shape of the car's interior with Becca sat at the wheel. She simply smiled at him and seconds later, she skidded the car round sideways so that it came to rest nearly in a parallel parking space.

Climbing out of the car, Becca greeted, "Hi Ava! You ready for the movie? It looks great in the trailer," and wrapped her arms around the smaller girl.

Yeah, great... Chris thought.

Ava smelled normal to Becca. No sign of any diseases beyond the normal for humans. Not that Becca had expected any to appear since that morning when she had driven Ava to school, but since it would cost her nothing to check, there was no reason not to. The scent of Ava's blood wasn't even a mild tingling in the back of her neck. Just like that of every other human these days, Ava's blood held no appeal for Becca.

She looked up and down the younger girl's body as she stepped back, checking for an injury that she knew wouldn't be there without Chris having told her about it already. There was no sign of change either; at least not that day, though comparing the girl before her to the one from a couple of weeks ago, she could see a little less rounding of the face, slightly more height and longer hair. Ava had visibly matured quickly during the summer break. She didn't have far to go before she was fully grown and this was a sad thought for Becca.

Being friends with Ava wasn't just a ruse to keep her close these days; they really did care about her. She'd be fully grown in a couple of years and then it would be the end of her life as she knew it. It would also most likely be their job to inform her of her fate, deliver her to it and maybe even bite her. They didn't want to be the ones who had to do any of that to her and there was a possibility that she'd hate them for making sure she arrived safely in the jaws of the Volturi. Not that there was anything they could do about it, but they did want to remain friends with her. Protection was something they were new to (the normal Volturi for the job were busy with an abnormally high number of promising humans) and vampires didn't often make good friends so she was the first really close one they had had in a very long time.

It was a shame they had to lie to her about so much but at least the more general things like their personalities, status and wealth were all true. Ava often complained about them buying her things. Becca suspected that this was why she had refused to let her come shopping too. Becca could see her point of view, but it just didn't seem right to let Ava pay for all the social things they talked her into doing these days; especially when she had a limited supply and it meant something to her. Their funding was effectively limitless and they could easily carry on without any of it. They had, after all, grown up being fairly poor and then spent a century as nomads.

"Of course we already got them, you paid for the bus and whatever you have in that bag," Becca answered whilst Chris straightened up and waved back to Ava. She said it as if she were talking to a child, but carried on smiling as she did so.

"Of course I don't want you to walk," Becca laughed. "Then I'd need a new excuse to pay for things. And what do you mean you need these things?" She mimicked Ava's pronunciation of the word. She could tell from the smell of it that the bag didn't contain anything nutritional so she darted forward and snatched out a small box. She was too quick for Ava to do anything to stop her and probably a little too quick for a human she realized too late.

They had known Ava for a while now and were beginning to get too comfortable around her. It was easy to act naturally around her but unfortunately for them, natural was unnatural and little things were beginning to slip through on occasion. Things that Ava had probably noticed... Still, it hadn't caused any problems yet and who knew, maybe being partial to their secret in a few minor ways would help her accept it in its entirety when the time came. Still, that was a few years away and they'd only known her for less than year so far. They'd have to be more careful. Chris must have thought the same thing because she caught an instantaneous look from him out of the corner of her eye.

As she thought about this, she also glanced at the box which depicted a lego fire engine racing around some street corner with one of the lego men hanging off the side by the ladder but smiling despite his predicament whilst the others all manned various stations on the vehicle; all aparrently completely unaware.

"Oh yes," Becca commented sarcastically, "I can see how these would be essential to your survival. They shouldn't count at all...but you're welcome." She winked at Ava as she copied her again. She put the box back in Ava's bag, considerably more slowly this time, and asked, "Do you want to leave those in the car? I'll be driving you back."

"I mean that I could not possibly survive without them," she teased. And in the nanosecond that it took Ava to blink, the box of lego that she'd bought was snatched from the plastic bag. "Hey!"

"Oh yes," Becca commented sarcastically, "I can see how these would be essential to your survival. They shouldn't count at all...but you're welcome." And with a well-timed wink, she placed the small box back into the plastic bag. "Do you want to leave those in the car? I'll be driving you back."

Ava hesitated. Their car was hardly regular enough to call a car. She was hardly an expert in cars, but it was plain to anyone with at least one eye that Becca and Chris's car went far beyond the expectations of 'car'. The word car, of course, originates from Celtic 'carrus' meaning cart or wagon, and their car was not a cart or wagon in any way at all. Except that it had wheels. Or maybe it could fly. Who really knew?

'Automobile' on the other hand was a much more accurate word. The word is a combination of the Greek word 'auto', meaning 'self' and the Latin word 'mobils', meaning 'moving'. Not a mention of wagons or wheels in sight. That car could most definitely move any self around. It was the master of moving from A to B.

None of this, of course, went through Ava's head (except for the 'Their car was hardly regular enough to call a car'). It is useful, however, for any regular person to know when reading about spectacular automobiles.

"Sure," Ava answered in reply to Becca's question. She didn't bother asking if it was any trouble anymore, it never was. She handed the bag containing the lego and the collar to Becca who put it in the car. "I'm guessing that the movie has something to do with vampires?"

Note: I do not know what half of this is that I have just written. There is no careful placement of senses, actions and whatever else is meant to be in a post (my brain is fuzzy). I hope, however, that it brings you joy and fulfillment.

Ava hadn't even tried to argue about the ride home. Becca smiled at her victory, taking the small, weightless bag and stowing it under the bonnet. Normally, this would be a strange place to put it but this car had its engine where the back seats and boot would normally be so this was the only space big enough for a machine that could push this vehicle up to 250 MPH. As a result, the storage space was at the front. It didn't contain much, just some changes of clothes, a first aid kit and a few other essentials so that they were ready to go at a moment’s notice if they ever needed to follow Ava anywhere. The only other things they needed were small and important enough that they carried them in their pockets at all times.

"I would expect so," Chris replied, "though I wouldn't really know. She's the one who watches all the trailers and reads all the reviews." He indicated to his sister with a jerk of his head and walked round the front of the car, passing his Rebecca, and stood by Ava. It probably wasn't that hard to tell that he wasn't as enthusiastic about the film as Becca, but mass media celebrity type things weren't really to his taste. They just seemed so petty and short-lived. Not only that, but it was a vampire movie; something which seemed to get worse with every single new release and that was saying something given how stupid even John Polidori's original was. After that, Abreham Stoker had set the trend and it had just continued to spiral down since. Vampire fiction just seemed depressing to Chris; even the ones that portrayed them as good. Rebecca on the other hand, found the human views and ideas about them amusing. She loved vampire stories and most of humanity seemed to as well. This was a fact that Chris found somewhat bizarre given how they tended to react when they met a real one.

"How are you?" he asked. As if he didn't already know, but he had to keep up pretences. He pulled out his wallet and took a cinema ticket out from behind the row of restricted issue debit cards (he had no need for credit) and handed it to Ava. He'd gotten a call from Rebecca earlier letting him know about the new plans and he'd detoured to get their seats for the movie whilst he was on watch. This particular film was on screen 1, the biggest one. Apparently, it was going to be popular.