Already Familiar: Jasper

“In another time from another vampire, the lack of immediate curiosity would have been almost frightening, but here, with her, it seemed almost as if her look was a familiar caress from a long-lost lover.” Jasper stumbles upon Alice and never looks back. JxA.

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I had been alone for quite some time. After leaving Maria, I had set off in the woods with Peter and Charlotte but I didn’t stay with them for long. A knowing sense of dread had begun to grow within me and I knew that being the way I was, it only caused them discomfort to be around me. So I left them with hardly a goodbye and set off into a pitch black night. I had hardly encountered a soul since. My heart was heavy with discontent and I couldn’t even find enough spark to go hunting most days. I felt myself wallowing in a deep despair that knew no boundary.

Being so susceptible to others’ feeling, I had become more than a master of my own but in these last few weeks, I had let myself grow undisciplined. Surely, I was punishing the creatures around me, human or not, with the crushing melancholy that coursed through me.

I wandered aimlessly through hundreds of miles of woods in this state of mental disarray before I ended up somewhere near Philadelphia. My eyes were dark with thirst but I felt no real desire, so I wandered near to the unfamiliar city. It was raining in heavy sheets that would have been somewhat blinding to any normal eye, but I could still see the details of the human form as they flitted by.

I became aware that if I was seen just standing outside, it would seem strange so I made my way cautiously toward a small, dilapidated diner that looked to be almost empty. I didn’t catch her scent until I was already inside.

She was sitting as still as if she had been carved in place when I caught her scent, there was an air of expectancy about her that sharpened and stirred when I finally located her in the diner. I felt a tug towards her as if an invisible rope had been thrown around my waist and was slowly being tightened until I stood next to her. Although experience had taught me to be wary of others of my kind, I knew by the waves of serenity that radiated from her that I had nothing to fear.

Her emotions were different than anything I had ever experienced. She had a sharp, intense joy about her that predominated any other feeling that came from her and it perplexed me at first. How could anyone be so happy, especially when I myself struggled so laboriously with trying to overcome despair in my life?

And so, when I came upon her, sitting silently in the middle of that decrepit diner, I knew that something in my life was about to change. Before she even spoke, I could feel her very essence brighten my own inner doubt and I wondered if she knew the immediate effect she had on me.

She hopped up from the stool she had been perched on and liltingly walked towards me. She was tiny compared to most vampires. She was slender and her hair was cropped short and unevenly but it only served to add to her cheerful demeanor. She could have been a dancer in a past life, but was now dressed very simply in what I supposed to be the fashion of the day. She was the most human-like vampire I had ever seen, but it didn’t bother me like it should have. Instead, it only added to her strange appeal.

She smiled as she took in my scrutiny and I struggled to place her soft, unshaped emotion. Her smile mystified me and I never tore my eyes away from her, not even when she shocked me by speaking my name.

“Hello, Jasper,” she spoke quietly; her voice was like bell chiming in the wind. “My name is Alice.”

Alice. The name echoed in my head as if I had already known it too. She tilted her head to the side, her eyes taking in my appearance but looking at me in way that suggested she already knew what was there. In another time from another vampire, the lack of immediate curiosity would have been almost frightening, but here, with her, it seemed almost as if her look was a familiar caress from a long-lost lover.

“You’ve kept me waiting for a long time, you know,” she continued, her emotions suddenly shifting from a soft, unfocused shape to a sharper, clear interest. Its newness caught me off guard for a moment and my brain struggled to file it away.

“I’m sorry, ma’am,” I apologized automatically, a remnant of my human days, and shook my head to throw off the encroaching emotions from other diner patrons. All I wanted to feel were her emotions right now. At my words, she laughed and an indefinable emotion hit me. I stared at her in wonder at this new aura that came from her and wondered again if she knew the spell-binding effect she had on me.

Confusion concerning her presence here lapped gently at my consciousness but I held it at bay, too entranced with this beautiful new companion to care why she had been waiting. At that moment, all I cared about was that she was waiting for me.

I averted my eyes, breaking away from her amused face, and concentrated on sorting through the arcane emotions that emanated from her for a moment. They were so powerfully strange, it was hard for me to take them in. I had never before come across anyone, vampire of human, with so many layers of emotions. But this Alice…she seemed to be a never-ending pool of shades of excitement and, most bewildering of all, joy. I had thought to myself many times before that day on what could possibly make any vampire happy, but I had never come up with a convincing answer. All I knew in my former life had been warfare and bitter hatred, but then, as I chanced a look back at her, for the first time in my existence I shared in some of her over-spilling joy. I smiled my first truly happy smile.

She danced a little closer to me and then held out her hand expectantly but without words. A small smile played upon her mouth and I was lost in it for a second. I could feel my world shifting around me as I took her hand. It was no longer filled with despair and loneliness, but only with her.

And so it has been since that day. My days have been filled with Alice’s smiles and Alice’s gentleness. She was the balm to my pained existence and, surely, the reason I didn’t return to the only life I had known. Instead, she led me in a different direction, towards my own serenity.

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