The Return: Nightfall Preface

Ste-fan?Elena was frustrated. She couldnt make the mind-word come out the way she wanted. Stefan, he coaxed, bend on an elbow and looking at her with those look that always make her almost forget what she was trying to recite. They shone like green spring leaves in the sunlight. Stefan, he repeated. Canyou say it, hunchly love?Elena looked clog at him solemnly. He was so handsome that he broke her heart, with his pale, chiseled features and his dark tomentum cerebri f completelying carelessly across his forehead. She wanted to put into words all the feelings that were piled behind her clumsy tongue and stubborn mind. There was so oftentimes she needed to ask himand to tell him. exclusively the sounds wouldnt come yet. They tangled on her tongue. She couldnt even send it telepathically to him it all came as fragmented images.After all, it was totally the seventh day of her new life.Stefan told her that when shed first woken up, first come anchor off from the Other Side aft er her death as a vampire, shed been competent to walk and talk and do all sorts of things that she seemed to guard forgottennow. He didnt know why shed forgotten hed never known anyone whod come back from death except vampires which Elena had been, but certainly was no longer.Stefan had also told her excitedly that she was learning like wildfire e precise day. New pictures, new thought-words. Even though sometimes it was easier to communicate than otherwises, Stefan was real she would be herself again someday soon. whence she would act like the teenager she really was. She would no longer be a young adult with a childlike mind, the way the enliven had clearly wanted her to be growing, seeing the world with new look, the eyes of a child.Elena thought that the spirits had been a petty(a) unfair. What if Stefan found individual in the meantime who could walk and talk and write, even? Elena worried all over this.That was why, some nights ago, Stefan had woken up to find he r gone from her bed. He had found her in the bathroom, poring anxiously over a news authorship, trying to make sense of the little squiggles that she knew were words she once recognized. The paper was dotted with the marks of her tears. The squiggles meant nonhing to her. nevertheless why, love? Youll learn to read again. Why rush?That was before he dictum the bits of pencil, broken from too hard a grip, and the carefully hoarded paper napkins. She had been using them to try to imitate the words. Maybe if she could write like other people, Stefan would stop sleeping in his chair and would hold her on the regretful bed. He wouldnt go looking for someone older or smarter. He wouldknow she was a grown-up.She saw Stefan put this together slowly in his mind, and she saw the tears come to his eyes. He had been brought up to think he was never allowed to cry no matter what happened. But he had turned his back on her and breathed slowly and deeply for what seemed like a very long time.An d then he had picked her up, engagen her to the bed in his room, and looked into her eyes and said, Elena, tell me what you want me to do. Even if its impossible, Ill do it. I swear it. suppose me.All the words she wanted to think to him were still jammed up inside her. Her own eyes spilled tears, which Stefan dabbed off with his fingers, as if he could dash a priceless painting by touching it too roughly. therefore Elena turned her face up, and shut her eyes, and pursed her lips slightly. She wanted a kiss. ButYoure safe a child in your mind now, Stefan agonized. How can I take advantage of you?There was a sign language they had had, back in her old life, which Elena still remembered. She would tap under her chin, just where it was softest once, twice, three times.It meant she tangle uncomfortable, inside. As if she were too full in her throat. It meant she wantedStefan groaned.Icant.Tap, tap, tapYoure not back to your old self yet.Tap, tap, tapListen to me, love.TAP TAP TAP S he gazed at him with pleading eyes. If she could have spoken, she would have said, Please, give me some credit Im not totally stupid. Please, listento what I cant say to you.You hurt. Youre really hurting, Stefan had interpreted, with something like dazed resignation. I if I if I plainly take a littleAnd then suddenly Stefans fingers had been cool and sure, pitiful her head, lifting it, turning it at just this angle, and then she had felt the twin bites, which convinced her more than anything she was alive and not a spirit anymore.Andthen she had been very sure that Stefan loved her and no one else, and she could tell Stefan some of the things she wanted to. But she had to tell them in little exclamations not of pain with stars and comets and streaks of light falling around her. And Stefan had been the one who had not been able to think a single(a) word to her. Stefan was the one struck mute.Elena felt that was only fair. After that, he held her at night and she was always happy.