1: The Future

     Why is it I can never find anything I like when I actually have the TIME to shop? Gabriella thought as she went over the clothing rack in the small consignment shop once more. She hardly batted an eye as the bell sounded at the front door, signaling a new customer had entered.
     Suddenly, she had to hold on to the top bar of the clothing rack as a vision took over her surroundings. 

     "Hang on, Gabriella. Help is on the way. Don't you leave me! You hear me Gabby?!" she heard the voice as if it were in her ear right now.
     "I'm so cold," her own voice spoke.
     "NO! This can't be happening!"
     "Don't do it, Nate. Please." She heard her breathing shake as a person does when they arrive at their last breaths.

      "You know I have to," the man named Nate whispered to the woman in the vision, her, after she'd gone unconscious. She watched as he bit into her neck.

      Then he propped her up on his chest and forced her mouth to open. 
      "Drink it, Gabriella. Now! Don't leave me!"

     As usual, the vision only took a second, but the whole scene was imprinted into her memory--like a dream would do.
     Out of the corner of her eye, she saw a man go unnaturally still.

      She gasped as her head snapped up to behold the gentleman standing in front of her. The man from the vision right here, right now. Her own look of shock got mirrored back to her before she ducked her head to escape his expression.
      "What are you?" the man's voice quietly whispered to her.

     She blinked a few times, desperate to forget she ever saw what she saw. When, of course, it didn't work, she panicked. It has to be wrong this time! It has to! "No!" she suddenly screamed to the man, the vision, and the cruel, spiteful world as she ran past him at a speed that surprised her, not offering an explanation.

     "Wait, please!" the man called to her once she reached the sidewalk outside, her intended purchases forgotten.
     She knew there was no point in fleeing, but the shock of her most recent vision rocked her to her core. She had seen her own death.
      Resigned that she must confront this strange man eventually, she ducked into an alleyway, knowing he would follow. She also knew he meant her no harm. He wouldn't be the murderer, but what he would do to her as he would try to help horrified her.

      Nathaniel followed the strange woman down the sidewalk at as normal a fast speed as he could manage without arousing the unwanted attention of the local townspeople. What WAS that? He'd never before been forced to read a mortal's thoughts before, but the vision of the two of them was implanted into his mind. He saw her nearly-iridescent blonde hair dart into a sort-of alleyway between the school and the swimming pool.
      They needed to discuss this immediately.

     "Who are you?" Gabby asked, taking charge of the discussion right away.
     "You're the psychic, you should know," he stated in a matter-of-fact voice, having figured out that much of the past few moments, and his arms folded across his chest.
     "I don't see all!" she snapped. "I know what you are only because of the vision, and since I know what you are I know you read me and saw it too." Nosy vampires!

      "I'm NOT nosy! And I was not trying to read anyone at that moment. YOUR thoughts came to me unbidden! It was like you screamed them at me!" he quietly and viciously exclaimed. He studied the woman before him. Minus the look of terror, she was beautiful and pale. Nearly as pale as him. He watched as her frightened, ice-blue eyes stared back at him, and he wondered if she could tell what he was thinking as well. "I take it this was a vision of a possible future?" he asked.

      "Not a 'possible' future; I'm never wrong. Never." 
      "How long have you been like this?" Never wrong?

     "All my life," she replied and watched his striking green eyes bore into her. She purposefully thought about several instances when her visions had played out exactly as she'd foreseen them.
     "I see," he said, never meaning that so much in his life as right now. "So, you're convinced this that you saw will happen?" he asked. "Yet you wish it wouldn't?" She nodded her head. "Then I must leave. If I never see you again, it can't happen."
      Her eyes started to tear. Everything was too real. "If only that were true then I'd move cross-country, but the future has a way of making itself happen no matter what."

      "We shall see then." I'll just stay away from her. Simple. With that, he left her without a backward glance. 
     Gabriella stared at her hands, confident that this wouldn't be the last she saw of him, and she didn't know how she felt about that.

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I'm sorry. I don't know WHAT I was thinking putting him in that suit. I hate it! lol

Okay, so now you've read it, thanks! Good or bad, tell me what you thought.