Nights were the hardest time of day for me. It wasn't from thirst - the lack of it made it pleasant - but from the absence of things to do. Homework took mere minutes. With my memory, studying wasn't necessary. 

Emmett and Rosalie had each other. They were often leaving the house at night, disappearing into the forest and not returning until early morning, needing a fresh pair of clothes. Alice and Michael had each other - and Edward, when he wanted to play games with Alice. 

After all, none of the rest of us would play with him anymore.  

Carlisle sometimes took the night shift at the hospital, or he and Esme would curl up on the couch and talk, design a new building, or plan a new international trip. 

That left Edward and I to our lonesome - and our challenges. It had began only a couple months after I had joined their family; I had been in my designated room when I caught Edward teaching himself Spanish. 

I told him I already knew the language, and we began to converse in it. The next night I picked up a book on French. Edward did the same. 

Each night after that it was a competition. Who could learn it faster, better, sound more fluent. Who could add a different accent to it. It irritating almost everyone in the family to no end when we switched languages - it's not like they wouldn't have been able to understand, they were just too busy with each other to bother learning new things. 

There were a couple different hobbies that we left to each other. Music, for Edward; it's not that I couldn't play, but he loved to spend time there and it mellowed him out (something often needed) so that was better left untouched. 

And of mine it was photography and sketches. There was something about it, the pureness of it, or the beauty, the simplicity that had me drawn to it the moment I started. Once my 'birthday' came around, I had started to get new cameras. Following that, it had been sketchbooks. Albums. Computers with storage. 

Esme had to set up a section of the attic with boxes for my photographs that weren't hung up. I kept my favorites around my room. It was a museum rather than a sleeping area. 

I was lounging in there, skimming through a beautifully bound book I had had published under a pseudonym when an idea popped into my head. The instant I thought it I had flown across the room and opened the closet, where every camera I owned was shelved. 

I took a couple of my personal favorites - a small, black Instant Camera that came with a roll of film; and a Sony Alpha A6000, a new gift specifically for my night photos. The next instant I was down the stairs and out the door, dusting past Esme and Carlisle and their plan for a week long trip to Canada. I got a glimpse of their pale pink colors before suddenly I was outside, streaking through the grass and over the river that perfectly reflected the night sky. 

I had a specific spot in mind - and it would work out just right if the moon even gave a glimpse of light. 

My footsteps were light, the ground carpet beneath my feet. I felt like a star, feeling everything quiet while I breathed past, running right along with the wind. Elegant was never a word I had applied to myself - especially not as a soldier, where rigidity and stiffness were the most key elements. No, I hadn't even considered people elegant until I ran into Nellie and her sisters. 

But even after my turning it wasn't something I thought of. Emmett certainly wasn't elegant - the image that created - and Edward was always too down to carry himself with that taint, even if his upbringing echoed back faintly. 

Yet running like that, moving at the speed of wind itself, almost flying, just barely touching the soft ground, elegant was the word to describe the feeling. It was an extended, suspended, frozen moment. Everything was silent, everything was still, everything was waiting, waiting...waiting. 

And then I was too. I had reached my spot, and as swift as the elegance had come it was now gone, evaporating like morning dew once the sun has awoken to kiss the earth good morning. 

There was a beautiful fallen tree that I had seen one morning when it was too sunny for us to be in human eyes and Esme had dragged us all outside. 'If we tell everyone we go camping and hiking,' she had said, 'then let's actually go hiking.' Ah, Esme. 

The log was covered in moss and more than slightly broken down. Even now I watched carefully, still, as a daddy long leg ran across the top and disappeared down the other side. But on one edge of the log there was a flower growing. 

Allotropa Virgata, or the Candystick wildflower. It had no need for sunlight, drawing energy from fungus and trees. It could also bloom at any time, and I had been watching it, waiting. 

I stepped to the side a little and settled down, crouching to get the perfect angle and wait for a glimpse of moonlight. I wasn't uncomfortable, though I was well aware that was a marker for my kind, not humanity.

It was a stunning setting - not that I had ever expected to use those words in a sentence that applied to something I was doing, either. I could see it now: black and white, a ray of moonlight spread across the face of the yellow girl, where she would be smiling, caught off guard. I would edit the photo to make her yellow, though. The exact shade of her -

Wait a minute. Where did that thought come from? What on earth was that?

Why was I thinking about her?

I hardly new the girl. Even the memory from her drew a painful fire down my throat, and almost instantly my muscles were tense, the camera giving a pained creak in my hand. I tried to relax my muscles, tried to get it through my head that that was just a memory, she wasn't here with me - no matter how potent said memory was. 

By the time the moon came out for a quick glimpse I had been squatting for two hours, my mind circling around and around about the yellow girl. What was her name? It seemed to be a critically important detail, I was hung up on it for the longest time, but I couldn't remember. 

I thought, on my way back to the house, the polaroid picture drying as I ran, about asking Edward, but I chickened out when I walked back. No doubt the rest of the family would hear, and that was not something I wanted to go through. And he wasn't in town, regardless.

Esme and Carlisle were waiting expectantly when I walked back in. It was nice to be around them. They had general light colors, pastels that matched the inside of the house. 

Esme oohed and ahhed over the picture like she normally did, and Carlisle, after commenting, disappeared to get ready for his next shift. 

"Is there anything specific you wanted to do with it, Jasper?" Esme asked gently, drawing my attention away from where I had been watching the river run by. 

"Oh," I muttered, off-handedly, "I was thinking of putting it in black and white."

"And a name?"

"Unbeknown."