The night Damon Salvatore came back to Mystic Falls, nothing was out of the ordinary. Mystic Falls slept under the illusion that it was a quaint town with citizens that were nothing out of their central norm. It's sins were veiled with the inevitability of time, and the town council's adamant mentality that the town never know of its dark past. A past that would reveal that Mystic Falls was home to humans and monsters alike. Monsters that toyed with you. That snatched you in the dead of the night and left you to bleed the rest of your life out once they were done torturing you.

Damon Salvatore was one such monster.

He walked the dead road that was lined with thick forests on either side, into the town he had once called home. He could hear the distant sound of laughter; there was some kind of gathering. The laughter was rich; laced with the vibrancy of youth, and from it pouring the truth of vitality. A hunger rose in Damon, one that consumed him to the point of physical ache. His fangs bore inside his mouth, and he slowly traced the predatory teeth with his tongue. He sighed deeply and shook his head; tonight was not a night he intended to ruin by creating a mess.

Time for chaos was abundant, and no one knew that better than Damon Salvatore. After all with eternity at your disposal, what was time but a mere count in centuries?

He continued in his silent trek, momentarily looking up into the indigo night to find solace in the moon. The road ahead curved slightly and Damon realized it led straight into the heart of the town. The centre of the town was lit with two bonfires, and in the spaces between were the humans that Damon had earlier heard. Damon shook his head in disgust. The town's overzealous attitude with its traditions had not died. Some things, he noted with agitation, didn't change.

Stopping in the middle of the road Damon opted to instead take the lesser known route through the woods. His intended destination was the Salvatore home, and it was a quicker journey through the town's forest. He spared one glance at the gathered crowd of citizens before stepping into the thick cover of the woods.

Bonnie Bennett stepped away from the suffocating gathering of her townsfolk and into the quiet of the September night. Autumn had swept through the town in full force; its fiery colours had replaced summer's vibrancy. Bonnie loved autumn more than most. Her friends dreaded the ritual of school that arrived, but Bonnie was the only one who quietly revelled in it. It made her feel productive, a feeling she knew her friends did not so much as consider.

Bonnie walked to the edge of the town square, eluding all attention. All things considered her friends were having too much fun for them to notice that Bonnie had disappeared.

I won't be too long anyway, just a few minutes, she thought.

There was a place in the town's surrounding woods where Bonnie had stumbled upon an old cabin. It was during the summer she had lost her way, and then like a sign from nature she had found a rustic dwelling devoid of any life. It was worn and ruined, years of unanticipated weather had eroded the wood and the windows were shattered. It had become Bonnie's favourite place in the town, a place only she knew of.

She stepped through the slight opening that she had created for herself in an attempt to leave the town gathering. As she passed through it, twisted branches scratched the exposed skin on her arms, and tangled their way into her hair. Pulling herself out of the mess, Bonnie brushed herself clean of the branch leaves and found tiny pinpricks of blood flowing from where the branches had scratched her.

Great, Bonnie thought in slight frustration.

She kept a slow pace, she wasn't in a hurry. Bonnie liked to admire the sights of her walks; she was an ardent lover of nature. It ran in the family, and for as long as she could remember her Grams and her would spend hours in the garden.

The night was a quiet one; there were no animals stirring and no leaves rustling from the wind. The night sky was such a deep indigo that it could have easily been mistaken as black, and there were no clouds to embellish the clarity of the sky.

Bonnie walked through the silence of the forest and was comforted by the soft cracks of the leaves that crushed beneath her feet. She came soon to a clearing and as it was the only clearing in the entire forest, Bonnie was sure she was almost to the cabin.

The moonlight hit the clearing in an odd way; it lit the centre with a soft yellow glow. Leaves scattered about the clearing and there were several tree stumps in a careless pattern across the open space. Bonnie entered the glade and immediately stopped. She could hear someone on the other end of the clearing speaking in hushed tones.

"Sweetheart, I'm not here to fuck," a low voice drawled from a little behind the trees.

Bonnie shivered involuntarily in the warmth of the night. She had an acute feeling that something was very wrong. As if by compulsion she walked to the source of the whisper and then as she neared it, she heard a shrill scream pierce through the open space and reach her.

Bonnie broke into a run and was swallowed by the trees. Her heartbeat was deafening as a thunderous roar in her ears, and her mind was rushing to the worst of conclusions. Then as quickly as it had started the scream died, and Bonnie walked through the maze of trees until from the corner of her eye she saw something move.

As she turned, almost as if in slow motion, she saw the standing body of a girl in a white dress caked with blood, collapse onto the forest floor. Bonnie rushed to her side, fear consuming every inch of her. She held the girl in her arms and pressed her ear to the dying girl's chest to hear her heart.

"Come on, COME ON! Please, please be alive. Please," Bonnie was all but begging.

"Oh don't be so dramatic. She's still alive," a lazy voice filled with boredom, spoke from behind Bonnie.

Bonnie's eyes widened and her fear was palpitating like a physical ache. Holding the girl from her stance on the ground, she turned slowly to face the source of the voice. She saw a man leaning against a nearby tree, arms crossed and dressed in mourning black. His face was as pale as the moon and his hair so dark that ravens would cry in envy. What nearly knocked the breath out of Bonnie though, were his eyes. Electric blue; the blue of clear, sunny, summer afternoons. And yet nothing in them held warmth. His volatile eyes were the only colour in the entire night, and they were staring at Bonnie with a dead expression.

"Wh-what did you do to her? Why is she bleeding?" Bonnie asked with a voice she didn't know she still had.

She could feel bile rise up her throat; the smell of blood was getting to her nerves.

"I decided to catch a quick snack on the way home," he remarked, and his eyes filled with a disgusting delight.

"Wha-? I don'- I have to help her!" Bonnie exclaimed, in her thorough confusion, and then she turned back to the girl and whispered, "I have to help her."

"I told you, she's alive," said the man, except this time his voice seemed to be much closer than before.

She turned her head slightly and saw that he was crouching beside her, looking at her with a quizzical expression. There was no way that he could have run so quickly without her noticing. Bonnie was terrified to the bone, but she didn't say anything. Instead she hurried to gather the girl in her arms.

His hand shot out and he touched her arm with force that could have broken the bones beneath her flesh and he commanded, "Stop."

As if her heart had stopped, like all breath had seized its way into her lungs, like the world was moving and she was paralyzed, was how his grasp had felt. Bonnie understood nothing. There was a girl dying in her arms, and a terrifying man who had turned her body immobile.

She closed her eyes and thought, I'm going to die.

"Look at me," there was a coarse rawness to his voice now. It was thick with command and confusion.

She opened her eyes hesitantly and all but screamed. The man stared into her eyes for the first time, and Bonnie found herself swimming in the blue, cold, abyss of his eyes. She felt a rush take hold of her, like being thrown into the ocean on a hot summer's day, and the man slowly loosened his hold on her until his arm fell limp to his side. With a raised eyebrow he tilted his head to the side and tauntingly whispered, "Interesting."

He wouldn't kill the girl. Not tonight. There was a slight buzz about her; like she was a flame that burned blue and the air around her bent to her warmth. And then there was the way she had reacted to him when Damon had touched her. Like she had been paralyzed with fear, or something else.

He had known she was in the forest the second she had cut herself. Although the scratch was invisible, and the tiny amount of blood had dried, the smell of it had flowed through the air. Sweet and mouth watering; like a flower before its full bloom in the springtime.

Something snapped in Bonnie's eyes, like a bomb had gone off and all of a sudden she was a painting come to life before Damon. Bonnie was moving, picking up the girl with sheer force, standing and then stumbling from the dead weight of the girl Damon had so carelessly maimed.

Damon stood in amusement and moved to catch the unconscious girl. He held her by the waist and then turned slightly to stare right into Bonnie's sea green eyes.

"Why don't I take this girl," Damon spoke slowly, willing his compulsion to take hold of the green eyed girl.

He shifted his weight so that the limp girl in his arms was completely in his hold and continued, "And you forget that you had ever walked in on anything here. You did not see me; you did not see this girl. You will continue your day like you had intended too."

Bonnie stared blankly at him, and Damon bent ever so slowly, so that his lips reached her ears and he whispered, "Goodbye little bird."

Bonnie couldn't understand why she felt so lost, helpless and scared. She was standing in the woods alone with nothing but her shadow as a companion. She looked around her aimlessly and realized her folly; she had probably just frightened herself. Bonnie shook her head and half smiled at her stupidity.

She walked past a couple of trees before looking back at where she had been standing. Even with nothing in her memory to aid her, she had the sinking feeling that something wasn't right. Stealing one last glance Bonnie continued to walk. She decided to head back home; the cabin could wait for another day.

"GRAMS! Have you seen my blue cardigan? The one we bought with the cute pair of sneakers? I can't seem to find it," Bonnie's voice echoed down the stairs of her home.

Her grandmother Sheila Bennett, or Grams as Bonnie called her, was in the kitchen making a batch of pancakes for her granddaughter. The house was unusually quiet for seven in the morning until the elder Bennett realized that Bonnie hadn't blasted her radio. Odd. From her place in the kitchen Sheila could hear Bonnie scrambling furiously in her room looking for her missing article of clothing, and Sheila smiled.

Her granddaughter was a force to be reckoned with.

Mixing her pancake batter in hand, Sheila walked over to the living room and turned on the TV to the local news.

Walking away and back to the kitchen Sheila could hear the news anchor's direct voice, "A girl was found dead in the forest nearby the small town of Mystic Falls. Officials say that it is a case of a wild animal attack. She bled to death from her neck and was found on the main highway into the town. She has not yet been identified."

Sheila stopped walking and placed the batter atop her counter, and steadied herself. There hadn't been an animal attack in Mystical Falls since the 1800s. Sheila knew however, better than anyone, that it hadn't been animals behind those attacks.

"Grams? Are you okay?" Bonnie whispered, placing her hands gently on her grandmother's arms.

Sheila said nothing and Bonnie looked past her to the TV displaying the gruesome news.

"Oh my god," Bonnie whispered.

The image on her television set was of a girl in a white dress stained with blood, and Bonnie's mind was catapulted immediately into the night before.

"I remember," came her frightened whisper, "I remember."