Fox's Unspoken Promise

Before the Cullens arrived, I had no idea that those legends and shadowy tales were actually a different kind of reality. I didn't even know that the place where I lived was merely a middle-aged woman's dream about love. — May 17, 2003

Fox is a place perpetually soaked in rain and moss, where sunshine is a stranger year-round. The gloomy sky ensures that the dominant palette here can never be bright and colorful. Only the color emerald green is overwhelmingly pervasive, a hue representing vitality that, in Fox, always feels oppressive, as if it's about to solidify into a tangible weight.

I need the overcast skies here, but I don't particularly like the green.

Every time I drive out in my second-hand sapphire-blue Ford, passing through the forest, I can see towering Douglas firs appearing and disappearing in the pale green mist. The mountains, green to the point of appearing blue, are covered with conifers. Occasionally, some wild deer appear by the roadside. Perhaps I should be grateful for the unique local customs here—no one casually takes a shot at these lovely forest creatures to end up on the dinner table.

I don't know how the trajectory of life extends. I've read many books about past and present lives and encountered numerous seemingly plausible reincarnation stories, but they haven't been of much help to me. At the age of eight, I set aside those eerie questions about life and decided to simply focus on living earnestly.

I remember that in my previous life, I was European. From the moment I resolved to stop questioning where I came from, the fact that I was European became a matter of my past life.

I fell ill in my youth, spent years shuttling between hospital beds, and eventually passed away. By then, my family and friends had already given up on my life before I did. I recall that when I closed my eyes on that sickbed, only the warm afternoon sunlight from outside the window crept across my face, gently accompanying me through the final stretch of my journey.

An ordinary life seemed to compress all the essence of its highs and lows into those last few years—the sorrow and suffering, the confrontation with mortality and the decay of the body, the footsteps of everyone leaving, and my own unwavering struggle against giving up. In the end, I embraced a ray of sunlight and peacefully welcomed eternal slumber, thus concluding a lifetime.

At the moment of my death, I felt no regret, only a sense of relief. I thought my short life had been utterly ordinary, yet after falling ill, I finally achieved personal maturity and transcendence. In the end, I could even hear the moment my soul became flawless and bloomed brilliantly, like a radiant flower.

I regained consciousness in a scorchingly warm embrace, surrounded by a sea of blood, dazed and disoriented. A woman was gently stroking my hair; she was pinned beneath a car, holding me tightly in her arms.

I never imagined a person could bleed so much—like a ruptured water pipe, with nothing able to stem the torrent of blood. The woman was a foreigner, with fair skin and golden hair matted with glass shards and dark red fluid. Her features were sharp and beautiful. I heard her murmurs growing weaker: "Claire, my darling, Mommy loves you. We're going to pick up Daddy, to pick up…"

I realized my face was streaked with tears mingled with the metallic scent of blood, yet I still couldn't grasp the situation. I had just accepted my own death, only to open my eyes and find myself somewhere else entirely.

Struggling to touch the woman's face, I comforted her as the pallor of approaching death trembled upon her features, "It's okay, someone will come to save you."

The woman's gaze gradually dimmed, and I found tears streaming down my face once more. Yet, I wasn’t so fragile as to cry at the sight of a stranger’s injury—my body and mind seemed completely out of sync.

I murmured to myself, "Someone will come to save you." After a long silence, I added, "Save us."

In the end, only I was rescued. They called me Claire Miller. They were all foreigners, speaking English. My English was poor, but miraculously, I understood all their chaotic words—the shouts, the comfort, the pitying whispers.

It was a bizarre and prolonged dream. The injured areas began to ache with sharp, heavy pain. I lay back in the hospital bed—a better medical environment than before. The physical agony wasn’t the kind of debilitating exhaustion worn down by death; instead, I felt renewed and strong.

It was an indescribably beautiful sensation, as if my soul was slowly merging with a body full of vitality. The trauma from the car crash stimulated my bewildered senses, allowing me to truly feel the intense pain of being alive—so vivid that I couldn’t resist or escape it.

This pain stemmed from shattered bones, wailing internal organs, and the reorganization of my spirit.

Amidst the constant stream of condolences and gossip, I learned I had become a six-year-old American girl. This terrified me for days, making me worry if I was having a psychotic break and playing tricks on myself. Gradually accepting the reality, I found out this little girl's father was a state trooper in Washington. While patrolling the highway, he got caught in a jewelry store robbery and was shot three times by the criminals, dying on the spot.

The mother was the woman I saw when I first woke up. I heard that after being notified by the police station, she was so overwhelmed that she took her six-year-old daughter, got in the car, and stepped on the gas pedal like crazy, heading to the hospital to see her husband, which led to the car accident.

Overnight, this once complete family of three was shattered and torn apart.

Only I remained, surviving anew as an orphan.

During that period, many people in police uniforms came to the hospital to take care of me. They tried their best to smile at me, told me stories and jokes, and brought lots of toys children love, as well as plush dolls, dresses, and new shoes that girls like.

I stared blankly at them, as stiff as a block of wood, because my English really wasn't good. Even though it was strange that I could understand this foreign language—filled with various American slang, down-to-earth humor, and all sorts of complex words strung together—the moment I woke up, without ever having learned it, I couldn't be sure whether I could speak it if I opened my mouth. I was more inclined to believe that if I made a sound, it would likely be in Mandarin.

So they thought I was frightened into muteness. Even the child psychologist came every day to build blocks with me and softly sang lullabies.

Later, a man hurriedly appeared. He was covered in dust, as if he had just stepped off a plane, with his luggage tossed by the door of the ward. He was a typical American—deep-set eyes, a thin face, and exhaustion written all over his features beneath short, dark brown hair. His demeanor lacked some of the natural warmth and enthusiasm characteristic of people in this place, instead carrying a hint of awkwardness and rigidity. He seemed a bit flustered around me. "I'm your uncle. I just found out about your mother. I really… I'm truly terrible for leaving you alone here for so long. Forgive me, Claire. Please don't be sad."

The man who claimed to be my uncle reached out and carefully embraced me, as if afraid of startling some fragile object. He spoke gently, "It's alright, it's all over now, child. I will take care of you. Your parents wouldn't want to see you like this. You're a good girl, you'll be fine, Claire."

I felt the warmth of this embrace, the same warmth as the mother who had protected Claire. Somehow, I found myself softly calling out, "Uncle？" with a hint of uncertainty—in English. I felt I had pronounced the word correctly.

The man's arms trembled slightly as he held me, then he hugged me tighter, his body shaking violently. He choked back tears, saying, "Yes, it's Uncle. Your mother loved you so much, Claire. She truly did."

I knew that all mothers love their children most of all.

But for a brother, losing a beloved sister is also a heart-wrenching agony.

Separation by life and death remains humanity's greatest unresolved and hardest-to-let-go burden.

I reached out and hugged him back, my voice carrying an unfamiliar, high-pitched childishness. "She loved you too."

I stayed in the hospital for half a month, and my uncle Charlie took care of me the entire time. I was grateful to him. I am not the real Claire, so I remember every kindness shown to me as a favor.

After my health improved a bit, he brought me to the small town of Fox in Washington State, where he had lived for half his life. On the day I arrived, it was raining in Fox. As we passed through the temperate forest, I saw the trees and rocks soaked in rainwater, all covered in a thick layer of deep green. The endless mountains and trees stretched on, long and illusory like a dream.

The Quileute River rushed through the ancient forest shrouded in emerald mist, as if singing all the way.

This was a green planet soaked in rain. I never expected I would end up living here for many years.

Even before that family arrived, I hadn't realized that this place, which sounded somewhat familiar, was any different from any other place name in this world.

It was raining again. I groggily opened my eyes. The windows with stone sills were filled with the crisp sound of rain, and the old stereo in the room was still on—I had forgotten to turn it off last night. The stereo was left behind by Jason Miller, who was also the father of this body. He loved any music with beautiful melodies and had collected many classic European and American music CDs, meticulously arranged in specific wooden CD box compartments, with quite a few also haphazardly stuffed onto Emma Miller's bookshelf.

This couple's interests and hobbies were very much in line with the tastes of the American middle class: they loved music and books, enjoyed hosting small gatherings, appreciated wine and beautiful porcelain plates, would visit a decades-old restaurant in Washington state once a week, and dressed in formal suits and evening gowns to dance at the music plaza. They were hospitable, kind-hearted, compassionate, sponsored an orphanage, and frequently donated bo