What if the Cullens weren't the first immortals that Bella met? What if she had an encounter with a more transitory immortal while she was in Phoenix? One that had a history with Caius…
Stephenie Meyer owns the original story of course. I am just playing with the characters.
Chapter 1 – That Phoenix Sun
Bella had been out in the Arizona desert too long. She was turned around and didn't know her way back. Phoenix couldn't be that far away. Where were her friends? She thought she heard her name being called, but she couldn't answer as the world was spinning around her and starting to go black. Fortunately she found a tree which provided some shelter from the intense sun. She first sat down, and then she lay down, trying to stop the spinning.
I must be dying, she thought. I'm only 13. Will anyone ever find me?
She felt something reach around her and pull her downwards. Arms encircled her at several points along her body and seemed to bathe her insides with cool water. So this is what it feels like to die, she thought. She lay in peace, out of the sun, for a long time. It was dark but the coolness running over her sunburnt skin felt soothing. She relaxed and gave in to the darkness.
She didn't know how long she was there; or even if any of it was happening. She thought she heard her father's voice from a long ways off. She raised her hand and seemed to be moving upward. Suddenly she was in sunshine. She blinked her eyes in the harsh light and raised her hand to shield her face from the sun.
"Daddy?" she called out.
"Bella," he called back, running over to her. "Where have you been? I've been looking everywhere for you!"
"I've been here, right here, asleep I think," she said groggily.
He turned to the cops behind him and said, "I thought you searched this area before I got here."
The officers, holding their cadaver dogs, replied, "We did sir. We've been over this area many times. It's where her friends said they saw her last. This is where we found her camera two days ago, so it was the first place we looked. It was the cadaver dogs that lead us back here today…"
"Well, maybe you should have brought your dogs the first time, since you obviously missed her," Charlie snapped at the other officers.
Charlie looked back down at Bella. "You're going to be ok, honey, I'm taking you home now," said Charlie as he carefully lifted her from the ground. As he carried her to his car she looked up at the tree above her. It seemed to lean its branches down and wave to her. Must be a trick of the sun, Bella thought.
Charlie took her to the Emergency Room at the local hospital where they were met by her mother, Renee. Bella was well known to the hospital staff because of her many accidents due to her legendary clumsiness. The staff had been aware of the search for the missing girl so they were relieved to see her. The RN was fighting back tears when she came in to take Bella's vitals, and there were lots of familiar faces pulling back the curtains around her bed while whispering, "Are you ok?" before the doctor finally arrived to check her out.
The E.R. doctor seemed surprised at her apparent lack of injuries from exposure. Bella heard him telling Renee, "I was expecting to see much more dehydration and sunburn. Instead, it looks as though she is already recovering from her sunburn. And I'm seeing very little dehydration. Are you sure she was actually in the desert all of the time she was missing?" While Bella couldn't make out the exact words of Renee's reply, Renee's indignant tone made it clear she was defending her daughter.
Bella was discharged the same afternoon, and Renee took her home. Once she got home she reviewed the photos on her camera. The police had found it by the tree she had been sitting under when Charlie found her. None of the photos saved in her camera's memory contained the image of the tree she had been under when she woke up. She decided to go back out into the desert in order to locate and photograph the tree.
On her way to the trail leading to the desert, in a gully not far from her house, she saw a tree that she was sure had not been there before. It was clearly an older tree due to its size, and it looked just like the tree from the desert. She scrambled around in the gully photographing the tree from different angles. She noticed a small cave directly beneath the tree with an entrance between its roots. She peered inside the tiny entrance. It felt cool inside in an oddly familiar way. So she entered the small space. It was just big enough for her to lie comfortably and stretch her arms a little over her head.
It was peaceful inside, and she felt replenished. She returned to this spot often over the next three years. She frequently wrote and drew pictures in her journal while inside the cave.
When she was sixteen, she decided to move to Forks, Washington, to stay with her father. On the day before she left for Phoenix for Forks, she went to the gully one last time. She told the tree she was leaving, immediately feeling silly. After all, who talks to trees? Yet the tree seemed to bow in answer though there was no wind blowing to move its branches. Somehow Bella felt she could leave now.
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