Disclaimer: Twilight belongs to Stephenie Meyer, as do all the characters you recognize here.

A Treatise on Nature

Part 1 - A Reflection on Reading

If ever I were asked to tell my story, this would be what I would never share.

I am a reader, and by its very nature, am unreasonable and selfish. This is a secret, and an immaculately kept one, for it is known only to those whose very nature forbid them to speak of it. The world would never think to accuse readers of destructiveness, of avarice, but what does the world know?

My abilities confuse my vampire family, who cannot understand the logic of a mind so private it could function as a physical shield. It has been half a century since that day in the clearing, but I have yet to share my theories with my family. And I doubt I ever would, for old habits die hard, even if I only had seventeen years to form them, as compared to this forever to break them. I never stopped reading – if anything, I read fiercer now, my literary thirst insatiable. I revel in the clarity, the understanding, that my new life has gifted me with. In that, I concede that I am not looking to break the jealous hold I have on my privacy, for I am still a reader, and I cannot believe there is any world more compulsively guarded than the mind of a reader.

Renee never was a mother in the most conventional of definitions – every lesson I learnt from her had been unintentionally imparted, and her never the wiser for it. She taught me to be independent with her dizzy distractedness, to seek contentment in my own company with her inevitable emotional absences. I turned to literature from young – in books, I found a scratching post to hone these life skills, and it was not long before I took genuine pleasure in my own thoughts, my careful deliberations, my hoarded sentiments. Readers can talk about their books, giggle over details in book clubs, deconstruct texts and subtexts in class, but yet, they would never choose to give voice to the whispered weightiness of each book, that which creeps into their hearts and sings and is magic. I share my delight in Romeo and Juliet and Wuthering Heights with Edward, but he is only allowed into my world unseeing, blind to the hues of cerulean and puce that explode into brilliance only for me. I know enough of silence, of the idea of self-possession, to honestly not be surprised that Edward could not read my mind.

Time is another gift that I have received from vampirism, even if it is a gift wrapped in patient silver and grey, quiet and unassuming beside its siblings of canary yellow, rich carmine, and rippling emerald. I would admit that the wisdom of Time pales when compared against the offerings of impossible grace, of blinding speed, and of unblemished beauty. But it is Time that enables me to learn this truth of myself, to appreciate the nuances of my power. I protect my family not by mercurial luck and a genetic quirk, but by the sum of my human years. Fifty years to the day Edward's venom made inroads within my body, washing out the blood that had sung to him like a cacophonous lullaby, and I am struggling to hold on to the frayed ribbons that secure me to my earlier life. Charlie had passed away two years ago, at the respectable human age of eighty-nine, and suddenly, I am bereft, cast out to sea without my father to anchor me to my past. Oh, I am happy – unreasonably, impossibly happy in this pocket of eternity I share with my Edward, this untouchable space of unhurried moments, our fingers twining and untwining, our voices low with murmured nothingness. But lately, I cannot help but feel as though I am swimming in my unaging body, each decade like a wave crest that pushes me further out to sea, making it impossible to see the sandy tracks I made in my time as human.

Jasper assures me that these thoughts are to be expected – when one has the time that we do, meandering and aimless introspection becomes inevitable. I think Jasper understands my torment so well because of his previous specializations – he dealt in Death, on battlefields against troops and newborns, and in his world, Death was the only constant. As vampires, we defy this rule of mortality, and I can only imagine his own restlessness as decay continues to fail to make any purchase on our indifferent bodies. It cannot be easy to have the fundamentals of your life, the essential truths of your previous existence, so comprehensively challenged every day that you draw breath. I am sometimes tempted to ask him if being able to feel the emotions of the world helps take the edge off his own demons, but I desist, my human manners having found its way into my immortality. And because of this illogical ache for my past, I am glad to have had the time to see my vampire powers as inheritances of my human legacy, that I can continue to be Bella Swan even if Bella Cullen is having a harder and harder time trying to hold a light up to those memories.

*

Understanding my abilities is a good thing, because it seems that I would soon be called upon to use them aggressively again. An invitation came for us six days ago. It came in the mail, and this gesture of consideration for our human charade was not well received. From any other party, it would have been appreciated as polite, even if condescending, but from the Volturi, it could only be read as a veiled threat. Of course we knew a week before of its arrival, but even Alice's powers could not prepare any of us for the recoil of fury and adrenaline that seized the best of our family. Rosalie would have destroyed the dining table from the mere force of her clenched fists had Edward not warned her, wincing slightly from the wrath of her thoughts. Jacob had phased against his will as Carlisle read the invitation aloud, and from the scorching onyx of my husband's gaze, I knew Edward envied Jake the release.

I had reacted as though lashed by a tongue of scarlet flame – pushing my shield outwards, covering miles within heartbeats, my lowered eyes unseeing as I tested the result of five decades worth of practice. The world fell from me, as did reason and logic, as I focused only on my ravenous need to protect, my ears ringing with the savage din of my boiling blood. And then there had been a pleading weight over my folded hands, and I had looked up to see Jasper, his slight frown causing the skin of his numerous crescent scars to pucker, his face a portrait of strange and terrible beauty. My other family members continued to argue in the background – when had they begun? – and I had forced myself to relax, and nodded in an answer to the question I saw in my brother's caramel gold eyes, burnt a sticky saffron by his tension. Jasper had held my gaze for a fraction of a second longer, before he released my hands, a wan smile for my benefit.

I then realized that my family had been debating the question of our attendance. The invitation had been to the renewal of vows between the Ancients and their mates – a celebration of time, of a thousand years, that should not have agitated my family. But the affair would be conducted on Italian soil, and it would bring us into direct contact with the strength that waits behind the Volturi's high marble walls. We would be at the mercy of their numbers, even if all of our extended family and friends made the same decision to attend. But not attending, as Carlisle had reasoned with Edward, would bring the Volturi to our doorstep, to "renew our friendship" as Aro had threatened not so many years ago. Alice had been on Carlisle's side, even if she could not see anything beyond Caius' feral smile of grim satisfaction at our absence. And Nessie, crouched in the corner with her fingers thick in Jake's russet fur, had been vehement, her voice breaking as she spoke of the harm that would come the way of her grandparents, and Rose and Emmett, should the Volturi really decide to pay a visit. Nessie had been full grown for as many as forty years now, and though wise in certain truths, including Aro's determination to collect the more interesting members of her family, she is still a child, and innocent. Edward's eyes had burned at me from across the table, and the same heartsickness had gripped me, compelling me to move over to his side, to twist my fingers searchingly into the home of his palm. There were worst fates than Death and destruction, and should Aro ever break either Edward or me, all he would be collecting would be fragmented pieces, the fine dust of our bones, for we would never belong to anyone else but the other. Nessie is young still, a child worried about Death, and it would not be at our hands that she be forced to grow up even faster than she have had.

It had eventually fallen to me to end the argument, to cast the deciding vote in this matter that was truly beyond resolution, diplomacy and democracy be damned. In a rare display of will, Rose had chosen not to give Nessie what she desired, and had voted against my daughter's decision to attend the function. Emmett, giving words to the thoughts nobody in the room had wanted to admit to, had roared his bloodlust, and welcomed the Volturi to try to take us on our own ground. I had not been surprised when Edward cast his lot with Em, his jaw tight as he silently dared Alice to try and change his mind. Alice had merely rolled her eyes, and took her stance on the other side of the table, beside Carlisle and Esme. I had been even less surprised when Jake decided to support my husband – his love for Nessie is as compulsive as Edward's paranoia when it had concerned my human fragility, and sending Nessie into the lair of savage vampires is a decision he never would have made. Jasper had refused his vote, but not before he had stared both Edward and Alice down, calling them out on their tactical warfare ploys, and ordering them to stop besieging him with their doctored emotions.

My logic had been simple when I finally decided – simple and unchallengeable. If it is in Aro and Caius' interests that we do not attend, then attend we must. None of us trusted the Volturi, and on the weight of that argument alone, the verdict had been reached without any further dispute.

*

And this is why I am here now, in Italy, one week after we received the invitation. My family stands beside me, a meandering line, and we look directly into the heart of the forest before us, the sounds of revelry from within mere murmurs in the sultry heat of this night. The Volturi had chosen a forest just on the outskirts of Volterra for their formalities, and even though it made all of us feel better that we would not be expected to enter the city at all, we are still apprehensive, and restless in our distrust of our hosts. While Alice had not seen anything sinister awaiting us on the horizon, and I am now strong enough to manipulate my shield like extended puppets, enclosing each of my family in their own separate cocoon connected to my consciousness by mobile and invisible threads, these are still small consolations. I do not know exactly how much energy this revision of my blanket shield would cost me, and as the night progresses and as the need arises, I would have to extend my protection to our Denali cousins, as well as to our other friends, who I have long come to love fiercely. And then there is the issue of Nessie's gift presentation.

Carlisle had explained the formalities of the Volturi rituals to us, and it seems as though each coven would be expected to present a gift to the celebrating couples. Offerings of wealth and pomp are considered vulgar, and only tolerated from the vampires without powers. But for a coven like ours, an unconventional tribute would have to be made, and after much heated argument, most of us have reluctantly acquiesced to the idea of Nessie delivering our gift. My daughter intends to "show" the Ancients her favourite opera performance of Tristan and Isolde, and while I have to concede that it makes for a better gift than Alice providing Aro with stock market tips, it still causes me to draw my lips back in an instinctive snarl at the very thought of the moment. Hearing my thoughts, Edward reaches for my hand now, his perfect face deceptively composed, but it does not fool me for a second.

"Let us go."

Carlisle's rich timbre is resonant in my ear, and my family exchanges a last round of glances. A fond smile for my Nessie, the briefest of nods to my sisters, and a conspirational, feral grin at Emmett, letting him in on my own readiness to fight. And then we are flying through the forest, my outrageous wine red dress barely jostled as I leap from tree to tree, always landing nimbly on my equally impossible pair of heels. My siblings blur around me in blazes of gold and black, each couple dressed to match, as is required also by the occasion. I look at my husband, resplendent in his open collar shirt of deepest vermilion, and lift his cold hand to my lips.

Just as we clear the last of the trees and into the awaiting meadow, I beseech him silently – Stay close, my love.

*

End Part 1