I strongly suspect that nobody will ever read this, but here goes...

This is my very first attempt at this sort of writing, but I had this little story idea in my head and thought "what the hell?"

I love the general idea of Twilight, but the endless vampire-self-loathing, human-self-loathing and general moralising wore a little thin with me - sorry! My vampires are going to be predominantly OK with the whole thing and will behave accordingly for the most part. And my Bella will not be so...you know...Bella-ish.

Most of the main characters will be in this story to some extent, but not in the usual groupings or couples. Also, everybody will be a bit older - I'm too old to spend my time writing about 17 year old virgins.

I've rewritten this chapter lots of times from various perspectives. I want to avoid jumping to different POV's. Please let me know if it reads a little weird. Please let me know if you like it. Also let me know if it's complete crap :)

The first few chapters will introduce the main characters and will be quite short.

******I do not own Twilight or any of its characters..I make no money from this...I do not intend any copyright infringement...etc...******

The story starts in 1920...

BELIEF IN THE ABSENCE OF PROOF

CHAPTER 1: THE SEER (November, 1920)

She held her limbs rigid. Despite the cold wind that roared through the forest and buffeted her body, there was no relief from the lava that coursed through her veins.

Her mind ran at a million miles an hour, but was still working through her memories more slowly than they were torn from her. She was a shell: her mind no longer held her past securely and her body was surely charcoal. She knew that the wind would scatter her ashes. Dust to dust.

She prayed to God to make it stop. But she knew that she no longer believed – that there was no God in this place.

There was a moment – an instant in time – where all knowledge of herself was ripped away and she felt that she was a blank slate: a Godless, nameless, charcoal shell. But she was also freed from the now-inexplicable self doubt that she knew had filled her just a heartbeat earlier. She could no longer feel it and could no longer recall the experiences that had forged it, but she felt its absence. She did not miss it.

The woman lay burning for an eternity – unmoving until her chest was lifted from the ground with a rolling movement normally reserved for moments of passion, but this time a response to the lava that had taken hold of her heart. The muscle gave one final, thundering beat and was still. She was reborn and unspoiled.

She lay still in a white dress that was damp with dew and clung to her tiny frame. She had no shoes, no purse, no history, no name. And she was beautiful: unruly black hair set above an angular, angelic face and perfect lips with the constant hint of a smile. She moved her fingers…testing…Her blood red eyes shot open and she scented the air around her.

Lying in the bracken, she was overcome with a series of disjointed memories that were startlingly clear, but entirely unfamiliar. In her mind, she stood before a trembling young woman and pulled back a green hood to reveal the woman's face and neck. Her eyes landed on a pulsing vein at the neck of the woman whose heavy breath was now warm on her face. In no time at all, her teeth had pierced the vein and she pulled blood into her throat until the woman trembled no more.

She had wept over the woman's body: heaving, tearless sobs that would never bring either of them back. She had no knowledge - no reference point for this memory – but she acknowledged that she had always been Godless with a strange lack of regret.

Her memories continued to flow through her at an alarming rate: blood and laughter and a cabin in the sunshine; a man in a doorway seeking shelter from the rain; a beautiful blonde woman…broken, but held so tenderly.

She remembered a man with topaz eyes looking at her like she owned his soul. A small smile played on his lips as he uttered one word like he was reciting the Gospel: "Alice." She saw herself touching his lips, trying to capture his breath with her fingertips and realized that she would give anything to remember this man; her past.

The wind shifted and she was gone. Wild and unfettered and blurring to the west...led by a scent that would surely consume her. The fire was back. She reached a woman and stilled before her. Pushing back a green hood, she sought out the origin of the scent and found it in the pulsing vein at the woman's neck. She felt warm breath on her face and thick, metallic blood flowed down her throat until the woman's heart stuttered and stopped.

Brought back to her senses, she looked down at the woman. Young and blonde and beautiful. Broken and drained and dead. As she wept, she held the body so tightly that bones cracked and shattered under her hands. A final indignity. She wept for this human and for herself. Kneeling on the ground, she looked up at the sky and muttered the first word of this new life: "Alice." She thought of the man with the topaz eyes and felt her soul settle. Because she knew now that he wasn't her past – he was her future.