Disclaimer: As I am not Stephanie Meyer, nothing you recognize is mine. No copyright violation is intended.
Sometimes I watch the moonlight slide shadows along the wall and try to remember what it was to dream. I usually end up churning one memory over in my mind—if one can call it a memory. Perhaps it is closer to the frantic invention of a hopeful imagination, but I like to tell myself that it remains as a whisper from my last dream: a flash of white-gold light, hovering, warm and breathing, before my eyes.
I can hear Carlisle downstairs tonight. Playing Mozart, I think. For the thousandth time in eighty years, the same thought rips across my mind and I feel my throat tighten.
Too often, I watch the wind rattle the dark outline of thin fingers that obscures my window and try to imagine what my dreams might be, were I able to close my eyes and see more than perfect darkness. Then the shadows of my wished-for nightmare crawl over softly and breath, unwelcome and uncaring, on my ears and eyes.
()
Slow, rattling coughs, the uncomfortable heat of too many stationary bodies; my stomach aches and I am floating within myself; there is a white, soft fog around the edges of my eyes. I can hear her breathing next to me. I take a breath, feel a deep ache in my lungs, and tell myself that her breath is enough for now as my body shakes quietly, grows weak. My lips are dry; the room is hot, much too hot, why won't someone open the window? I move my hand and feel my skin sting from the touch of my own fingers.
She isn't only breathing, anymore; I can hear her voice now. I don't bother to understand. I know my mind couldn't hold words in this fog. Up and down, waves of notes, she's talking to someone, and I am close enough to hear her. That is enough.
I take another breath and gain less air than I expected. Another, and I fight harder for it this time. There's something in my lungs, I think. I inhale again. It hurts.
I cannot hear her anymore. I cannot hear her breathing—but perhaps it has been drowned into silence by my own breath in my ringing ears. When did the ringing begin? Another deep breath, and my lungs feel full, but there is still less air than I expected.
I am a little startled by my own voice in my ears. My throat is soar from the lack of use, but something cold on my face makes me cry out. It melts the heat on my skin faster than I could've hoped—someone has opened a window at last, perhaps…but the rest of me is still warm. I hear something again-- soft, gentle, sad. Someone is shushing me.
The breeze on my neck sends a chill down my side. I can smell something—jasmine and roses, certainly, and maybe lilies, as well. Someone has opened the window—flowers blooming in the cold. A lazy thought struggles to the front of my conscious mind: our jasmine never blooms in winter. That is not its nature. What sort of strange night is this?
The cold draws nearer to my throat. I wonder if I am closer to the window than I imagined. I try for another breath and finally manage more air, but it is still painful. No, even more so. My lungs sting, and the strain extends to my throat. There is a slow, sharp pricking in my skin. I feel my breath losing force. Then I clinch my jaw shut as the pain grows larger, begins to growl and sing, spread through my body like slow-moving water. I find the will to clinch my hands as the burning, stabbing jolt in my flesh spikes. My skin burns from the inside now; I know the feeling. What was… what…yes. It is like the burn of frost bite. I have only known it once before now. December, two years ago, Father took me hunting…no, fishing, I neglected my gloves because it was easier to bate the hook without them.
That pain is nothing; it refuses to be recalled beside the slow-moving, breathing, growing burn of this new creature: this beating, pulsing reality that trickles through me and tears at my flesh as it moves. I can almost see it, a thick, clear poison that shaves off bone and sears marrow. It twists inside of me, and all I can do is hold onto the blanket under my hands and listen to it sing.
()
I shake my head and look to the side of the window, feeling myself swallow—once, twice. My imagination fades back into quite darkness and my throat loosens. The moonlight is enough to illuminate a curled corner. I smile as I lean over and touch the smooth tape holding my page to the wall. It's been there too long; soon the glue will not hold anymore. I push myself out of the chair in front of the window and collect a pen a notebook from the desk, and then remove a thin paperback from the small bookshelf to the right in one motion. By the time I open the door, she is standing on the other side, the graceful stillness I have learned to take comfort in giving her a soft glow in the bright hall lights.
"So, now you're too impatient to wait for a knock?" She tilts her head to the right for a moment, and offers a small half-smile. I admire the gesture for a moment before returning it.
"I knew you were coming, anyway," I answer. "Why waste the time?"
The corners of her mouth flicker upward and I relish the feeling as my heart leaps. She doesn't smile as much as I'd like anymore. I like to take little opportunities to change that wherever I find them.
Now she looks like she's trying to suppress a smile as she studies my face.
"What's the matter?" I feel myself smiling, too.
"I am determined to refrain from making the hideously obvious statement that that question invites."
It takes me only seconds to realize what she means, and in the end we are both laughing as I follow her toward the stairs.
()
Rosalie proceeds into the living room and takes her seat next to Eseme. I stay back in the entrance and listen, watching Carlisle play. Now I remember the piece—Piano Concerto 23. At the end of the first movement, he looks up and turns toward me. I look him in the eye for a full minute as he smiles at me and we listen to the silence.
I keep my face expressionless until his smile begins to falter into observant concern. I can feel Eseme watching me, too and Alice has already risen halfway off of the couch, her cautious eyes studying my face Jasper is already standing, waiting to move forward if I offer even the slightest invitation. Even Rosalie is staring. My eyes flit over each face for a half-second before reclaiming Carlisle's eyes.
"Your C's are flat."
Everyone realizes what I've said at the same moment, but Carlisle is the first to start laughing. He moves over on the bench and touches the space next to him. I deposit my books on top of the piano, and accompany him for the next two movements.
()
Carlisle doesn't believe that I prefer his playing to my own, but it's true: no matter how much joy one takes in the feeling of keys under skin, sometimes it is better for the mind to listen to someone else's hands. I leave the bench after the piece is over, staying close but leaving him to play Schubert's Impromptu No. 4 alone. I let him feed my ears as I lean over a decidedly musty copy of Hamlet. I hold the book open with one hand and maneuver the pen across bleach-white lines of sweet-smelling paper with the other.
I can feel Jasper and Emmett leaning over either shoulder, but I elect not to explain my behavior. The others are very understanding about most of my quarks, but if I tried to describe the reasoning behind this one, they may not appreciate it as I do. Besides, everyone needs their own, private joke every once in a while.
In the middle of Chopin's Nocturne F., I excuse myself from the living room to complete my little project. I leave the book and pen on the desk and tear the new sheet out before removing the old one, lifting from the bottom so that the weak tape comes off, too. I look away long enough to dispose of the dirty, turning bit of notebook paper before folding the new sheet so that only the filled lines are visible. I press four long strips of clear tape into the wall, one along each edge, then one smaller one at each corner. The words stand rich and dark against white under a milk-white, liquid moon. That should hold for another five or ten years. I allow myself a smile at the simple job before returning downstairs, stopping to listen to the door close behind me. I can take one evening out of ten thousand to spend with my family. The lines will be there the next time I am sitting at the window and need an ironic chuckle.
To die, to sleep no more—and by a sleep to say we end
The heartache, and the thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir to.
To die, to sleep--
To sleep—
Perchance to dream. Ay, there's the rub!
For in that sleep of death, what dreams may come.