New story time! Hooray! Bella and Jasper talk Thoreau. For those of you who don't know who he is (I thought he was pretty well-known, but maybe I was wrong), Thoreau was a nineteenth-century American philosopher and writer. By far his most famous book is Walden, which is about him living in the woods alone. Off we go!

The room was very calm. Sunlight shone in through the windows and cast the little dust motes into even greater contrast from the air; probably even Bella's eyes could see them.

Alice sat beside me, silken head resting on my shoulder, one hand on my thigh. I glanced down at her every now and again, and her eyes were closed, lips parted slightly, as though sleeping. I knew she was breathing in my scent to help her concentrate as she picked through the visions that flooded her mind.

With Alice so close, her loving emotions filling me and multiplying my own tenfold, it was hard to focus on my book. There was only one author who could keep me focused now. Henry David Thoreau.

Alice was incredulous that, after so many times of picking through my dilapidated copy of his works, I could still be entertained by him, but I was. Though truthfully, entertained was the wrong word. I did not read Thoreau for enjoyment; I read him for answers.

Edward sat at his piano, playing a delicate, tinkling song that, for once, was not Bella's lullaby. Bella sat beside him on the bench, hands clasped in her lap. Her hair was down, flowing loosely over her shoulders. It covered her neck, and I was glad of that. Though it seemed to me that maybe the dry ache of my throat was less pronounced than it usually was while Edward's human sweetheart was around, it still couldn't hurt if I was unable to see the pulse beating in her neck, counting out the blood that was just a few layers of skin away...

Stop it, Jasper... I told myself, and I was very pleased when I was able to force myself away from the tantalizing scent of her skin. Maybe I was finally getting some of the self-control the rest of my family found so easily? Or maybe I was just very used to her mouth-watering presence in the five months she'd been with Edward.

I turned my attention back to Thoreau.

I had read every thing he had ever written - the broken spine, well-marked pages, and worn cover of my book could attest to that - and still, he had given me no answers. I had found so many passages I could apply to my life but still, that didn't seem to be enough.

I had gone to college four times in my time with the Cullens. Three of those four, I had majored in philosophy. I would have majored the fourth time, too, but it might have been noticed - a Jasper Cullen majoring four times in the same subject at four very prestigious schools in the span of thirty years? So I had majored in English the last time, hoping to gain new insight into other authors I hadn't studied so worshipfully but still made the occasional comment on human nature, such as Steinbeck. Though, if you wanted to be precise, it wasn't human nature I was interested in but life, or existence, itself.

But unfortunately, Thoreau, nor any other author I had found, had any answers for me - at least, none that I had found so far. I had searched his work hundreds of time over, looking for double meanings in every word, every phrase, every idea - and found nothing.

Still I looked, because still I yearned to know the answers to my questions - those "big" ones that only an elite few even tried to tackle, but personalized to fit my somewhat abnormal life. Why did I have Alice? Why should I follow Carlisle's lifestyle? And most importantly, why could Maria and others like her kill so mercilessly, while my conscience would plague me for months after I made a any sort of human kill? What I wanted to know even I wasn't sure, but there was something, some elusive pull that kept me coming back to Thoreau. Was it all the violence that I had suffered and inflicted that made me so philosophical now?

Aim above morality. Be not simply good, be good for something, the tiny print on the page said. Was I interpreting that the wrong way when I applied it to my new lifestyle? I tried to be good on my own, before I had met Alice, but that obviously hadn't worked. Then she had come, and suddenly I had something to be good for other than my own damaged, immune conscience. She had been the reason I had started to succeed at abstaining. How many times had I seen her beautiful face shatter when she took in the vile new color of my eyes? That had helped me, during the school day, helped me to hold my breath, to find the will to stay strong and resist. Alice had shown me how to aim above morality.

Never smother your sorrow, I read, flipping ahead, maybe even to a new book or essay, it didn't matter, but tend and cherish it till it comes to have separate and integral interest. To regret deeply is to live afresh. Yes, I felt regret. Deep, hollow regret that comes when you've killed thousands of nameless, faceless individuals who will never live, nor laugh, nor love again. And I had certainly dwelled on my sorrow long enough. How often had Alice woken me from a daze in which I was drowning in shame and guilt and comforted me with her soft caresses and gentle words? Yet I could never be sure that all my sorrow and regret would never 'come to have separate interest'.

I was about to read the next sentence, but Alice's voice, as it so often did, cut into my thoughts and shattered my morose musings with its clear beauty.

"It's all right, Bella. You can ask him." I looked up, startled. Alice was looking at Bella, amused. Bella's face was red, and my throat reacted to that, maybe more than it should have if I really was getting better at desisting human blood. I felt my muscles tense automatically, and I worked to loosen them as Alice rubbed my kneecap soothingly.

Edward's playing cut off. He put his arm around Bella and said, "What is it?" He obviously assumed that it was himself to whom Alice was referring. I was just about to return to my book when Bella spoke.

"Er, I..." she stuttered, glancing over at me nervously. "I was just wondering what Jasper was reading."

I didn't know what she was so embarrassed about. Obviously she had already made up her mind to ask me, or Alice wouldn't have been able to call Bella out about it. Perhaps she had been wavering over the decision for a while. Maybe it was the bluntness that bothered her. Well, she would have to get used to Alice's way if she was going to stay with Edward long.

But it was curious that she had cared enough, had even noticed enough, to ask me anything. All the humans I had ever come into contact with had been dull, unobservant, and uncaring - most of them probably wouldn't have noticed that I even had a book out, much less care enough to ask me what it was.

Or maybe the reason she had asked was because she was too scared of me not to go through with it. Her original intention was just an errant decision. There was a mild frightened undertone to her embarrassment, but those two emotions often came together in humans. And why would Bella be scared of me? I was no different than Edward - though, of course, she had heard, and maybe even seen, for all I knew - myself and Emmett killing James that day in the ballet studio.

It could have been just that I was a vampire in general that scared her, I supposed, but she wasn't scared of Edward or Carlisle or even Emmett. I was fairly sure I hadn't done anything too frightening this summer, nothing that the others hadn't done, too. I had moved too quickly many a time, of course, but only in the house, and my skin had glittered in the light reflected in from the windows, but according to Edward, she found this beautiful, not frightening.

Perhaps she was scared because Edward had told her I was to be feared. Not directly, of course. He would never be so discourteous. But if he told her I found our 'vegetarianism' difficult...

Something that had been annoying Alice recently was how I over thought things, and I caught myself doing it now. Did it really matter why Bella had asked, or why she was afraid? Did I really have to run through every plausible theory in my mind trying to find the answer? No, Alice would say, and you'll probably find out soon enough anyway. In fact, I know you will. I smiled at the thought.

Whatever the reason for her fear, I saw Edward's arm tighten around Bella as he read back her emotions from me. Bella tried to relax into Edward's shoulder while she waited for my answer, but her battle wasn't going so well. I helped her out, almost without thinking about it. Edward mouthed a thank you from over her head.

Alice nudged me, and I realized that I had been so preoccupied with Edward and Bella's emotions and my own theories about them that I had forgotten to answer.

Smiling a little ruefully, I held up The Complete Works of Henry David Thoreau.

"Thoreau?" Bella squeaked, barely loud enough for a human to hear. She couldn't suppress the little grimace that flitted across her face, and though her face smoothed out in just half a second, her emotions did not.

"Is that a bad thing?" I asked, amused.

"No, no....it's just, I..."

"Bella, have you ever read Thoreau?" I asked somewhat condescendingly. Many humans, I knew, were turned off from him just because of his reputation as being a philosopher. They established that word with boring and hard to understand in their minds, while in reality, Thoreau's writing was not so hard to get through. For a vampire, at least, though I supposed that the two minds were so very different from each other that it was hard to compare them.

"Yes," Bella said indignantly, and her chin came up slightly as the rest of her embarrassment evaporated and was replaced by indignity. "We read Walden in tenth grade English. And I did a little more reading outside of school."

"And did you like him?"

"Well..." She bit her lip, looked down at her lap, twisted her hands together before answering. Such human responses. "He seemed a bit too long-winded, you know?"

In truth, I had never found Thoreau very long-winded at all, but I politely agreed. "Nevertheless, he had some good advice. Would you disagree with, 'It is best to avoid the beginnings of evil?'"

"That's not a very original idea," she frowned. "People have been pointing that out for hundreds of years."

I laughed aloud. "So they have. But what about, 'Nature is full of genius, full of the divinity; so that no snowflake escapes its fashioning hand'?"

I was showing off, just a little bit. I knew Thoreau like the back of my hand, and I wanted to show Bella that. I could quote Thoreau all day, and back up the quotes to boot. I highly doubted she could do the same.

But Bella surprised me. "Thoreau wasn't always right, though," she disagreed, still wary. "What about 'Old deeds for old people, and new deeds for new'? You're old. I don't know how old, but old enough. Do you think that just because of that, you should not be allowed to do anything new?"

Edward and Alice laughed together, harmonizing with each other. No one had ever been either interested or brave enough to stand up to me on this point, and Bella's logic was sound.

This was a new side of Bella, one I had never seen before. In Phoenix, she had been nearly silent, speaking very quietly only when spoken to, never voicing her own opinion except in those two outbursts when she expressed her concern over our family's safety. I hadn't known there was another side to Bella beside the meek side, though Edward had sworn there was one. I wondered if this was what she was like all the time with him.

On a side note, I was very pleased how easy it was to talk with her normally. Much easier than it had been in Phoenix, where every motion I made, every breath I took, every word I spoke had to be measured with how much self-control I had left. That had been exhausting. This was enjoyable.

"Well, I'd be the first to admit that Thoreau doesn't always get everything right," I replied amiably. 'Beware of any enterprises that require a new set of clothes.' Obviously, that's not true," I said, resting my hand on top of Alice's hair. She elbowed my side and stuck out her tongue.

Bella laughed nervously.

Silence for a moment, unlike the one a few minutes ago. This one was awkward, pregnant. After a few agonizing moments, Edward took his arm from Bella's shoulder and began playing the same piece again, picking up effortlessly from where he had left off.

I went back to my Thoreau, but I found it hard to concentrate. Had I finally found my match in literature with this little human girl? I was always thirsting for someone to talk to about my philosophy. Edward and Carlisle both found philosophy a dry subject, and were both too stuck in their own convictions, while it seemed Bella found it dry too, she at least seemed willing to talk to me about it, and was far more open-minded.

The room sank back into restful peace, and Alice nestled her head once more upon my shoulder, and the afternoon was relaxing once more.

Thanks to TheSingingGirl for the awesome betaing, as usual (You're right, that word should be in the dictionary). To show my thanks, I wrote you a limerick:

There once was a Girl named TheSinging,
And she did not like the phone ringing
So one day she came home
And she beat up that phone
And now it makes just a small dinging.

Haha! Don't you love it!

Also, the name of the story is after the Flyleaf song, which is really beautiful if you haven't heard it. But I don't really think it's the best fit, so if you have any better ideas, tell me. Ideas about future chapters, too.

Review, please!