A/N: I know I said I wouldn't be starting any new long term writing projects until I finished the ones I already have ongoing, but this just wouldn't leave me alone, so here I am... starting another story while I still have several ongoing. Sorry, not sorry. :) I hope you all enjoy, and for all my TRT Series readers, an update is coming soon, I promise.

ADRIFT

SUMMARY – Bella is an immortal mermaid, and after nearly three centuries wandering the seas alone, running from the pain of her past and the cruelties of humanity, she finds herself drawn to a new land and a new people. Will one little boy be able to remind Bella what it is to really live?

CHAPTER 1

Bella woke to soft sunlight filtering down to her through the murky depths. She'd slept for the night in a makeshift bed of seaweed, wedged deep into the reef, and while the rocks and coral all around her worked well to keep predators away in the night, they failed to block out the light of the morning sun now.

So Bella stretched her arms above her head and quickly began untangling herself from the seaweed, which had managed to thoroughly wrap itself around her waist and tail as she slept.

Her tail…

Bella sighed quietly as she brushed the last of the tangled vines and bulbs from her tail's deep blue scales. Over the centuries, she had grown accustomed to living primarily beneath the water's surface, but to this day, she still missed the feeling of walking on human legs.

There was once a time when she had felt so safe, so free, living among the humans. She had truly been one of them, but that seemed so long ago now.

Bella, or Isabella Marianna Swanson as she had been known back then, was born three hundred years earlier in a tiny village in the Scottish Highlands. Her birth mother was an English woman seeking to escape her abusive husband. She ran from him when she discovered she was pregnant with his child, and six months later, she wandered into the village, starving and terrified. The clan gave her sanctuary and Charles Swanson, a former Englishman himself, and a respected warrior within the clan, took her in and protected her. And just shy of three months later, when childbirth proved fatal, Charles adopted Isabella and raised her as his own. He was the only father she had ever known, and she loved him fiercely.

When Bella was nine years old, Charles married Marie, a young stable hand's daughter. Her father held no title, and she had no dowry to speak of, but Charles loved her and that was enough for them both. Marie considered Bella to truly be her daughter and loved her dearly, even before they were wed. Bella absolutely adored her new mother, and the three of them quickly became a happy little family.

By the time Bella turned fifteen, just six years later, she had four younger brothers, and Marie was pregnant again. They were far from wealthy, but they had a beautiful little home near the center of the village, and their growing family was happy and healthy. Life seemed perfect to Bella.

And then came the night that marked the beginning of the end for the Swanson family. A rival clan raided the village in the night, killing many of their warriors, pillaging the food stores, and setting what was left of the village ablaze.

Charles was killed by the raiders in the attack, and three of Bella's little brothers became trapped when their home was set aflame. They died before anyone could get to them.

Bella narrowly escaped the flames herself, cradling her youngest brother, Duncan, to her chest. Shielding him from the blaze, Bella was badly burned, her left arm and much of her upper back permanently scarred.

Marie, now nearly six months pregnant, escaped the fire, but the stress of the attack, her grief at losing her husband and sons, and her injuries from that night combined to trigger a pre-mature birth, and the tiny baby girl did not survive. Unable to cope with the loss of yet another of her children, Marie took her own life, leaving Bella alone at fifteen years old to protect and care for not only herself, but also little Duncan.

With most of the clan's warriors dead or wounded, and the Laird of the clan recalling all able-bodied fighting men to fight in other regions of the territory, their village was left vulnerable to attack. There were four more raids in the next several months, and by year's end, most of the survivors in the village were sick or starving. Duncan was barely two years old, and couldn't continue to survive under those conditions, so Bella decided it was time to leave their home behind.

Only sixteen years old, Bella had no real means with which to pay for their travels, but she was willing to do anything to keep herself and her brother alive, even if it meant whoring herself in the streets while Duncan slept by the fireside in whatever hole in the wall tavern they were staying in that night. It was a very dark time for Bella, but she stayed strong for her brother; they were all that each other had left…

Finally, almost two years later, they made it to the port of London, and by then she had saved enough to secure passage for herself and Duncan aboard a small merchant ship bound for Marseille, France. It was the fresh start that they both desperately needed, and Bella was excited for the first time in years.

The journey would take nearly three years as the captain intended to stop in nearly every available trading port between London and Marseille, but Bella was thrilled at the prospect of being certain about having a roof over head and food on the table day in and day out without having to sell her body to pay for it.

She wanted to learn about sailing and trading, to learn useful life skills that she could use once they made their new home in France, and she was looking forward to being able to spend lots of time with Duncan. He was four years old, and would be seven by the time they arrived, so she wanted to cherish every moment she had with him while he was still young enough to enjoy such things.

She taught him to read, a skill Charles had insisted on bestowing to her despite its rarity among people of the time. She taught him Gaelic, the language of their people, and a tiny piece of home that he could take with them to France. She told him stories about their parents and brothers so he would never forget them, even if he was robbed of the chance to really know them.

Their time on the high seas was beautiful in its calm normalcy. After so much death and pain and fear, they both craved the absolute beauty of having nothing at all to do. Where the crewmen grew bored on the days between ports, Bella and Duncan couldn't have been more at peace. They were safe, and they were together.

About a year into their journey, an unexpected romance began to blossom between Bella and the first mate, Francis. He was a young man for his station at only twenty-four years old to Bella's nineteen. He was an only child who had lost both his parents at a very young age, and they bonded over their shared grief and understanding.

Before long, it was obvious to everyone aboard that the two were madly in love, and two years into their journey, Francis asked Bella to marry him, an offer which she readily accepted. They made plans to be wed properly in the first church they could find once they landed in Marseille.

And for the first time since her family died, Bella could see a wonderful future laid out before her, a future in which Francis helped her to raise her brother who had become more like her son, and the three of them would build a new home together in a new land, free of the burdens of their pasts.

But the curse that had become her life was not finished destroying her. Just three months before they were meant to make port in Marseille, a vicious storm capsized their ship in the night, and Bella went down with the ship.

She drowned. She died. But she didn't stay dead. Instead, she awoke resting on the sands of the French coast, under nearly a hundred feet of ocean water, with a long scaled tail and huge fin like that of a whale.

She never found out what became of her beloved Francis or her precious Duncan, and it wasn't until nearly eighty years later that Bella discovered the truth of what she was. A mermaid.

She had been wandering the seas alone for decades, stricken with grief and fear, when she had stumbled upon a little girl with fire red hair and an emerald green tail much like her own.

At first Bella had been frightened of this stranger swimming beside her in the depths, but the girl, who she came to know was called Arianna, brought her back to her home. There, in a great undersea cliff, living in the natural caves, were hundreds of other mermaids just like her and Arianna.

She found herself being welcomed into a community of people who didn't judge her or fear her as she had assumed the humans would. They were like her, and they were able to explain the truth of who and what she was.

As it turned out, mermaids were really a type of shape-shifting creature. They could transform their great tails into legs and shed their fins for feet so that they might walk on land, and reverse the transformation when they returned to the sea. Arianna's father, Marvin, told her that some of their kind made permanent homes on land, living among the humans in secret, and that most likely one or both of her parents were mermaids, and passed on the gift to her.

When her ship sank, and she began to drown, her other form made itself known in order to save her. Mermaids were still flesh and blood, and could be killed just like humans, but they could breathe under water, and they healed faster than ordinary humans, so her gift expressing itself was enough to keep her alive.

To understand that she wasn't a monster, and that there were others like her, was something Bella desperately needed, and it helped her to deal with her past and begin thinking about a future. Marvin and Arianna insisted on taking Bella in and helping her to acclimate to her new home, among her people. He reminded her so much of Charles, and she came to care for him very deeply.

She lived with them for nearly twenty years, and they were truly happy together. Though Bella and Marvin were never romantically involved, she found herself filling the role of Arianna's mother and protector, and she loved the little girl with the hair like wild flames as if she were her own flesh and blood.

But the fates were not yet finished with Bella Swanson. The next blow came in the form of a human plague much like the sickness that had swept through Bella's village as a child. A merman named Rex had been living among the humans for years, and upon returning to his people, brought with him the illnesses of those he had met on land.

The plague swept through the cliffs, until the only survivors were Bella and Rex, the two among their people who had lived among humans the longest and were thus able to fight off the sickness.

Wracked with the guilt of what he had unintentionally done to his people, Rex begged Bella to kill him. She hated him for being the reason she had lost Marvin and Arianna, but refused him all the same. She wasn't a killer, and she wouldn't allow this merman to turn her into one.

The next night, Rex antagonized a great beast of a shark by threatening her young, and the shark tore him apart. Bella watched helpless to stop him from her cave in the cliffs.

The memories of that place quickly became too much for her after that, and so she left, never staying anywhere more than a few days, wandering the vast oceans, searching for a place to call home, secretly afraid that she might well be the last of her kind.

And that was how she found herself here in this cold and rocky reef nearly two centuries later, staring down at her deep blue scales and her massive tail fin, dreaming of a time when her life was simpler. A time when she was just Bella, not the last immortal mermaid destined to wander the oceans alone for all eternity. A time when she woke up every morning in the arms of a man who loved her. A time when a little boy she loved with all her heart would jump into bed in the morning and wake her up, all smiles and laughter.

Bella's soul was adrift now, floating aimlessly through the never-ending blue waters. She didn't know how long she would continue on like this, searching for what she had lost in a world alone, but she hoped that someday, she might find a new place to call home, and a new people to call her own.

A/N: I know there has been no clear indication of the time/date in which this story takes place yet, but the Cullens will NOT be featured in this story. Everything should be more clear when I finish Chapter 2.