NOTE: THIS IS SET TO TAKE PLACE AFTER ECLIPSE, AND INSTEAD OF BREAKING DAWN. BELLA IS EIGHTEEN, AND IS IN THE MIDST OF THE 'VAMPIRE OR NOT' DECISION.

Beyond What Sparkles

Prologue

Beautiful. Everything here is so beautiful but so… so cold. I reach out my long fair fingers for a still red rose in the blinding light, and relish the velvety smooth texture of its blood-colored petals. Such a sensual thing a rose is, I can't help but think as I continue to run my fingers over its smoothness. Oh, how I could fall asleep in a very rose bed, and blissfully roll around in quintessential beauty.

But something's wrong here. I feel it nudging furiously at my gut, and I know it, because instinct tells me so. And that's when it comes – the sharp feeling of ice coldness slicing through my veins like icicle blades. I tear my hand away from the glimmering rose. So pretty, it is, and at the same time, lethal. I see it now. I see it's thorns now, and for the first time, I am scared of it. Dead scared.

The coldness runs from my hands up to my shoulders, and trapped in claws of ice pain, I fall to the snow ground like a soft doll.

What's this around me? It isn't just snow. Why, it even shines! It sparkles underneath the light. Glitter. Yes, glitter and sparkles – so much of it, and so pretty like the rose, but –

I double over in pain, clutching at myself for lost comfort. The sparkling glitter, the magnificent rose, the soft snow… Why are such beautiful things so painful to my human fingers?

And this world… Where am I? No, this does not look like my world. The sky is white, the ground is white – everything is white! Except for the blood red roses, but even those are too beautiful to be real.

I long to go home! Where is my home, my world? Take me back to warmth. Take me back – I can't stand this cold world any more…