This is not my favorite that I've done. But, I figured the little guy at least deserved the chance to see the fanfiction kingdom, instead of rotting away in my document folder.
Original characters belong to SMeyer.
So on and so forth...

Even Then

He wouldn't remember it, eleven years later when he first met Leah Clearwater, he would never connect the dots that it was her and Emily playing that day down by the water.

The younger of the two girls that Sam Uley was watching play from the shore of the beach, safely behind the trees and tall grass, was wearing shorts and a little shirt.

The other one was wearing a dress.

The younger one was running into the waves, clapping her hands, then running back again, the one in the dress was watching a spider web.

"Em-lee!" The little one yelled. "Em-lee, look at what I find!" Leah was holding a crab in the palm of her hand.

Emily came over to inspect it. Emily poked the crab, causing it to pinch Leah, where it was otherwise sitting peacefully in her hand.

She gasped in surprise and Emily leaned down to pick it up from the ground.

"I love him." Emily declared, looking at the crustacean with adoring eyes.

Leah only frowned, opting to not point out the injustice of her discovering the crab first, that she only dropped it in the first place because Emily had poked it.

"Oh Leah, I'm going to bring him home!" Emily sounded delighted, and smiled.

The grownups all loved Emily, she was nice and pretty and didn't cause trouble. Leah was cute and a spit-fire, but she had compassion and understanding, something that adults never seemed to miss the chance in passing over.

"Em-lee, you can't he will die without the water!" She knew, because her daddy had explained it all to her before.

"But, he would rather be with me." Emily sounded sure, and Leah didn't bother arguing with her. Someone would make Emily put the crab back before they went home. Leah's mom would never stand for that thing in the house, especially since she was so cranky all of the time now, and eating weird things. And very sensitive when Leah asked why she was so fat.

Leah returned back to the ocean, laughing at the wave's inability to catch her.

And Emily stayed with the crab, who was already beginning to go limp in her hands. "Oh no, it died!" Emily cried out. She dropped it in her despair.

Emily's mom came running over, trying to comfort the screaming child.

Leah picked up the crab, and took it back over to the ocean, nobody noticed what she was doing.

"Go back home." Sam heard her say.

Leah stood up, and Sam was sure she was smiling, although he couldn't see her face, and saw her wave.

Sam went home that night, thinking about those two girls, how different they were. And said he wasn't very hungry when he found out they were having crab that night.

By the next morning the memory would have faded almost completely, and by the next week it would be forgotten wholly.

In fact, the only person who would remember anything about it at all was Leah, who never did pick up the creatures from the water again.