Flourishing Minds
AN: This one-shot came about after I started thinking about modern parapsychology and human anatomy, neither of which I know anything about. Enjoy the concepts. Someone can feel free to write a longer fic on it; please notify me. Turandot is wonderful inspiration. Thanks go to the patient phantom-writer3739 for pre-publication assistance. Recognizable characters and concepts are property of their originators.
Appears an elderly, uncertainly countenanced, shining man in the darkness, sitting: "Direct your attention with me, and see…"
The darkness lifts, and the infinite dimensionality of what is shifts into view…moments, days, eons pass before the chaotic scramble of sensations settles into a recognizable form.
Doors. Tiers, stacks, twists, racks of wide, narrow, plain, filthy, bloody, shining, or intricate doors; and yet the intrinsic nature of these doors is the pure essence of a gateway: each encapsulates a life.
These lives, whether stinking of a murderer's malice or wooing the senses with the beauty of a mother's bliss, make up the web-lace of what once was.
The man speaks once more. "The mind is only limited by itself, but growth is a layered concept."
Curiosity becomes predominant; this seems to be unrelated to earlier lessons.
Suddenly, he is standing.
Instant arrival. Another immeasurable period pass in the perusal of the door. This gateway, smelling of flowers, blood, and love, was happy and long. With the application of attention, the door opens, as does a view of she whose tale this is. Receiving the lesson should be quick.
This is a compression of one of the tales of the web.
~ \ / ~
Bella was growing old. Not decrepit-old, but in the blossoming sort of way that differentiates a richly loved and greatly privileged woman from an innocent and untouched girl. Her mind grew also, branching out into patterns adorned with ornaments, forming a construction intricate, and marvelous to the touch.
Edward, of course, was ecstatic. His insistence on the retention of her humanity was vindicated by her maturation. However, she had worn him down to the point that he acquiesced to her refusal to go past twenty-two, that being five years older than his permanent state.
The fact that her assets had been enhanced by time was a minor perquisite of its passage. Of course, he would never be motivated by such petit concerns: she was beautiful no matter her attributes. Still, the fact remained that the incidence of (oh so carefully staged!) sexual encounters had risen from two per day to the astonishing median of six. This limit was imposed on a joint decision that her body simply could not take more—she still insisted on being productive, regardless of the fact that anything she could do in a day could be done in less than fifteen minutes by her adoring husband. And productivity did not consist of spending the day in constant post-coital cuddling.
With the familiarity of two years of flirting and two long years of happily consummated marriage, her formerly walled and buttressed mind was becoming more and more apparent to him. Not that he could read her yet; it was merely that a texture, a weave, was evident.
He, being the all-knowing master of the mental universe, was convinced that he was merely adapting his ability to her mind.
In actuality, her humanity and his presence in that humanity had removed the reason for her internal suppression. The insecurity and attentiveness to detail that had come about through her comparisons to and care for her mother were disappearing in the wake of her husband's constant adoring attentions. Caring for people who could be troubled to carry their own weight in most endeavors (or more, as their physical capability was much more than her own) also contributed to the removal of the debilitating unsureness.
Her leg muscles would have atrophied from constantly being carried, except for two activities. Edward greatly appreciated dancing, having been brought up in a society where mass media was not the primary source of entertainment. Helping matters was her love of her newfound grace on and off the dance floor.
The sex was a great assistance to strength, if not control.
Putting aside all matters physical, her increasing self-esteem and still mutable human brain were changing her latent psychic ability, bringing it to life and modifying it. The constant presence of a soothsayer and a thought leech had their own, separate, effects on the potential.
Only Carlisle and Jasper had suspicions, and they were still obscured from the magnitude of the changes due to lack of communication. Newlyweds. Insatiable vampire newlyweds (or one of them) to boot.
~ / ~
One morning brought the world that was balanced on Edward's shoulders crashing to the ground.
He heard her.
A dream was taking her and shaking her (scantily clad) form with fear. The abandonment nightmares had all but ceased with the self-confidence of marriage and devotion, but they recurred periodically.
One flash, a giant red-brown wolf facing off with a vicious image of himself, thrust itself into his head with shattering power, complete with terror and loss. On top of his ever present sadness at his years-old foolishness, he felt her ripping, tearing despair.
Hours later, still reeling under the effects of her no longer dormant influence, he was able to move. A new fear caught him: what would this mean for his precious Bella?
~ \ ~
Carlisle had no wisdom to give his son, beyond his suspicions. No one had ever documented the growth of human talents, or examined—scientifically and verifiably—vampire abilities.
All that Jasper could add was that the underlying miasma of greyness that had surrounded Edward's wife had muted and mutated into a bright flush, an aurora of certainty and purpose. He posited that married and mated life agreed with her—humans change with such facility, and Edward's influence on her life was great (as evidenced by her emotional implosion on separation)—so much that her growth took many forms.
Edward and Bella did not communicate on the subject. On his side, clinical insanity and overprotection seized his desire to share with her and strangled it. For her part, the dreams were only slightly different than they had been; she saw no reason to share something as minor as feeling like she was mentally sandblasted in the morning. Worrying him was not to be done—was he not blissful? Was he not worthy of some peace and happiness after near a century of enduring contentment, at best?
And so months passed, and a rift grew from the secrets that neither knew they were keeping.
~ \ ~
The fateful autumn arrived with the cold east wind, and Bella was adamant that she be changed. So, in the fullness of time, Edward did as he had reluctantly agreed three years past, and bit her.
She was pained beyond childbirth's agony for the space of days, but loved her adolescent husband throughout with the unwavering devotion of a tried soul. And when she arose from her deathbed, magnificent and terrible beyond reckoning, he found her lucid and controlled as none he had ever seen.
Her red eyes looked beyond his face and saw the darkness and the light that motivated and restrained him. Smelling the love and desire he had for her, she cared for him as mates care for mates.
As they climbed, fed, fell, and sated themselves in each other, she felt the shape of secret fears in his mind. She also found that she had hands in this new place: she reached out and took the secrets for her own. Having taken, she understood, even beyond his own understanding (which was laughably incomplete).
Sadly, with the unchanged humility of her former, human, self, she asked him about the confidences he had kept.
The shame he felt at her gentle reproaches was matched only by the bright, burning curiosity that made him a perfect counterpoint to his father's more rigorous investigative tendency. His feeble attempts to hide this were easily thwarted by his lover's mind.
She forgave him, of course, as she always had. Her marriage and change had been entered fully knowledgeable of the nature and inclinations of the man to whom she was binding her life. The expectation of constant mistakes was something she learned from her stories, and the longsuffering she learned from her parents' inability to adequately care for themselves kept her aware.
All of this was now amber-frozen in the vibrant stone of vampirism.
Emmett was (very briefly) less than happy; yet another, even more effective, finder of hidden things had been added to the happy commune that made the Cullens. Of course, he soon saw the advantages—Alice's plots were now impossible, if the often-compliant Bella could be convinced to divulge them.
And so the Cullen family grew in knowledge and prosperity: love, life, and centeredness from their Bella made them seamlessly introducible to any society, even that of the curious but resolutely obtuse humans.
~ _ ~ _ ~
Centuries and millennia may pass; powers and knowledge change, grow, die, and live again; but family never dies. The Volturi, weakened by their futile confrontation with the benevolent and blameless Cullens, may fall to the reinforced Romanians, who in turn are viciously destroyed by a massed covenant of their lupine once-allies. Humans may discover vampires and find them fearful, discovering weapons and training soldiers in their use, but ultimately having to accept a truce with an enemy that can parasitize the best of them.
And the Cullens may become respected, granularized by conflict and compassion, but always sintered again by the love that bonded them these many years. Increase comes; a dying shrapnel-mutilated survivor, a blue-eyed waif depressed below the threshold of warmth, the rump of an eradicated threat, and others. None bound, all loved: none perfect, but all humane. For bridging the worlds with their beneficent actions and constant charity, those that do not adore them at least trust them.
Each may lead in some fashion, but Carlisle, Edward, and Bella lead the rest. Carlisle the mind, Edward the senses, and Bella the heart; their family supports them, as do the humans and the regulated remnants of the paranormal wars. The Cullens may spread wide and deep, respected and loved.
The ultimate war may come, and none are exempt, not even the peaceable neutrals: all are coerced by one means or another.
~ / \ ~
"And as they lived together, so did they die. The judgment that was levied upon their variegated souls was lenient, for the love they shared." The old one speaks, interrupting the blurred narrative. For the first time, some feeling enters his voice: jubilance? reverence?
In a place that contains wonders beyond wonders, this untouchable love sits above them all, stunning in its simplicity and ineffability.
All by the changing of a mind.