Disclaimer: I tried to legally change my name to Stephenie Meyer, but that doesn't mean I own Twilight or any of its characters.
)O(
My first memory is of seeing Jasper's face in my future; I always knew that he was where my life was headed.
There was a face. For just a second, a second that felt like an eternity, her entire world was composed of a face. Blond hair, pale skin, and red eyes. And strikingly, stunningly, beautiful. She does not know what she is comparing this beauty to, but she knows beyond doubt that this face is unequivocally beautiful.
And then The Face disappears, and she is somewhere else and the world has expanded and grown beyond The Face and she does not know where she is. Even with the world surrounding her, her past consists of The Face.
She thinks of sitting up and she is. Though she does not realize it, the action was done in much less time than it should have, but she does not know of time beyond that of the last few seconds, and her only concern is that of her surroundings.
She takes in the world around her with all senses. It is cold, and dark, and what she sits on (ground her mind supplies) is hard. She sees a light from one direction, and her mind identifies her location as a cave.
She hears the wind blowing plants, hears a bird chirping, and the rustling of wildlife. And just barely within reach of her hearing (she does not yet know how very far away this is), she hears indistinct murmuring and a piercing noise that she cannot identify.
And she smells. Oh, she smells. She smells fox, and deer, and rabbits. She smells dogwood, and azalea, and rhododendron, and honeysuckle, and something unbearably sweet. And abruptly, suddenly, she realizes how very hungry she is.
Before she thinks further, she follows the scent, and as she stands up, she is not longer in the cave. She is outside, by a white building, and surrounded by screaming and that sweet smell, and a taste to match it.
And now she is away from the building, but the screaming and sweetness still surrounds. She is tearing into the creature (person her mind says) that sends off this scent and fills her with this sweetness.
And now she is somewhere else, but is absent the sweetness, but there is a harsh screaming closer than all the others (her own) and there is a horrible burning, and then nothing.
And then she is back in the cave, and an animal instinct, one that knows only the desire to remain alive holds her in place, and again, she is no longer there.
She is in a forest, and she tears into a cougar as she once tore into the person, though the taste is absent (like cardboard she thinks).
She sees The Face again, and she sees other faces, and at the end, she does not feel the emptiness that her mind has now identified as death.
She leaves the cave, and a primal instinct takes over (food, food, food, food), and she runs the building.
Before she emerges, before she hears the screaming and tastes the sweetness, she remembers the nothing and the mantra of her instinct changes, battles.
(Food, survival, food, survival, food, SURVIVALSURVIVALSURVIVAL)
She turns around, and seeks out the cardboard smell, and tears into that.
And again she is gone. The Face is back, eyes tawny gold now and laughing. "Alice." The other faces return. "Nice to meet you, Alice." "How are you, Alice?" "What do you mean, Alice?" Alice, Alice, Alice, Alice, Alice…
She is Alice.
Alice searches, the gnawing hungriness driving her on. The sweetness continues to call for her, but instinct remembers death, and remembers that is taboo. She hunts cardboard. (Survival, survival, survival)
She leaves several times, and soon she realizes that she does not leave, but her mind does. And after several hints of animal arrivals, she understands these visions to be of the future.
Finally sated, she returns to her cave, and wonders what to do, until abruptly, she is caught in a vision.
"Alice," The Face murmurs, and she smiles. "Jasper." She is aware that they are somewhere, but she is absorbed in The Face and then The Face leans down and kisses her and she is excited and blissful and oh-so-happy.
"Jasper." She returns with The Face's name on her lips. And then she remembers what these visions are of, and she smiles because The Face (Jasper, she reminds herself) is her past, but her future too.