Broken Dawn

A Twilight Short Story

Chapter Two

Sunrise Glow

"Mom!" My daughter spun through the door, the pale blue blouse Alice had given her accentuating the pale, glowing skin of her gracefully trailing limbs. She sank blissfully onto the black leather sofa that had once stood in Edward's room in the Cullen's huge house in Forks, smiling contendedly. "You'll never believe how school was."

Edward, standing close beside me, our arms linked as they always were when were together, smiled ecstatically.

"Oh, I wouldn't go quite that far, Renesmee. I know I'd believe anything you were inclined to show me." Renesmee's special gift, similar but opposite to her father's, allowed her bring someone inside her head for a short while - in effect, to see what she was thinking. It made for a very... persuasive means of communication.

"Go ahead, honey. Tell me all about your first day of school." I said encouragingly. Not merely her first day of high school, but her first of any school. The stupendous growth spurt Renesmee had undergone from the day of her birth - I shuddered a bit at the memory of how close I'd come to dying, to losing Edward forever - to early this year had kept her out of contact with any humans but Charlie, who wouldn't tell anyone, and the werewolves, who had their own secret to protect.

"Well, first I had Art." She giggled slightly. "The boys were so funny." It wasn't difficult at all for me to to imagine their reactions - it had to be something like mine to seeing Edward the first time. By the partly amused, partly infuriated expression on his face, I was right.

"There was this one boy, named Daniel. He walked me to Biology." Another giggle. "We're doing a project on the genetic variation of wolves this quarter." Edward shared the laughter this time.

""Tell Jacob. I know he'll enjoy that." He said, his bell-like chuckles echoing delightfully off the ice-blue walls.

"Tell me what?" Asked Jacob from the kitchen, a plate of the muffins I'd made early that day casually balanced in one hand. I knew now that Edward had not been kidding about the repulsiveness of human food - not humans as food, the smell of which was only too inviting, but the food humans ate - but leaving Jacob to cook would have been criminal, and besides, I liked it.

"I'm going to be studying you this quarter in school." Renesmee replied, eyeing the muffins distastefully. "Did you have to make human food, Mom? Couldn't I have some blood?" We'd insisted that she practice eating, as opposed to drinking, if she was going to blend in at all in school. I remembered only too well how odd the fact that Edward and his family never ate had been, when I was human.

"Maybe you could bring me in for show and tell. I'm sure the class would be interested." Jacob said, ignoring her blood comment. Like Charlie, he found some things about my daughter easier to ignore than accept.

"Jacob, you know there isn't show and - " Renesmee's protest was cut off by the ringing of Edward's cell phone from where it lay on a coffee table. I was closest, so I reached for it, wondering as I did so if it didn't make more sense to have an O-negative table instead, since only one inhabitant drank coffee, and only infrequently at that.

"Hello?" My voice, though I'd been practicing for almost a decade, came out melodic, as though I were singing to a silent song.

The human voice was a shock after weeks of speaking only to vampires, Jacob, and my daughter. "Is this Bella Cullen?" I confirmed the woman's suspicion, thrilled as usual by my last name. "Hi, this is Patricia Givens, from the school. I'm just calling to invite you to the new parents' orientation dinner tonight. Can you make it?" I glanced at Edward, who nodded casually, grinning.

"Sure, we'll be there. Thanks for thinking of us." I said cheerfully. Knowing, without the slightest possible doubt, that I was as graceful and lovely as Edward had cleared up most of my issues about parties. I idly wondered if there would be dancing.

"Great! See you later, then."

" 'Bye."

"I hope you don't mind." Edward's velvet voice was slightly apologetic. "I just really want to hear their thoughts when you walk in."

"I expect you to tell me all about it." I said , reaching up to kiss him. Jacob and Renesmee rolled their eyes, my daughter looking delightfully like Edward when she did so.

"Get a room, you two." Jacob griped jokingly from the chair he'd occupied.

"Jacob," I pointed out, "It's our house." He gave a wolf whistle.

"Very funny." He said.

"You too." I replied, then we both smiled. I liked this Jacob much more than the bitter, cold one who'd haunted my last few months in Forks.

"Actually, I'm rather thirsty." Edward remarked. "Shall we step out for a bit?" Our own private euphemism for the hunting trips we both enjoyed...since we didn't necessarily spend all our time hunting.

"Sure, just so long as remember to check for humans." I made the same joke every time we went hunting, a reference to our first excursion.

"Oh, can I come too? I'd rather have elk than those muffins. No offense, Mom." Renesmee asked, getting up. Jacob followed, as he always did.

"None taken. I would, too." I was a bit disappointed that Edward and I wouldn't be alone, but only a bit - Jacob and Renesmee both had to sleep.

--

I'd gotten better at hunting; now I didn't have to rummage through the garment bags Alice kept me well supplied with after each trip. I was grateful that I could escape the chore of sorting through the fashionable nightmares she preferred for a pair of jeans and a t-shirt, but Edward's reaction to the improvements sometimes made to the clothes by speed, vegetation, and unfriendly animals was usually enjoyable. My daughter had been hunting since about a month after her birth, and so was almost as good at it as Edward, who managed to drink his fill from the elk herd Renesmee sniffed out without staining his white shirt. I wasn't quite so lucky, and there was a small patch of red at my collar. It wasn't too bad, sort of like if, as a human, I'd spilled cinnamon on myself and had had to spend the day with it's aroma filling my nose.

Jacob, of course, had the biggest mess of any of us; his muzzle was coated in sticky red patches that accentuated his nose-burning scent. As a wolf, he wasn't used to being clean. He excused himself to wash in a stream we'd passed, and Renesmee followed, curious about what a fish would smell like. Edward and I had to return to town for the party. It felt odd to return from a hunting trip to go straight to a human event, but I really was looking forward to it. Edward, the product of an earlier century, was looking forward to obtaining independent proof of my beauty for me. When he mentioned this, in a low voice while he softly played with my hair, I'd turned away from the mirror where I'd been contemplating our reflections - one tall and bronze-haired, with a face like an angel, and one shorter, with long dark tresses that waved about a face that looked like it belonged next to the other - and kissed him fervently.

"Later, Bella darling," He'd said, and hoisted me into his arms and through the door to where my Ferrari was parked in the garage. I let him drive, the better to concentrate on his face, which had lost none of it's allure over the years.

Edward's driving, still faster than my own, if by much less, got us to the party almost on time, for all that we'd left five minutes before it was scheduled to start. While he knocked on the door - no doubt concentrating very hard on not breaking it down by accident - I composed my face into a look of mild excitement. It wasn't as much of a chore as it would have been before I was changed, since I no longer dreaded any form of attention, but being breathtaking and coordinated had only cleared up most of my issues.

The woman who answered the door had clearly never seen a vampire before. She stood flabbergasted, her mouth hanging open in an extremely unattractive fashion, short strawberry-blonde hair shifting in the slight breeze. With a visible - and highly amusing - effort, she pulled some semblance of herself together long enough to stand aside and say, in an extremely unsteady voice:

"Um, wo - won't you come in? I'm Melanie." I glared playfully at Edward, whose lopsided, stunning grin was not helping things, then smiled warmly at Melanie.

"Hi, Melanie. I'm Bella Cullen, and this is my husband (I still thrilled to the word after a decade of marriage) Edward. Our daughter is Renesmee."

"My Daniel did mention meeting someone named Renesmee. I think they have Biology together." Anyone but another vampire wouldn't have noticed the slight tightening of Edward's grin. I giggled slightly at his Charlie-esque reaction. I'd never thought I'd see the day when the two of them would have anything in common, but it had apparently arrived.

"It's nice to know you, Melanie." I said warmly. She seemed like someone who, were she not warm and appetizing, would be extremely easy to get along with. Sort of like my old friend Angela, who I still regularly exchanged emails with. She thought Edward and I were living in France, since we couldn't have escaped a visit had she known we were still in Washington State. Edward wrapped an arm around me, and we stepped into the house. All conversation stopped as soon as we stepped over the threshold.

"Hello, Ladies and Gentlemen. I'm Edward Cullen, and this is my wife Bella." Edward's velvet voice slid through the room like a wave of pure delight.

"It's wonderful to meet all of you." I chimed in, trying to imitate Esme's way of making herself instantly lovable. By the welcoming smiles we got back, it seemed to work.

To my disappointment, there was none of the dancing that would have allowed me to make use of my vampire grace to whirl about the floor with Edward, but I still felt marvelous as we strolled through the parts of the house and garden where the party was taking place, our arms about each other. It wasn't until after, in the Ferrari on the road to our house, that he let the growl he'd been repressing all night escape in a threatening rumble from deep within his chest.

"Edward? What's bothering you?" I asked, concerned.

"Most of the male population of this town, for starters. If you knew what they'd been thinking all evening..." He let his voice trail off menacingly.

"Well, you were looking for independent, unbiased confirmation that I'm as lovely as you keep saying. I'd say we found it."

"There's no doubt about that."

"Well, surely there's something to celebrate, then?" I smiled suggestively, using my newly - proven loveliness to best advantage.

"I love you, Bella."

"I love you too, Edward."