The Rose in May

Chapter Two: February Hearts

'And she is as fair as the rose in May.' – Geoffrey Chaucer

"Isn't she beautiful?" I said dazedly as I stroked the delicate petals of my rose. Esme was sitting beside me, with one of her hands resting lightly on my shoulder. Her thoughts were going back and forth from thinking that she was somehow dreaming or that I'd gone insane from the many years without a mate.

"She's… really something, Edward," she told me carefully, quite obviously trying not to insult me or my mate, even if her mind was also basically screaming that she thought I was delusional.

"She's so perfect," I said again, bringing her up to my nose and taking a big lungful of air into my, well, lungs, before laying a gentle kiss on the base at the top of her stem.

Rosalie was the first to break the question. "Carlisle?" She began, before blurting out "how exactly is… this," she waved her hand in my direction, "possible?"

For once, Carlisle didn't seem to have an answer, and he said so, too. "I don't really know…" However, he as always looking on the bright side. "But, everything happens for a reason!" He said, clapping his hands once loudly and smiling brightly at me. "If, uh, she's what you want, Edward, then I'm happy for you, son."

I smiled brightly at him. "She's everything I want and more, Carlisle!" I exclaimed happily, looking up at him with what I'm sure were bright eyes. He smiled indulgently at me, and I knew he didn't quite understand, but I also knew that he'd put up with what he deemed as my 'insanity'.

"Well," Alice said carefully, her usually bouncy nature somewhat repressed as she looked into the future, which was now blurry because of some decisions that had yet to be made. "What's her name, Edward?"

"Name?" I asked, looking up at my sister curiously, who just rolled her eyes.

"If she's your imprint, we have to give her a name," she said as if it was common knowledge. "We can't just refer to her as 'Rose', because – well, that's Rosalie's nickname."

I guess it did make sense, and I really should have thought of it. I looked down at my beauty for a moment, before realizing; I'd been calling her Beauty in my thoughts… "Bella," I said firmly, pressing a gentle kiss to her stem just after. "Her name is Bella."

And it definitely felt right; it almost seemed like there was a thrumming feeling coming from the delicate flower that I held carefully in its vase, as if it was happy with my choice of name. I knew that couldn't possibly be true, though; after all, flowers weren't alive in the same sense that my family and I once were, as mammals are. In any case, though, she was my imprint, and I would love her with everything I had in me, even if nobody else understood.

"I think we should decorate her vase a bit, don't you think?" Alice asked a couple of days later, after she'd come in my room with a package of plant food she'd found in Esme's gardening shed. I hadn't even thought to look for anything like that, and I'd been very thankful towards my psychic sister. She was being the most helpful out of my entire family with this entire situation.

"How do you mean?" I asked curiously, wondering how much you could possibly make a vase look nicer than it already was.

"Well, stickers, ribbons – that kind of thing. Just make it a little more deserving for a flower as beautiful as her, I suppose; I think Bella will like it," she told me, and it did make sense in away, however…

"I just have to say that you should make it blue; blue would look nice," I said, nodding firmly to back up my words. Blue would look nice, and it would make the red of her petals and the green of her stem stand out even more.

My imprint was a curious little plant; Esme had told me hesitantly that picked roses usually began wilting in a day or two, but – if anything – my Bella looked healthier than she'd been before I picked her. There was absolutely no sign of wilting; my rose was nowhere near leaving me, and Alice had said that she could still see me holding the same rose in a decade. A rose lasting a decade was completely unheard of, and my family and I couldn't figure it out. I, of course, was extremely glad for whatever was causing this abnormality; it meant I would get to keep my beauty with me for far longer than I'd ever thought possible.

Taking care of her was fairly easy; I doted on her, of course, though. Misting her petals and carefully trimming her growing roots, keeping her water at just the right level, giving her nutrients and sunlight probably more often then was necessarily needed, but it was the only way I could spoil my imprint, and so I did it as much as possible. Esme had given me some pointers for taking care of plants, and everything else I knew about such things had been soaked into my mind via the internet, which was a wonderful thing.

I had placed Bella on a shelf that was in a position to be hit by the morning sun, but not the significantly-hotter afternoon sun, which may dry her out too much. In the afternoon I usually sat outside with her for half-hour cycles.

My family thought I was crazy for doing all of this, but they'd be doing the same if their imprint was a flower.

By the next day, Alice had Bella's vase tastefully decorated in a beautiful shade of deep, midnight blue, and I was right; it offset her colours just right, and looked very sharp against her red vase, as well. I had, once again, thanked my psychic sister profusely, really liking what she'd done with it.

"Edward," she's said sternly, looking exasperated with me after I'd thanked her for the fiftieth time. "You know I like doing this kind of stuff; I'm just glad I had a new project to work on, even if it wasn't a very big project," she shrugged, giving me a hug before she turned to leave.

Before closing my door behind her, she eyed me carefully, and leaned against the door frame. "This rose… she really is your imprint, isn't she, Edward?" She asked carefully, not wanting to insult me.

I nodded at her, and smiled. "At first, I couldn't name the feeling that was pulsing through me, but then I remembered the thoughts that you six have about your mates, and I realized that it was the same. It was frightening, but at the same time it was like I hadn't been whole until I saw her for the first time."

My sister smiled. "That definitely sounds like an imprint to me. I'm happy for you, Edward," she said, and she closed the door gently and ran off to find her mate, thinking of watching a movie with him. I smiled at the shut door, before going to sit on my couch beside the shelf that held my world, content with just watching her, and not a movie.

Not a very informative chapter, was it? Oh, well; I just needed another chapter that explained a little bit of the home-life after Edward imprinted. It's definitely a unique situation, isn't it?

Next chapter you're in for a surprise, let me tell you.

Also, I have recently posted a new story which is kind of a spin-off for another story of mine, Edward's Inferno. It's called Edward's Purgatorio, and you absolutely do not need to read Edward's Inferno before reading it. It's just an alternate universe of that story, and everything you need to know will be explained in Purgatorio. However, if you want to read both of them, go ahead – I won't complain. ;)

Review, please, and remember me.