EPOV

"Where is she now?" Bella asked again.

"Just three or four miles away," I replied patiently.

She had asked the same question nearly fifty times, but I couldn't be cross with her for that. She was, after all, a tender-hearted mother who cared deeply for our little girls. If our circumstances were reversed and Bella was the one following Brook, I know for certain that I would be asking just as much, if not, more.

"Is it three or is it four?" she asked with concern. "A difference of a mile is a long distance for a little girl, and I don't like being off by an inch." None of us liked not knowing exactly where she was, but I had to shrug my shoulders apologetically because the fact was that I just didn't know.

Bella, Esme, Carlisle, Alice, Emmett, Rose and I all sat around Brook, who once again lay sprawled on the floor. Alice and Esme had already cleaned up the shards of her plate and glass that shattered around her. She was carrying them to the sink to rinse them off when her little body fell to the ground, only to be separated for a time from her spirit. As far as any of us could imagine, that's what it must have been. Her mind, her spirit, or whatever one would decide to call it- it wasn't in there. She wasn't in her physical body. Yet, when she was outside of her body, I could follow her. Sometimes she would pass beside a mirror or a pool of water. If she would take the time to glance, she would see her reflection. How that was possible, I had no idea; none of us could figure that one out. However it may have happened, the fact was that when she stared into her reflection she was the same Brook in form. She still had wide brown eyes and long brown waves half way down her back. She looked as if she were her body and as her body grew or changed with time, so did her spirit. Each time I followed her outside of herself, when she noticed her likeness, I was in awe. All of this simply begged the question: Was I, in fact, looking at my own daughter's soul?

I watched where my daughter's thoughts took her. I watched as she walked alongside a slender, winding creek that wasn't too far from our home. Though how far she was along its way, I wasn't absolutely sure. She was moving southward presently, but that was all I knew at this point. She would stop every now and then to pause and look around at the trees or if she heard an owl hoot or the footsteps of a deer. She was a little afraid because she hadn't been this way before. She was wondering if she could find her way back, but she already knew that she would find a way. I wasn't sure how it happened, but when her body and mind were ready to reconnect, they just would. She would be pulled out of wherever she was and return to us, whether she wanted to or not. She hadn't learned how to willingly leave or willingly return yet.

Alice was working on coming up with ways that Brook and Catie could exercise their abilities. Her guidance and the emotional support and understanding of the family was invaluable for children in their circumstance, but even though they had more confidence in themselves now and learned to not fear when their talents "happened," they were still not able to consciously harness them yet. We all had faith that in time, they would grasp onto how to do it. Our faith in them gave them faith in themselves.

Alice and Rose wrapped their arms around my worried wife. They guided her to the couch in the living room so that they could try to take her mind off of the stressful situation here in the kitchen. Esme had moved into the living room already to take Jen's phone call. Jake's wife had called to ask her for motherly advice with her first pregnancy. Esme prided herself on knowing many valuable things as far as carrying children was concerned. Even though it was something that she was no longer able to do herself, she invested her time into classes and books to help the blossoming generation of mothers around her. Jen was due within the month. She was beginning to have a difficult time sleeping because her mommy-tummy had become so out of proportion compared to the rest of her body and the boy she was carrying kept her up most of the night with his nonstop kicking habits. Everyone else thought it was cute. To her, I guess, it was cute at first too. That was the first night. The following two weeks grew considerably less adorable to her as she lost much needed rest. I remember Bella's last month or so of carrying our girls. She was happy and excited, but also miserable and exhausted. I spared no expense in making her as comfortable as she could be and I learned to give the best foot rubs that anyone could ever give. To this day I am convinced that no one can give a better foot massage than me. Fact.

I felt Brook look upward suddenly. A noise had startled her, but she wasn't sure what it was. If she didn't know, then I didn't know either. The downside of looking through her thoughts when she wasn't seeing with her physical eyes was that if she interpreted something in a different way than what it actually was, that was how I would see it too. Her perspective was all I had to go on. One time she walked by a red chair in Alice's room, but in reality, the chair was blue. If she saw red, I saw red. Another time she walked into a grove of cherry trees, but the entire property was now an empty field. I couldn't determine what created the discrepancies. When she was three and four, I had assumed it was because she was so little. Now that she was five and understood more about how if something goes up it must come down and all that, I couldn't pinpoint why she still didn't see things as they really were sometimes.

I motioned to Carlisle and Emmett to go into the living room with the others. It would be easier for me to concentrate on Brook if I had complete silence around me. They gave me a hesitant look and wondered if I would be okay alone. "I'll be fine," I assured them, and motioned for them to exit again. This time, they complied.

As my daughter looked upward through the twisted ends of leafless trees, she noticed the moon coming out of the clouds. It shed light over the water of the creek, and she made her way to the edge to peer in at her reflection. She hopped over the creek and ran westward very fast. She stopped when she noticed the moon gleaming off of another body of water. This time it was a shallow pool of rain water that the level of the ground collected just so. She once again saw her reflection, but this time, there was another set of eyes staring back too.

"Huh," Brook gasped in shock. She was alarmed that someone else could see her reflection, since she wasn't really there. She was sure the pupils in the center of the red irises beside her were not just looking into the water, but into her own brown eyes. "Can you see me?" she asked.

"I knew you would come here one day, just like they said," replied a sticky-sweet voice.

"Just like who said?"

"The others, Brook."

"You know my name?"

"We all know your name, my little jewel. Here."

The reflection of the strawberry-blonde showed that she removed a wreath of woven flowers from the crown of her head and was handing them to my daughter.

"I can't," Brook said. "I can't touch anything. I'm not really here."

"Who says you can't touch anything just because you're not really here?" Tanya giggled too-sweetly.

Her reflection was beautiful and her laughter sounded like angels. Her soft, strawberry-blond curls swayed in the wind and her white skin shone like silver in the moonlight. How could my poor daughter not have been tempted to take something from someone who wished her so much strife? Indeed, the reflection of this creature was stunning and her smile was wide and dazzling.

Again, Tanya's reflection pushed the crown closer to Brook's reflection. She hovered the wreath over my daughter's head. My daughter reached upward and grasped two sides of the circle with her own small hands and placed it on her head. She smiled with delight when she saw her own reflection wearing the flowers and as she felt them on her the way she would if she were wearing them on her physical body.

"They look very pretty on you," Tanya said. "Like a princess, huh?"

"They look prettier on you, I think. You are very beautiful."

"Reflections are not always what they seem to be. Turn and see for yourself what I really am."

Slowly, Brook did turn. The heartbeat of her physical body quickened from the fright that her spirit felt when she looked upon Tanya's true form: Her real eyes were black, and void. If it were not for their shine, provided by the moonlight, they would have seemed void all together. Her hair was not lovely and tame as it had seemed to be in her reflection. In reality it was wild and all different lengths. She had scars all along her arms and up her neck and a deep gash on her left cheek. It looked as if chunks had been scraped away from her legs by fingernails and her right leg was literally sewn on at her hip. Her skin was not the pale porcelain it had once been, but rather ashen with a greenish hue to it.

"You are afraid, just as you ought to be," Tanya sneered at the little girl. Her laughter and smile were no longer her captivating features, for they had disappeared entirely.

"Why's that?" Brook stuttered. "What are you going to do to me?"

Brook turned around to face the water again, preferring to see Tanya's beautiful counterpart rather than what she really was.

"Do you know why you can see your reflection, Brook?" Tanya asked indifferently.

"No," she answered the distorted reflection honestly.

"Well, someday you will know." Tanya's smile was now cruel rather than delightful and her red eyes were narrowed in the water. I could see it because Brook could see it: Tanya was aiming for her. She was aiming for us. "But for now, why don't you tell me about your sister?"

"Catie?"

"Yes. Catie. Why don't you tell me about her?"

"What shall I tell you about Catie?"

"Well," Tanya smiled too sweetly, "Why do you think it is that everyone loves her more than you? Do you think it's because she's prettier than you? That's usually why grown-ups love someone more than somebody else: because of how they look. You know, I was once very beautiful. I am not anymore, and now no one will love me. I used to have anyone and anything I wanted, but not anymore. It's because of how I look. No one cares about who you are; only how you look on the outside."

"I look like my mommy, and daddy says she's the most beautiful lady in the world."

"Does he now? Well, then that means that you are the most beautiful and not your sister, if you look just like your mommy. You should tell Catie that so she knows it. But I wonder… So why, if not for how you look, do you think it is that the others love you less than her?"

"I don't think they love me less than…"

"Oh, but they do. Maybe you should ask them why that is, Brook. Maybe you should ask them if they had to choose between you and Catie, who would they pick? In fact, be sure to do so, because the time will soon come when they will need to make that choice. Why don't you let your daddy and 'the most beautiful lady in the world' know that, okay? You can tell them that Tanya told you to ask."

"What are you going to do to us?" My daughter shivered as she asked.

"Whatever I have to do, Brook."

With that, Tanya ran. Brook stared once again at her reflection. She felt dissatisfied all of a sudden, with her brown hair and her brown eyes. Then she turned angry and tore the crown of flowers from her head and threw them into the shallow water. She made her way back to the creek and followed it up toward the main house. She passed the cottage on the way and peered into her and Catie's bedroom window. She saw her sister and Jasper hanging glow-in-the-dark stars across the ceiling as they laughed and talked. She saw him flip a finger through Catie's curly blond locks and tell her that he loved the time they got to spend together.

They didn't even think to wait for me to hang the stars, she thought to herself. Does he like the time that they spend together more than the time that he spends with both me and Catie? How long has Catie known she is loved more than me? Why didn't anyone ever tell me before?

She grew sad at the idea that her sister was more loved than her; an idea which was completely false. It was the seed of a lie that was beginning to plant itself deep into her mind, and I wondered at how we would ever erase it, or if it ever even could be erased. I slammed my fist through the wood floor in anger at what Tanya was trying to do to our family. She was trying to pull us away from one another, as she always had before. But this time she manipulating my children, and may hell swallow me whole if I was going to allow her to get away with it!

All of a sudden, I could feel that Brook felt a familiar pull, and she was brought the rest of the way back to the house, into the kitchen, and back into her body – all within a matter of seconds. She began to cry as she opened her physical eyes.

"Daddy?" she asked. "Who do you love more? Me or Catie?"

Bella and the others ran into the kitchen when they heard her tiny voice. They had already been alarmed by the sound of my fist hitting the wood floors just seconds earlier, and they looked around to see what might have been the matter; however, what the matter was – or rather who the matter was – would probably be more than they could handle emotionally at this point.

"Brook, sweetheart! Why would you ever ask such a thing?" Bella asked as she knelt beside her and hugged her.

"Because," Brook sniffled, "Tanya said you would have to choose. Who will it be?"

…

A/N:

Distorted: not truly or completely representing the facts or reality; misrepresented; false; twisted; deformed; misshapen; mentally or morally twisted

Crown: any of various types of headgear worn by a monarch as a symbol of sovereignty; the top of the head; the highest or most nearly perfect state of anything