Chapter 2: They Don't Know Her
Edward hates that they all stare.
It isn't as though he doesn't understand.
They've had fifty years to look at each other. When hunting and wrestling, when living each of their everyday lives in all the clothes of five to nine different decades. They could trace the space of each other's shape and styles without the blink of eye. That was simply what happened in a seven person microcosm.
They know everything about him.
The way he lays across a couch, and stands, perfectly still, staring at the dawn.
But they don't know her.
They almost catch him in the way her wrists turn, or her chin lifts, or the way the words of her speech flow. But he isn't there when they stare harder. Or he is, but there's more than just him, too.
Her cheek bones are still high, like round gleaming pearls, but her voice is in a higher resister.
The way she laughs is like small bells hung in he trees when a breeze. Far more like Alice's now, even though her temperament ranks more with Rosalie, except it still err in ruefulness and dark ironic tones more than anyone else there.
The discomfort they once had in his inconsolable loneliness is over shadowed now.
They knew the resigned, scholarly second-oldest, yet youngest, among them well.
Like the melody you never quite forgot once you had learned it.
But they don't know her.
Her waifish figure of perfect porcelain, and her long curtain of copper hair.
The tinniest ankles and lithe grace that she wears Alice's skirts with eventually.
She is like them, but she stands outside of them, and that makes them feel even worse.
It's Edward, and it isn't, so they stand at his side, waiting, and they do what they can.
Watching her, weighing her, judging her, learning her. Always, always with their eyes.
And the thoughts she can no more miss than she could have before this happened.
