Chapter 7 – Waking up

Bella's Point of View

The last processes in my transformation were slow and drawn out. The thrashing pain had receded from my extremities and climaxed in my chest, in my heart. My heartbeat raced, then stopped.

It was finally over.

When I finally woke up from the burning, there were two things that I noticed.

Firstly, was how everything was so clear.

Sharp. Defined.

The brilliant light overhead was still blinding-bright, and yet I could plainly see the glowing strands of the filaments inside the bulb. I could see each color of the rainbow in the white light, and, at the very edge of the spectrum, an eighth color I had no name for.

The second thing I noticed almost as quickly as the first.

We were no longer in the Cullen house.

I was in a room with cedar planks along the walls and ceiling, like a log cabin. The scent was musky and rich, a smell I wouldn't have noticed before. I could distinguish the individual grains in the wood.

Where was I?

Perhaps a murderer or rapist had in fact kidnapped me, except that I remember hearing Esme's voice, and Alice's, and…

Edward.

I searched the room for a sign of the familiar, and I finally saw it.

Edward's face.

How many times had I stared at Edward and marveled over his beauty? How many hours – days, weeks – of my life had I spent dreaming about what I then deemed to be perfection? I thought I'd known his face better than my own. I'd thought this was the one sure physical thing in my whole world: the flawlessness of Edward's face.

I may as well have been blind.

For the first time, with the dimming shadows and limiting weakness of humanity taken off my eyes, I saw his face. I gasped and then struggled with my vocabulary, unable to find the right words. I needed better words.

Despite Edward being there – he consistently calmed me, though I wasn't ruling out Jasper just yet – I had a feeling of anxiety, a defensive instinct that told me to fear the unknown. This room was unknown. Where were we?

I saw my vampire family against the far wall by the door, Emmett and Jasper in the front. Almost like they were protecting them against a threat, like I was the threat. Perhaps I was, I was a newborn vampire after all.

However, I couldn't help my anxiety and I could see that Jasper was getting nervous as well. I remembered what everyone said about newborns, how they often couldn't control their emotions. I tried to reign in my anxiety, and I could tell that Jasper was relaxing in synchrony to me.

"Bella?" Edward asked in a low, calming tone, but the worry in his voice layered my name with tension.

I could not answer immediately, temporarily lost as I was in the velvet folds of his voice.

"Bella, love? I'm sorry, I know it's disorienting. But you're all right. Everything is fine."

But I had a feeling not everything was fine. I opened my mouth for the first time with the question that I felt to be most pressing.

"Edward, where are we?" I said, but it sounded like singing. My voice rang and shimmered like a bell.

I could see Edward wince slightly, and Jasper taking a step forward.

"Bella, love, we're in a cabin outside of Ocean Falls, BC."

BC? As in, Canada?

"What are we doing here?"

Edward looked to his family nervously, but replied calmly.

"We're just staying here for a bit while you get adjusted." He was hiding something from me. I looked around and didn't see Rosalie. Or my daughter.

"Where's Renesmee?"

Edward hesitated for a moment. "She's with Rosalie."

"Why?" Surely a mother should be allowed to see her daughter.

It was Carlisle who answered.

"Renesmee's half human, Bella. And you're a newborn vampire."

I didn't think about it that way. I assumed I would be a risk to be around humans once I was changed, but to my own daughter?

"Oh, I'm sorry Bella," Carlisle apologized. "Of course your thirst must be very uncomfortable."

Until he'd mentioned it, the thirst actually wasn't unmanageable. There was so much room in my head. A separate part of my brain was keeping tabs on the burn in my throat, almost like a reflex. The way my old brain had handled breathing and blinking.

But Carlisle's assumption brought the burn to the forefront of my mind. Suddenly, the dry ache was all I could think about, and the more I thought about it, the more it hurt. My hand few up to cup my throat, like I could smother the flames from the outside. The skin of my neck was strange beneath my fingers. So smooth it was somehow soft, though it was hard as stone, too.

Edward took my hand, tugging gently. "Let's hunt, Bella."