This chapter is a bit shorter again-I apologize but I think I'm coming down with something. However, it was another one that was a lot of fun to write.

I want to say thank you so much to all who have commented-your words really give me a lift and make me so excited to keep writing. Please continue to let me know your thoughts.

Disclaimer: Stephenie Meyer's Twilight series, storylines, and characters do not belong to me. Sad, but true.

Extraordinary: Chapter Seven

I don't know how it happened. One moment there was nothing...no awareness, no feelings, nothing but silent, peaceful black.

The next, I was sitting in a tree.

Let me repeat that. I was sitting in a tree.

It made waking up on an escalator seem like a sweet memory. I stared around for a moment at the pine covered branches surrounding me, only one tree in what seemed like an endless landscape of them, and then I made the mistake of looking down. Once I saw how very high up I was, I did what any normal person would do and shrieked like a five year old denied candy. I must have moved too, because the next thing I knew, I was plunging towards the ground. I would have screamed during the fall as well but I was using all my air to gasp for breath. It seemed to take a really long time to reach the ground, probably because of all the branches I managed to hit along the way.

I slammed face first into the hard ground, an impact hard enough to make me feel like I might have knocked out my ribcage through my back. I lay there for a long moment, hyperventilating and quivering all over with terror. I was also waiting to feel the inevitable agony of broken bones and possible internal injuries. After a few minutes, I realized the pain wasn't going to come. I rolled over and slowly sat up, confounded by this. I was no good judge of distance, but from what I could tell during the few seconds I was up there, I'd been higher up then I would have been if I'd sat on the roof of my house. Still, I felt nothing except a lingering sense of shock and a dull, distant ache. I would have considered myself lucky, but as I pondered what had just happened, any sense of gratitude became impossible to summon. In fact, I was feeling distinctly put out as I jumped to my feet.

"OK, this is officially not funny!" I yelled at the overcast sky. "First an escalator, now a tree? What did I ever do to deserve this?!"

After a few minutes of ranting and raving at nothing, I finally became calm enough to really start to think through what was happening. I stared around me, taking in my surroudings and feeling fear crowd into my chest more and more. I was lost, alone, in the middle of a forest. A big, scary, Blair Witch-esque looking forest, and I could not see any signs of humanity anywhere. This was almost worse than hanging with the Volturi.

I almost threw myself back down on the lush green landscape to sob my eyes out, but I had no time to be a weeping damsel in distress. I wasn't used to such an overcast sky, so it could have just been the thick layer of gray fooling me, but it seemed like it might get dark soon. I definitely didn't want to be hanging out here when it did. No matter how deserted this place looked, there had to be a trail somewhere that would lead me back to a campsite or a park ranger station, anywhere that I'd have a good chance of finding someone who might be able to help me get back to civilization.

I looked down at myself, relieved to find I was back in my usual dream attire of my emerald green top, jeans, and comfortable yet cute black boots . The skirt and strappy sandals I'd worn to go shopping earlier definitely would have made a long hike much more difficult. Not that it wasn't going to be difficult anyway...my general idea of roughing it meant staying in a hotel without satelllite tv so I was definitely out of my element. Squaring my shoulders, I looked around, but no particular direction looked any more promising than the other. I sent a silent prayer up to whoever might have been watching over me that I was going the right way, and started forward.

As I walked, I wondered to myself how far I might get before I finally woke up. After all, this had to be another dream, right? How had I fallen asleep, anyway? I frowned to myself as an elusive memory teased my brain. When I tried to focus on it, it danced away from me, like a butterfly cresting the wind. Frustrated, I searched my mind, trying to remember what had happened that day.

Let's see...I'd stayed up all night, then had a fight with Dad, went shopping at Horton Plaza, met a nice lady who sold me a book on meditation and then...what? It seemed like my memory abruptly stopped at that point. I ran through it all again, trying to focus as hard as I could. Now I had a vague recall of some conversation with Rae. She'd been annoyed with me. Did we have a fight? I tried harder to clarify it, but it was too foggy. As tired as I'd been, I must have fallen asleep not long after that point...maybe on the bus home. Ew...I hoped that the weird, smelly guy on my route who hit on every single female rider wasn't sitting next to me as I snoozed away, oblivious to his wandering eyes. Shuddering, I put the image out of my head as quickly as I could.

It wasn't all bad, my jaunt through the forest. I'd never really been to a place like this before-what passed as 'nature' in southern California was usually a stand of trees next to a new housing development. It really was kind of pretty here, and a few times small animals ran across my path, most too fast to identify although I did see an angry looking looking raccoon. Maybe I'd see a deer or something-that could be cool.

'Cool' was not exactly the first word that came to mind after I'd been trudging along for more than twenty minutes. I still hadn't seen a trail, or any signs, not even a reassuring piece of litter thrown carelessly on the ground to reassure me that people really did still exist in this lonely place. And was it me, or was it getting darker? My heart starting pounding faster and I was unable to stop the reel of horror movie flashbacks that were running through my brain. When it got dark, it would get terrifying here on a level I was completely not prepared to handle.

I shoved down the panic that was threatening to overwhelm me, but there was suddenly a loud noise in the distance that made it come back ten times worse. I froze in my tracks. What was that sound? It sounded like snarling or growling. My heart nearly stopped. I'd almost forgotten that the forest held more than cute, fluffy creatures like raccoons and deer. There were bigger-and meaner-animals, like coyotes, wolves, maybe even bears. I started to shake. The only comfort I had was that the sound seemed very far away, but even that was taken away from me when the ground below me began to tremble ever so slightly and the growling grew louder. Whatever it was, it was on the move, apparently in my direction. I looked around wildly for a place to run, then stumbled backwards. The noise grew louder and I turned and ran, tripping several times in my nervousness.

It was several paces before I realized what a huge mistake I'd made. The noise had been so distant at first that I hadn't really been sure what direction it had been coming from, and without knowing it, I'd fled the wrong way -right into its path.

It came crashing through a nearby stand of trees and when it burst through and I saw it I nearly fainted on the spot. It was a bear. An enormous, shaggy brown, snarling creature with its black, glinting eyes fixed on me. I couldn't move. My own eyes were so huge it felt like they were going to pop out of my head. It was so huge-somehow I'd never imagined bears as so huge, even when I'd seen them for myself at the zoo or SeaWorld. I guess they looked a lot less immense safely behind thick glass or steel bars.

When the bear caught sight of me, it skidded to a stop. For just a second it sniffed the air, and then it roared so loudly the sound hurt my ears, standing on its hind legs. If I'd thought it was big before, that was nothing compared to how it looked as it reared upwards. It would have dwarfed my six foot fall father easily. Me, I felt like Thumbelina, standing so close to it. My terrified eyes locked onto the bear and refused to look elsewhere. I was hoping and praying that it would take in my strange human self and run away, but I registered the angry gash and dark, wet looking fur near its throat. It took me a moment to understand what it was, and then, much like Bella in Twilight, there were three things I became absolutely positive of. First, the bear was wounded. Second, the bear was pissed. And third, the only living being to take its pain and anger out on for miles and miles was unfortunately...me.

As the knowledge that I was about to end up as bear food finally overcame my paralysis, I turned and ran once more. I knew it was useless-I could hear it thundering after me, its paws slapping the ground. I could hear its growls and snarls and for an endless second, I felt its warm breath on the back of my neck as it easily outran my slow human pace, gaining on me. There was nothing else I could do. I threw myself onto the ground, expecting to feel its giant claws and teeth ripping through me any instant. What a horrific way to die-if I'd had any sense I would have let Jane kill me in Italy rather then endure this torture.

My eyes were closed, my body tense, waiting for the tearing of my flesh, when I heard it. Something else was moving fast towards us...it wasn't so much the noise from it that I heard as much as the rush of the air and the snapping of tree branches and brush around us as it sped into our vicinity. Then there was an enormous thud and suddenly I felt the bear fly away from me. It was growling and snarling even louder now, or at least I thought it was, until I realized that whatever had tackled the bear was making even more noise then it had been. I could hear an epic sounding struggle somewhere to my right but I didn't bother to look to see what was even bigger and scarier than an infuriated bear. I jumped to my feet, my legs shaking so hard I was surprised they could even hold me, and I ran once more.

I didn't get far before I couldn't breathe anymore, and my legs were definitely about to collapse under me. I fell to my knees and for a moment just tried to get the oxygen into my lungs so I could shake off the horrible suffocating feeling. Then my sense of self-preservation kicked in and I began to move. I was in no shape to struggle back to my feet, so I crawled forward as fast as I could. There were two trees close together nearby with a tall, leafy bush in between them, and that's where I headed. I crawled behind the bush and sat there, shaking so hard the bush moved with me and it pretty much made any effort of hiding null and void. Still, I couldn't go any farther. I could only hope that when whatever had attacked the bear was done with it, it wouldn't come looking for me.

That hope, like so many others I'd had lately, was short-lived. I'd only been behind the bush for a minute or two when I heard a sound like light running steps. I cringed back, fresh alarm blossoming inside of me as the noise got closer. Something was only feet away, pacing back and forth. I was numb with fright, too scared to even peek.

"Come on, where did you go?" I heard the voice-just a gruff whisper, really, but to hear something so unexpectedly human in the isolated woods where I'd been so sure I was going to die was shocking. I shook harder and the footsteps suddenly stopped, then I heard them coming in my direction. I shrank back-at this point, I couldn't be sure of anything, much less that my apparent savior was actually here to save me instead of subject me to an even more gruesome end.

The bush was suddenly parted by a large white hand and I gazed, stunned, at the face that peered in, staring at me with an almost equally shocked looking expression. Then the furrows on his brow smoothed out, leaving nothing but unblemished ivory skin behind and his mouth widened into a cautious but friendly smile, showing incredibly white teeth.

"Hey there, kid. You can come out now-you're safe." His voice was low and husky, but that wasn't what kept me staring, open-mouthed, as I took in his intimidating frame with the large muscled arms. My eyes toured upwards to observe the brown curls that covered his head, and back down just a little bit to take in the golden eyes that were surveying me with a mix of consternation and surprise. I couldn't believe it, but it had to be true...

Unless I was very much mistaken, I had just met Emmett Cullen.

To Be Continued...be sure to come back for chapter Eight and more Cullens then you can shake a stick at!

Please let me know what you think. : )