A/N: It's been a long time, huh! Two concerned readers PM'd me recently asking after a continuation, and I made the time (: I'll try to get back into updating more steadily! Thanks for your continued interest, as you can see, it really does make or break a story. Enjoy!

Alice sped up to catch her family, which we did just as they were pulling into the driveway. Alice skidded her car to a halt, grabbed me by the wrist, and drug me inside past a line of her confused looking siblings.

"Excuse me!" I said, trying in vain to escape her vice grip. "My legs still work, y'know!"

"You move too slow!" She grumbled.

I sighed at that and allowed to her continue on. Outside I heard Jasper ask, "What is that all about?"

"Apparently Bella has asked Alice on a date, and she wants us all to convene in the living room."

"God dammit Edward, stop being so nosy!" Alice called out, but in response we just heard the bronze haired boy chuckle.

We came inside to find Esme waiting for us, and before long the other Cullen's had arrived as well, all save Carlisle who was at work. "So what's this I hear about a date?" Emmett said, wiggling his eyebrows.

"We're going to find more eggs!" Alice said, beaming.

Esme's eyes lit up. "That's wonderful, dear! When will you be leaving?"

Alice looked to me and I just shrugged. "Whenever works. We've got the whole weekend."

"Let's go now!" Alice said, jumping up and now in her excitement.

I looked to Esme with a smile and said, "I guess we're leaving now!"

Esme chuckled and said, "Well then! Any idea where?"

"Oh, I have a few ideas but it's going to be a surprise," I said with a lopsided grin.

"How romantic!" Emmett said, walking up to Alice and ruffling her hair.

"Romantic?" Esme questioned.

Rosalie laughed and said, "Bella and Alice are pretending to be a couple to mess with the humans."

Esme just chuckled and shook her head. "I'm going to assume it was Alice's idea, because no one else would come up with something like that."

Alice took a small bow.

"Do you girls need anything for your trip?"

I tapped my chin. "Do you have any hiking packs? For holding anything we might find?"

"Of course!" Esme said. "They're in the attic. I'll go run and get them."

She blurred off and as soon as she was gone Edward asked, "So what exactly are you looking for, Bella?"

I smiled, "All over the world I've always sensed certain places that call to me. Where Alice and I found the eggs we have now, well that was one of those places. Because we have some downtime now I want to go find some others, see if they're all nests. And I need Alice to come with me."

"Why?" Edward asked, curious.

I shrugged and smiled a little awkwardly. "I don't know. I've tried for years to find out what these places were on my own and got nothing. But when Alice was with me, something happened. Some kind of magic in me activated, or something, and we were able to draw them up. So, I'm kidnapping her to try again elsewhere."

"So what you're saying is that she turns you on, technically?" Emmett said with a dumb ass grin on his face.

I didn't rise to the bait, however. I just sniffed and said, "In a manner of speaking, yes."

Emmett didn't let my lack of reaction get to him, though. He just laughed and went on, "Do we need to send a parental escort with you two? I'm not sure I trust you guys alone together."He went to ruffle my hair but my hand flashed up and grabbed his wrist. He tried to jerk away but, to his obvious concern, he couldn't.

Mock serious I said lowly, "I will singe you. Don't muss the do, dude."

I released him and his back away, laughing nervously the whole while. "Hey, hey, okay. Easy there, tiger."

"It's Romeo, actually," Alice pointed out.

"What?" Edward asked, but just then Esme returned and I choked down my mirth.

"Will these do?" She asked, holding up two packs, one small green pack and a larger orange one.

I smiled and said, "Those will be great, thanks Esme."

"What about Mavrik?" Jasper asked.

In my mind I reached out to the wolf and found him listening in, as always. I smiled and said, "He knows. He's far up north, planning on using this time to find a pack worth bringing to Alaska with us. He'll probably be back around the time we are."

"Are you two leaving now? As in, right now?" Esme asked, tilting her head.

"I'm not su-"

"Yup!" Alice spoke over me and I laughed again. She grabbed onto my hand and began dragging me towards the sliding glass doors that led to the back yard. "Come on, Bella!"

I laughed and waved, saying, "We'll be back by Sunday!"

"Keep her safe," Esme called, waving.

"On my life," I swore, and after a few moments spared to stoke the Forge's coals, we were running.

A vast forest glowed beneath us, bathed in western sunset light. Alice's skin was ablaze with sparkles and flecks of color I could only rarely glance at from the corner of my eyes. I was in my third form, but we flew so high above the earth the only thing we needed to keep an eye out for were planes, and with moderate clouds hovering around us, providing apt cover, it was an easy thing to accomplish. I turned north, and as dusk fell over us any trace of deciduous wood had turned completely to pine and conifers. Tall stalks of wood scraped the sky, mottling the ground beneath us. We flew over the Canadian Rockies, and as twilight bathed us in half shadows, I flew down to weave between jagged peaks. It was marvelous.

I turned to Alice and said, "Still less spectacular than yourself if the sun, you know. The life blood of the mountains is deep within, in molten caverns and inner sanctums. Outside it only glitters, but what we see has no heart. It is a cold world."

"I have no heart," Alice murmured. "I am cold."

"And yet you are still one of the most loving people I've ever met. The body does not make the thing, I've found. Who you are is not restrained by the package it comes in."

"Says the shape-shifting dragon lady," Alice mused and I just snickered.

I set down a time later, on the bank of a low and lazy river. Being as it was the only place open enough for me to fit, I searched for a place that was more rock than sand to avoid leaving prints. "We should both hunt now, I think. We'll be flying through the night."

Alice grinned. "How far north are we going?"

I smiled once more. "Who knows?"

Alice groaned and sat down in a huff. "I hate not having my visions. You mess everything up, you know that? I can't see a damn thing where you're involved."

I chuckled, laying my large white form down behind her. Looking up in this rare clear swath I could see the sky it was brilliant with stars. I sighed and pulled my Demi form around, smiling and enjoying the feel of my human limbs, stretching and ruffling my hair.

I looked up to find Alice staring at me. "What?" I asked, confused.

She just laughed and shook her head.

"What?" I asked again, laughing a bit this time. "It's good to be out and about again. You know how long it's been since I left the west coast for longer than a day or two? Nearly sixty years!"

Alice grimaced. "That sounds awful. To answer your question, you just looked happy. Really happy. It was good to see."

"You act like I've never been happy before," I scoffed. "Which I strongly disagree with, seeing as you were there when we brought up the first clutch of eggs. I don't think I've ever been so happy."

She seemed to think on that, then said, "I'm not sure. That was different. You were happy, but it was a relieved happy. It's hard to judge that kind of happy, one where its only cause is that you were alleviated from sadness, against something like this."

"And what, pray tell, is this?" I smirked, sitting down beside her.

She shrugged. "Dunno. You just seem free happy. Unrestrained and in your element, kind of. Its a pure happiness, not conditional on circumstance or emotion. It just is, and it was nice to see."

I looked up at the stars, considering her words. How long had it been since I was just happy? Plain old happy, without a reason or means to an end? In my mind a reason to be happy didn't make you any less happy, but at the same time I understood what Alice meant. Pure happiness that happened without a reason was a beautiful thing.

"I don't know. I think this is absolutely happiness based on circumstance."

"How so?" Alice asked. "You just seem so... natural." Alice shrugged a bit hopelessly.

"Well, I'm here with you, and we're on our way to look for more dragons. I enjoy your company and flying, which I have had in abundance lately. I get to look forward to an entire weekend with you, I'm certain we'll have a good time. What's there not to be happy about?" It seemed fairly simple to me.

Alice smiled. "Alright then, Romeo. So are we hunting or what?"

I chuckled at her use of my nickname and bowed chivalrously. "Lead the way, Juliet."

We ended up taking two two large bull moose. Perhaps it was a bit much but the way I figured was that we had a long night and a long few days waiting for us. It would be best if we both had our strength up.

As it was, the flight was indeed long, but we passed the time well. We discussed our favorite animals to hunt and why. We discussed her favorite places to shop and why. I told her in detail about what flying was like, the way it felt to catch a warm updraft under your wings and how it swept you into the atmosphere, what it was like to just glide. We spoke more of her family and she shared some of her favorite memories from her time with them, and in turn I told her about the pack.

Between deep belly laughs I forced out, "But he couldn't swim, so Jake needed to leap in the water after him-"

"In the dead of winter?" Alice asked, laughing as well.

"Yes! And he hadn't even shifted yet so they both came out as... icicles, basically."

"And where were you during all of this?" She asked.

I chuckled again and said, "Watching from the top of the cliff, of course."

Alice laughed again, "Naughty Bella."

I just laughed once more. The woods glittered beneath us. We were very far north now, and autumn was closer to winter here. The fire in my belly kept me warm and Alice said she was comfortable, despite the chill in the air being subzero. Just as the sun was rising we came over a lake I could not name, but it looked deep.

"You holding on?" I asked.

"Yeah, why?" she asked, brows furrowed.

"Hang tight!" I said, then streamlined my body, angling myself down towards the water's surface.

"No-o-o!" Alice half laughed, half screamed. A few pumps from my wings had us hurtling far faster than gravity intended, but my body was made for taking hits. My eyes had a third lid that slid down to cover my eye much like a shark's would, or a falcon. My hard scales would break the water's surface and withstand much of the impact. We sliced through the surface and shot almost two hundred feet further before the water slowed us down. I turned my head and flashed a toothy grin at Alice, who's hair floated around her like Medusa's snakes. She glared at me but I saw a smile playing at the corner of her lips.

"How long can you hold your breath?" she yelled through the water. Despite the water's garbling of the sound waves, I understood her still.

"Almost an hour," I grinned. My body metabolized oxygen extremely well, due to natural deficiencies when flying at higher altitudes. I transitioned my body's motion from the up and down flap of my wings, to the side-to-side motion of a swimming snake. We swam beneath the surface for nearly fifteen minutes, our keen eyes peering into the deep. We passed schools of fish and several sunken ships, laden with lake scum and algae. Ever so gently I pointed my snout upwards and eventually we breached the surface. I looked back to see rivulets of water running down Alice's face. I snickered.

"I've never seen you look so disheveled," I teased.

"Oh, shut up." A thoughtful look crossed her face and she then asked, "If you were to transform back now, would human you be wet because dragon you is?"

I laughed and nodded. "Yeah, unfortunately." My wings stretched out over me. It took five powerful down thrusts to get us out of the water, but then we were back to climbing into the sky.

Our journey ended long after the tree line did. The ground when I set down was hard packed with permafrost and covered in scrub brush, where there was anything at all. Snow drifted in the shadows of eskers and low hillocks. Perhaps a mile into the distance one ridge stood out above the rest, amassing at one point into a dome with an oddly flat top and a caved in side.

"Volcano?" Alice asked.

I nodded with a small smile. "I found this one after we spent a year wandering through the tundra, when Mav and I first came to America. Caribou made good eating and I didn't understand much of what had happened, only that the mountain made me feel... safe. Or at least it seemed like a known entity, when so much else was foreign. If anywhere will have something to do with dragons, it's here."

Alice beamed. "Well then let's go!"

I smiled at her enthusiasm and we were off.

The closer we drew, the more introspective I became. I searched deep inside myself and ranged outward simultaneously, trying to pick up something, anything, from the world around us. Feelings, impressions, any kind of push or pull, but the only sense I got was that of the mountain calling me inwards. I was eager to comply, my excitement growing with very step. Alice must have sensed something from me, as she asked, "Well?"

"It's strong," I said, trying to find a better way to explain what I was feeling. "It's like... With the eggs, I got a sense of them, like a whisper in my mind. This is a pull, like a magnet. There's definitely something there."

Alice grinned and skipped a few steps, beaming. And for a moment I was caught off guard by her radiance. It blinded me for a moment and I stumbled for a lapse in watching my footing. Were it summer I'd probably be waist deep in muskeg for the slight, and even so I couldn't bring myself to mind. Alice skipped on, oblivious and shimmering in her mirth and the weak Canadian sunlight.

When we came to the base of the hill I looked up and took a deep breath. It was not steep or terribly tall, and yet I felt quite intimidated. Alice looked to me and smiled. "You ready for this?"

I grinned up at the peak and said, "Absolutely." We started up.

It was much easier for us to pick our way up the slope than it would have been for a human, per say, but we did have a bit of a time with it. We moved slowly and in a zigzagging pattern so that I could get a feel of whatever the mountain had to offer. Alice was patient, her excitement never wavering. I could feel her energy behind me as distinctly as I could feel the power of the ground beneath our feet, though hers was comforting where as the mountain had my anxiety building. I felt that we were drawing close the higher we got, and my ranging became a more direct line straight towards the part of the slope that had been blown out by an eruption from ago.

It was mid afternoon by the time we stood in the epicenter of the crater. Boulders and jagged rocks, fragmented and broken, loomed around us. Some were large, some small, some as massive as houses. Granite mixed with pumice and every now and then glints of obsidian. Every time a piece of the shiny black glass caught my eye I grinned and bent to retrieve it, stowing it in my pack.

To Alice's questioning gaze I explained, "Obsidian, because it is forged within the fires of the earth, retains heath very well. I can melt and reform it in my flames, and it makes a good base for nests. Dragons used to horde it. In fact, back even before my original days, in the early birth of humanity, they used to think obsidian was created by dragons and not just used by them. It was nigh on worshiped by tribes for qualities it supposedly possessed."

From then on Alice looked at the stone in new light and helped to gather it, with purpose now instead of just in happenstance. My ranging stopped abruptly as a fierce shiver ran through my entire body. The jolt of electric energy seemed to meld my feet to the rocks I balanced on, and my eyes widened. I cast about, trying to find it's source, until they finally came to rest on a small dark hole hidden almost entirely under two boulders that had landed caddy-corner to one another. As soon as my feet unglued I darted for it, catching Alice initially unawares but only a split second later she was hot on my trail.

My momentum was halted only by thudding gracelessly against the boulders and peering into the cavern. While the entrance itself was narrow, it seemed to open up just beyond. I flashed a quick grin at Alice then ducked inside, quickly scrambling over the rocks. Her laughter was breathless as she moved in my wake, but I spared little time to consider her not that the fire had struck in my veins. It consumed me rapidly, and I knew without really noticing that my hair was white and my eyes blue and that a peppering of scales dotted my skin.

Alice's gasp drew me back along with a strong grip on my backpack, pulling me backwards. I snarled without thinking but by the time I crashed to the ground, I was shocked and pale. Before me, where a moment ago I had seen the path continuing to gently slope, was a vast cavern perhaps the width of a gymnasium or two, and the drop from our chute was at least a hundred feet down. I drew in a deep shuddering breath and the strength fled my bones. I noticed belatedly that I had fallen partially into Alice's lap, but as I returned to my senses I only relaxed further into her.

"I- The path was- It was right there," I mumbled out, dazed. I shook my head and brought a hand up to cradle it.

"I saw the cavern open up and when you didn't stop... Bella, I saw it from yards ahead. Are you okay?"

I shook by head once more, partially to clear it and partially to answer her. "I swear Alice, that's not what my eyes saw. I was... I was so caught up in finding whats down there, I needed to..." As I reflected upon it I felt the blood drain further yet from my face. The memory, though it was only moments ago, felt disjointed and foreign. What had come over me? The only clear thing was a desperate need to reach the bottom of that trail, to find what lay beneath, and to move quickly. It had utterly overcome me.

"Well," Alice said, seeming at a loss for words. "Are you okay now? Do you feel like yourself?"

I paused before answering, trying to assess that for myself. "Yeah, I guess so. I'm back in my head at any rate. Let's... Let's keep going, I guess."

Alice nodded slowly, but watched me warily. As I made to stand I realized how close we were. Even despite the backpack it felt intimate, and I had to hide my blush by pressing on, albeit more gingerly this time.

I came to the ledge and looked for any kind of path. None seemed readily available and I frowned. From what I could see, it appeared as if a pocket of looser material had been jostled and collapsed in on itself, either during the eruption or more recently. There was no easy path down, but I judged the cavern large enough for my third form's wing span. I turned to Alice and without a word lifted her into my arms. Before she could gasp I'd leaped from the ledge. In midair I shifted into my third form and glided in sharp circles down to the bottom. I set Alice down gently and simmered back down to a more manageable form.

While I was no longer overcome by an unexplainable urge to leap from high places, the dragon inside did grow much stronger, clawing at my control. My head felt uncomfortable and stuffed too full, as it often did when I ventured too close to aspects of my old life. I pressed on, ignoring my discomfort because I knew what it meant. Somewhere, inside this labyrinth, was something I needed to find and recover. And finally, just when I thought I was wound too tightly, too tense, we burst into a cavern that was much unlike the others.

It was half collapsed, but the portion that remained was remarkable. The ceiling was fifty feet high at my best guess, and just as wide. It would have been a perfect half sphere if not for the cave in. And engraved into it's walls were hundreds of carvings and images and runes, and where there was not some sort of record there were scorch marks. Several even outlined forms, some recognizable as cattle-like animals, and some in the upright and fearful pose of a man, cringing from flames my mind could feel and picture from a glance. Alice was even more awestruck than I was, as she didn't see at first what this was.

"This is a dragon's lair," I said, awestruck. The soul that I once had cried for the carvings and the runes I could no longer read. I moved to the wall nearest to us and brushed my hand lightly over them. A whisper ran through my mind as I fought to understand, but they eluded me. Frustrated I turned to examine the walls instead. The stone carvings seemed to, in their crevasses, hold tints of color but after eons they no longer showed. The stone that remained was more than enough, luckily. Rearing, roaring, fire breathing dragons, depicted as they truly were, covered every surface. One mural showed a large drake soaring over a peak, perhaps the one we stood in before the eruption. In another frame a lax dragon was offered chestfuls of gold and gems carried by hordes of humans. In yet another, the dragon roasted the humans alive.

"This cave must be ancient. Most of the depictions are from the pre-treaty eras, when dragons still ruled the world from their spots at the top of the food chain. There was no human roasting when I went down," I muttered, half to Alice and half to myself. "Well, unless they really deserved it."

There must have been hundreds of pictures in that cave, and as much as I would have liked to spend a century examining them, I was called away by a clear, ringing sensation in the forefront of my mind.

I stood bolt upright and cast about. "This might be harder than I thought," I said quietly.

"Why?" Alice asked, watching me like a hawk.

"Because we're not here for eggs..."

A/n: Yes, no, maybe so? Let me know!