Hi. Oops. This is SO LATE. And my outline has been completely reworked. This chapter is short because I wanted to give you all something in the meantime. If you're still reading, I love you.
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chapter fourteen: aletheia
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A List of What Makes Bella Swan Different: by Edward Cullen
She doesn't sleep. Like ever, as far as I can tell.
She (and her friends) can make people fight each other for no reason
Creepy vibes.
I've hit a standstill. A brick wall. Sure, Bella is weird as hell and possibly not completely human but I don't have any evidence. Just a hunch and a gut feeling.
A lot at stake and nothing to go on.
I've locked myself in my room for almost the entire weekend, not sleeping and running on this manic, desperate energy googling every creature I can think of.
She's not a vampire, I've seen the way she likes the sunshine on her cheeks. I've seen the way she wraps her lips around an apple.
Though the thought of those lips on my jugular isn't all that off-putting to me. I'm sick, it's fine. Everything is A-okay.
Then I thought, maybe she really is a witch. But it seems too cliché and underwhelming. Wouldn't more be happening? Wouldn't it be raining toads or something? Cauldrons in her room?
She's not a banshee, she's not the fucking Loch Ness Monster.
I've flown through books of mythologies from all over the world and while some seem to match, it's not perfect. It's not right.
It's not Bella Swan.
Maybe she can bring a wind, make lightning, but she's no Kitsune, the Japanese fox shapeshifter. I doubt she's a Valkyrie, sent here to choose whether to let me live or die through some sick kind of seduction—no matter how much it feels like she is.
I toss the book in my lap to the floor, the pen on my notebook clattering on the laminate. The sky is clear and thankfully dark enough to stargaze. I need to rid my head of all of this for a few moments, start fresh later.
I find Orion first and then move to Nyx. I don't know why but Nyx always makes me feel closer to Bella. The story of her, that shadowy figure born of chaos. Beautiful and feared and—
"Nyx," escapes my lips before I can stop it. Nyx, mother of sleep who runs the night. The darkness. The cosmos, the sky.
The weather, maybe.
It's an impossible idea, but it's an idea I'd always hoped to be true.
The factuality of the mythologies I'd spent so much time losing myself in.
People made from the stuff of stars.
My phone buzzes from my bedside table—probably Jasper, who has been calling me at least three times an hour since we met at the diner the other day.
For the first time, I answer it.
"Thank fuck you're alive," Jasper breathes, forgoing the hello I'd always come to expect from him.
"She's Nyx," I say, forgoing it, too.
"Who's what?"
"She's…Bella…she's at least, she has part of Nyx in her. Doesn't she?"
"I have no idea what you're talking about, dude."
"Nyx! The night! The stars!"
He doesn't understand. Whatever Alice has told him…she wasn't clear.
I have to be right.
Or I'm finally breaking. My mind is completely gone.
Either, way, something will end.
I could find the truth, or she could see me for how insane I actually am and I could just…disappear.
I hang up the phone, let Jasper's voice stop echoing in my ear.
If Bella's part of that…Alice has to be...what? Part of someone. Something.
The mythologies book is back in my hands in no time and my eyes are searching a sentence-a-second for the word music.
And then, Apollo.
The god of music, truth and prophecy, healing, the sun and light.
Alice's smile.
Her ever present ear-buds.
Her knowing voice floating over me.
It would only make sense if Rosalie Hale was parts of Hera, perhaps, for her jealousy and her vengeful nature. Maybe Aphrodite for her beauty. Her vanity.
But how?
How would this make any goddamn sense?
Sure there are stories, stories of children of Gods and mortals. Achilles. Hercules.
But that's all they are.
Stories.
Right?
There's only one way to find out.
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til next time xx