New chappy yay!
Now I am writing this at my own expense because I have an exam tomorrow and I need to study for it. So the least you can all do is review. :D
Now, the chapters are short right now because I am working it out bit by bit and it takes concentration. Enjoy, I hope!
Jasper POV
Bella was leading us expertly through the woods.
We ran faster than was usually necessary, our muscles, which were unaccustomed to actually putting effort into running, were complaining.
"Can't we slow down?" grumbled Alice. "I can't see where we're going anyway... we could run right into danger, going this fast!"
"Exactly!" snapped Bella. "He's in the wolf territory, Alice! In the state he seems to be in, what do you think his reaction will be to random wolves he probably has no recollection of jump out and start attacking him?!" shrieked Bella a little hysterically. I tried to calm her down a bit, and then flinched as she screamed at me in my head.
It echoed... it really hurt. Man, Bella's one angry little vampire when Edward goes missing!
Edward POV
I still felt as though I was in a place I wasn't supposed to be, even though I could see no evident danger and nothing had come to get me.
Walking around slowly, I suddenly realised I had given very little thought as to why I had fled. There was still a niggling itch in my head, but it was lessening with every wave of cold I was experiencing. I felt sick to my stomach, and, not for the first time, I wished I could sleep it off.
Wait... not for the first time?
Those words had leaped unbidden into my mind, but I guess I've had these thoughts before. Sleeping is a luxury I miss more than most things.
I feel like there is something else I miss as well...
My dilapidated shoes froze in their tracks as I watched them, without me really making much effort. They turned my body around to face almost the way I had come, but a little to the left. The greenery around my legs and above my head lost colour slightly as I narrowed my eyes and widened my nose.
I could smell something very, very sweet. (I considered, at this point, leaving it there and having you guys wonder whether or not it was a human he could smell, but then I decided you guys have had too many obscenely short chapters for a while, and I tried to make this one more worthwhile!)
I angled forwards and ran to it. It was an incredibly soft, unobtrusive smell. Floral, flowery, and it was backed up by the scent of actual flowers. Both scents came from the same place, and I ran to it.
As I got closer I identified a smell with it that normally I would not have noticed, but it was infused with the flowery smells... I could tell that it was something I was used to smelling, every minute of every hour of every day....
It was me.
My smell. Mixed with the somehow familiar flowers that I could trace, the scent that was so alive and sweet and intoxicating... it filled my head and made my eyelids droop, and I wondered how I could possibly have smelled this before and not be able to precisely recall exactly where and when.
The scents became stronger and more whole with every step, and my thoughts sped up with my legs, and with what I imagine my heartbeat would have sounded like....
Then I was there. It wasn't what I expected; a flowering bush maybe, or some blossoming grass.
It was a meadow. It was unimaginably beautiful... the bold, green grass trembled infinitesimally in the nearly nonexistent breeze... the miniature flowers showed off their colours; so small but so strong in smell and fitting in body. The meadow was framed by trees that shaped around the grass so perfectly it appeared as if an artist of old had laboured over the design that would be most pleasing to the eye, and painted it in with the colours of the clouds and Heaven and the sea.
My mind revelled in the magical place, and I felt distinctly un-masculine as my feet carried me into the centre of the meadow, and my mind continued to draw up soppy analogies... but it was perfect. It was right. Except for one thing.
Something was missing. The source of the flower smell was here, the source of my smell was here, but the source of the vibrant floral scent, so unique yet so homely, was missing. It seemed to dull the colour of the place and my spirits plummeted as I lamented the incomplete paradise. I wished I could remember when it had been whole, but it eluded me as surely as the sun eludes the night.
But the night is good; supplemented my mind. A long-lost memory jumped to mind – without the night, we'd never see the stars.... I remembered gazing with amused wonder into the colour that I loved. Chocolate brown.
The memory replayed in my vision in acute detail, but out of the blue, a friendly cannonball rocketed into me, and I was knocked into the waving grass.
The tangy smell of love filled my nose as I looked down into a face that slowly turned up to meet mine. A pair of golden orbs that held the memory of chocolate brown stared up at me, and the forest hummed as I was filled with recognition.
My eyes closed as I hugged the source of the final scent to my chest.
Memory returned. I knew where and who I was. The final wave broke, crashing and echoing in my head as the haze lifted and my mind cleared. The numbing weight broke away and I was free.
I was free, and I wasn't alone. As the noise faded, my thoughts sang one sentence that I vowed never to forget again.
Bella. My Bella.