It's that time again. Boy howdy has Real Life been, um, just that. I would like to insert some other invectives there, but for now, my brain is swimming, and I'll just be leaving it off as a bad job. Suffice to say, I cannot thank all of you enough for your kind words and encouragement, as well as your cheerful good wishes. I've laughed, I've sighed, I've never felt so fortunate to have the chance to do this. Thank you.

A thousand thanks to all of you who have nominated me over at the Twilighted Awards (twilightawards [dot] this-paradise [dot] com) as well as for the Eddies and Bellies (thecatt [dot] net]. It's probably too late to go vote, but there are some absolutely fabulous stories listed on both forums that you should check out - especially when certain authors are remiss in posting on a regular basis.

*ahem*

The dry ground crunched under her feet. The first winter snows had yet to fall, and the freezing night temperatures had drawn the remaining moisture from the soil, rising up from the ground in tiny fluted opalescent towers, huddled together like a multitude colony of icy mushrooms. There was a biting quality to the air, a dry smoky, snowy taste on the back of Bella's tongue that crept down her throat and chilled her spine.

She was tired, but it was a pleasant sort of exhaustion. The last five days had been a constant mix of hiking and running as Bella chased her quarry over the rugged Canadian mountainside. She had been tracking the part of the pack that the Canadian members of the study had tagged further up north, using their shared collection of radio-collar signals to measure their range as the wolves moved south, following their migratory game to the winter feeding grounds.

For a time, the wolves had drawn her northward, high up into the ragged hills, as she searched for the signals that lurked in the shadows around the open alpine meadows, following a quarry that wheeled and circled, vultures of the earth, ever watchful, ever wary; far more cunning than the human that pursued them.

Bella had relished the chase. There was no darting or physical inspection to be done – the battered old Mossberg was for her protection only – and so she was instead able to move at a more primitive pace, using her instincts to draw her to the faint pinging signals that would tell her how far her wolves had ranged. She ran, she stepped, she leapt, letting the exertion sweat out the anxiety that coursed through her veins, purging the misgivings from her like the breaking of a fever. With every cold breath that seared into her aching lungs, and each curling twist in the muscles of her thighs as they slipped across her bones, the clench of her calves pulling her down the trail, she felt the releasing of those fears that had held her mind to the ground, binding her to the pain of her old life, burning them away.

When night fell, its darkness heralded by the last orange rays of the sun slipping behind the cold blue stone of the Canadian Rockies, so to would she go to earth, cocooning herself in the down of her sleeping bag. Wrapped up in feathers and nylon, drugged with exhaustion, she would sleep the night through, while the silent stars spun overhead, watchful fates, whispering their mysteries to her sleeping ears.

Always, she would awake before the dawn, jerking out of her slumber with the flavor of a name on her lips, the apparition of her dreams, just out of sight and memory. Her heart would race, and her nipples would tighten with anticipation as her flushed body clamored for the respite of the touch that would not appear to sooth it. And Bella would shove herself out of her bag, divesting herself of it as she could not the new adult desire that had suddenly possessed the dull and predictable flesh she had come to call her own – coming to her unbidden in the night, prickling her skin, setting her very being aflame – burning for that golden moment in the forest, and the pale young man who had shone with her in the pale sunshine.

Edward.

The fire overtook her, scorching through her body, seeping through her pores, lighting the path before her so that she ran in brightness, clothed in the light of a sun that no longer circled overhead in the cold winter sky. It surged and effervesced within her, blazing through her nervous system until she was alight with it, swelling in her chest, buoying her up, until she felt as though she could step off the rocky mountain trail, up over the rough hewn landscape, and into the clouds.

His presence, his resurrection thrilled her, disturbed her new existence to its very foundation. And the sight of him, in that brilliant moment those few days ago, as he stood as close to her as he dared, their desperate skins almost touching, tasting the sweetness of his breath as she whispered against his lips, was burned into her brain; a constant mirage on the trail before her, tantalizing her, taunting her, until her breasts, her belly, her thighs ached with the dual frustration of desire and duty. She could feel him against her as she ran, her feet stepping soft and sure over the rocky terrain, as the cool air knifed through her clothes, wrapping around her in a ghostly embrace, throbbing in time with her heart, until in every beat, in every breath and each step, the silent tempo echoed with his name, tumbling off her chapped lips, slipping between her thighs.

Running along the hidden mountain trails, the deer tracks, and open scree, Bella felt the last of her lingering anger dwindle and fade, until it was a line, a memory like the scar on her hand; proof of her injury, and of her ability to overcome. Angry as she had once been, angry as she was, that night in the car, until he kissed her and made her very world go mad, so easily did that barricade come down, as one man, her only love, pulled her heedlessly into his arms in a desperate attempt to draw the poison out of them both.

Their wounds would no longer be mortal. They would heal, Bella knew, for all that it had been so easy to hold onto the hurt and the anger; to see all of her insecurities smothered by the lie that Edward had told her. His own confession had shone a light into the depths of her own guilt. Had she loved herself enough, believed in herself, she would have seen the real truth in his eyes, and known how her ready acceptance of his defection had actually hurt him.

On the fifth day she ran. Her data was collected, her duty was done, and the lone signal she had left to follow came from no radio collar, but from a strange magnetic tug emanated from somewhere behind her navel, as though iron north had become some shaded seclusion deep within the park, somewhere in the hillside above the lake. And she was drawn to it, pulled by some unknown force, down the mountainside, to what she did not know. Her pack bumped roughly on her back, and the dead weight of the shotgun jerked heavily on her arm. She was unaware of these things, but remained intent on the signal, the call that pulled her wheeling circle ever south.

The call drew her, demanded her, and Bella's booted feet beat a steady tattoo upon the ground, the ropy sinews of her legs curling and hurling her downward through the timberline, through the pine canopy, into the shadow of the trees, into the ancient darkness shrouded within their branches. Her lungs burned with every inhale, shooting oxygen through her veins, pushing her, compelling her ever faster, beyond the ache, the protest of her already tired muscles. Each pounding step flashed behind her eyeballs, a claxon warning of imminent collapse, and yet still she ran, no more able to stop herself than she could stop the sky if it suddenly chose to fall.

There was a sudden puff in the still air, a quick breath of wind heralding the falling snow. Her hair snagged on something, the band of her braid breaking loose, and her long tresses whipped out behind her like a banner as her flagging yet desperate strides devoured the terrain.

There was a brightness ahead – white ground against the gray sky, shimmering oddly in the muted browns and greens of the drowsing forestland, and suddenly she was at the edge of a clearing. She stopped dead, her breath catching in her throat. Before her was a sight she had only read about, reenacted in marble and shells and soft feathers winging in deceptive death against the sky: the mythic fall of a young boy, betrayed by his foolish pride. He fell, he reached, he stretched, trapped in stone, forever yearning for the freedom that was always just out of his grasp.

"Icarus Falls." She did not know she had spoken aloud until suddenly the bottle cap Edward had given her flamed, hot and alive, in the pocket of her jeans.

"Oh . . ."

For suddenly she saw on the opposite end of the clearing the real incarnation of that fallen man:

Edward.

He stood just as he had that night in Alaska, still and remote, his skin glowing oddly in the dying light. But, unlike the last time, he was unaware of her presence; and Bella felt almost as though she were intruding on some intimate revelation, seeing his face etched with sadness and longing, looking once again impossibly young, the cuffs of his jeans uncharacteristically dusty, and the reddish mop of his unruly hair whipped to an almost unrecognizable frenzy, as though it had been trying to climb the trees as he walked under them.

And Bella's heart broke for him, standing, lost and alone, eternally divided from the vibrant, violent, and violently brief human life that he so patently craved, that he had reached for, through her, and fallen so woefully short.

Poor Edward, who had been destined to die all those years ago, when Carlisle in his loneliness had ripped the promise of heaven and the afterlife from him. Edward, now trapped within the stone skin that was neither living nor dead, hard nor soft, marble nor flesh, the undreaming half life of unsolicited immortality.

He had not wanted the life that Carlisle had forced upon him – not under those deadly terms, and had instead labored sadly, angrily, and righteously frustrated under the existence that had been wrought upon him, content to be neuter, until she had blazed into his life, a shot into his unbeating heart.

Poor innocent Edward.

Seeing him now, misery plain on his features, Bella wanted to fall down on the earth and weep for him, to curse the man who in all his kind benevolence had seen fit to remove the terrible waste of Edward's eternal rest, and reward him with living damnation. But she could not, knowing that she in her self doubt had been just as guilty.

He was before her then, pulling the Mossberg from her numb fingers. She heard the grim, gravely crunch of metal on stone as it dropped to the ground, and felt the cool touch of one hand against her cheek as the other slid along her hip, with his mouth soft and sure against her own, and she was wax in his arms.

"This!" her body shouted at her. "This man!" She melted against him, sinking to earth as he set her aflame, letting him mold her body to his own, feeling the delicious hardness of his wiry frame pressed against hers. Her breasts, her body ached for him, and she arched unwittingly against him, as if the cool touch of his skin could ease the maddening pressure of her swollen flesh.

"I want you," she whispered wordlessly into his mouth, along his jaw, into his ear, branding it into his hard skin with her teeth.

From somewhere far away, through the rushing blood in her ears, she heard the sound of ripping fabric, and felt the burning touch of Edward's cool hands, his open mouth on the sensitive skin of her breasts.

They did not speak; that moment, as they strained against each other on the forest floor, communicating soundlessly in the timeless language of the body had dissolved that final reticence of the mind, birthing between them a new understanding of who they had both become.

She wanted him. Wanted him to take her. Take her away from the sadness, the conflicted confusion of her existence. She wanted him to take her to earth, down on the ground, to mark her naked flesh with his own. She wanted him, wanted it all, his heart, his mind, the earthly delight of his cold body as it moved against hers, passionate and unrestrained. And finally, she knew what the destination of the wandering painful trek her life had led her on, and where she had been running to, all those five years in the woods.

Edward.

And herself. The Bella that was whole, the Bella that could love her fallen boy, and the Bella that could heal him, body and soul, with the pure offering of her own.

Here. Here was life. Here in his arms she knew what she wanted. There was only one thing left.

"I want to go home."

X X X X X

They sat for a moment in silence, as Bella's words dropped slowly around them. The smoke of her breath rose slowly skyward, whispering with the sweet incense of pagan sacrifice. Edward held her on to softly, his hands resting gently on the swell of her hips as they spread wide athwart his thighs. His very being swam with primal lust as the lush heat of the woman straddling his lap pressed against him, with the world silver and crimson with the falling snow and the sound of Bella's rushing blood echoing strangely in his empty chest.

"Home?" he said stupidly, his hands tightening urgently on her soft flesh. The words meant something, something important, but the thunderous pounding of Bella's heart throbbed loudly between his ears in tandem with the resounding ache deep in his groin. In his confusion he felt the vague stirrings of alarm.

What home could she mean? Surely not . . .

And then Bella was smiling gently at him, her red lips soft and inviting as her chilled, warm hands heated his cheeks, and she tapped her forehead softly against his.

"Home, Edward. With you, wherever that may be."

All his words, the eternal affirmation, crowded into his mouth, choking him with all the effectiveness of awkward youth, and Bella must have seen something of the joyful, resounding, "Yes!" that he could not speak, for suddenly she was kissing him, long and deep, her lips moving languorously against his own, long minutes of it as her skin rippled with equal parts gooseflesh of both cold and desire.

Edward groaned into her mouth, wrapping his arms firmly around her soft frame, pulling her body flush against him. Her kisses were warm, sweet aloe against the painful poisonous wound of self-doubt and hatred that had plagued him throughout his undying existence. They confessed him, absolved him, purified the bitter stain that sullied his inescapable, ever wakeful life.

Bella.

His salvation and his life.

Bella, now bestride him, exposed, the soft fullness of her feminine flesh heaving in the chill mountain air as he kissed it with an open mouth; Bella's body whispering the silent words to him that he had waited all his immortal life to hear: that he was wanted, desired; that he was home.

And so he could not bring himself to be ashamed at the sight of her, her lips swollen from his rigorous attention, her eyes dilated, black with desire, the flush of her cheeks spread low, falling over the soft lines of her neck and breasts, and the maddening heat of her pelvis as it pressed against his own. She was soft and hot, and yielding in his arms, enswathing him in lush femininity and latent promise, and Edward itched with the desire to kiss her again, to tear her shirt the rest of the way down, to rip off all their clothing, to claim the rest of her naked skin with his mouth, and his body, his and his alone.

But night, along with the snow, was falling fast, the orange and golden flames of the sunset extinguished by the dropping snow, and so Edward contented himself with pressing his lips softly, once against hers, and once on the flushed skin just above her breasts, before he pulled the ragged ends of her shirt closed. He let his fingers rest for a moment over the arch of her collarbones, feeling them tremble with subtle rise and fall from the heavy vibrations of her heart, before closing the zip on her heavy canvas jacket. It was a benediction and a promise, a vow to continue what they had begun.

Smiling ruefully, Edward levered himself gently to his feet, guiding Bella carefully up along with him. She seemed deflated now, her whole body seeming to sag with exhaustion, but her eyes were bright and alert, as she fixed him with a steady gaze, and her voice, when she spoke, was soft, and smooth, albeit somewhat wry in its sentiment:

"Let's get me back to civilization. It's fucking freezing out here, and I seem to have ripped my only shirt."

Edward wanted to laugh at the oddity of his situation as he easily shouldered Bella's overnight pack, and picked up the shotgun from where it laid – the world's most perfect predator, carrying a twelve gauge through a forest completely devoid of threat. He slung her bag onto his back as easily as he had once done with her, as he would never dream to do again. Though through her humanity she remained physically frail, this new Bella was far too dignified, too strong, to be tossed about like a piece of baggage. And Edward was enough in awe of her to feel deserving of the bolt of heaven that would surely crash down upon him should he dare to trespass upon her exaltedness.

Instead, he forwent the lightning curse and took her hand, slipping his arm around hers and pulling her close to his side. For all that she appeared exhausted, Bella was surprisingly sure on her feet, treading softly and steadily by him, her fingers resting, feather-light, in his chilled grasp. Edward did his best to chafe them against his palm, feeling all the while, a slight subterranean shiver from deep within her.

Arm in arm, they walked back down to the rented cabin, utterly silent except for the odd dry sound of their booted feet as they stepped upon the new fallen snow. He did not regret her slow, human pace as they hiked down the darkening hillside, leaving the marble corpse of Icarus in the clearing behind them, but instead delighted in it, knowing that, at least for now, she had returned to walk beside him, to be the unwitting light in his life of darkness.

Edward started a fire while Bella showered off the grime of the last five days, warming his body against the crackling flames as they bathed the unlit room in a warm smoky glow. He turned when she emerged from the bathroom in a puff of steam, wearing only the thick lodge robe, her wet hair falling about her in Gorgon's locks, and the light shone briefly behind her, showering her rosy flesh with a golden cast, before she switched it off, dropping them both into the pleasant winking shadows of the firelight.

He went to her then, cautiously gathering her against him, as though her rinse in the scalding water had washed away the progress they had made, but Bella slipped her arms willingly around his anxious body, breathing a grateful sigh as she rested her cheek against his breastbone. She was still overwarm from the shower, her skin burning with latent heat, and he could feel himself begin to soften against her.

Suddenly she pulled back, pressing her palms flat on his chest, and looked up at him, her eyes not quite meeting his in the shifting shadows, but focusing somewhere in the neighborhood of his forehead. Trapped against her mesmerizing warmth, and the softness of her gaze, he was unable to look up himself. Bella's brown eyes were deep and unfathomable, and Edward was struck once again with the conflicted desire to both fall down and worship her, and tear the flimsy hotel robe off her and ravish her with his own lust.

Bella unwittingly broke the spell herself, her face splitting into a very undignified and patently mortal grin, as she reached up past his curious eyes and pulled out a fairly large and rather colorful clump of lichen out of his hair.

"Bringing home the whole forest, Edward?" Bella plucked a twig from the uncertain grasp of his disheveled locks.

Nonplussed, he finally relinquished his grasp on her shoulder, and ran an embarrassed hand through where her fingers had just been, feeling a rather remarkable accumulation of forest material.

"If I were a botanist I'd be shaking your head out over some slides right now," Bella's dark eyes crinkled up at him, her face wide and open, and Edward found himself trapped in her expression, falling into it as though he would drown. It was a real smile – the first real smile she had given him since they had been so abruptly reunited, and it transformed the now angular lines of her heart shaped face, softening her cheeks, her full lips quirking upwards at him. The sight of it took his breath away, for she was so beautiful, shining at him with a joy they had each of them rekindled, her look both human and divine, the vibrant goddess glowing within her, and the hand Edward had kept at her waist splayed reflexively against the small of her back, pressing her close, as the sudden reminiscence of a much more innocent time swept over them. Memories of a boy and a girl, awkward, anxious, and utterly infatuated with each other, fumbling through their budding courtship over a third rate microscope and some scratched slides, against the equally uncomfortable backdrop of a high school science class.

He wanted to weep then, for all they had lost, the time they had wasted – that he had wasted through his own fear. How many endless nights he could have seen that smile, could have felt his dead heart leap at the sight of that pure joy that looked up at him now.

Perhaps seeing some of that thought in his expression as he looked down at her, Bella's brow furrowed, and she gently brushed her hand over his cheek, before standing on her tiptoes and pushing the hair off his forehead. It was an altogether motherly gesture, but as the softness of her breasts rubbed against his chest, and with all her lovely round flesh pressed to him, Edward's thoughts toward her were anything but familial, and he felt every muscle in his body constrict with desire.

"Go take a shower, Edward," said Bella, brushing another bit of earthy detritus from his shoulder. "And then come to bed." She might as well have said "Go throw yourself in the fireplace," and Edward would just have readily complied. As it was, he felt himself nodding dumbly, her words landing in his belly like hot coals, lodging somewhere in the vicinity of his belt buckle, before his hold on her slackened, and he turned away to bathroom that she had just occupied.

It was a hotel washroom like any other, stark and sterile, but the hot steamy air of the shower smelled like soap and mineral water and Bella, and Edward was of half a mind to turn right back around and throw himself on her. He swallowed thickly, knowing that she deserved better, and undressed himself with shaking fingers. The hot water warmed him, beating softly against his hard skin and he scrubbed himself as though he could peel away those layers of himself that he did not want, scouring away the undesirable surface and exposing the new pink quick that he now knew existed beneath it.

What would she do? What was it that she wanted?

Edward lingered under the steaming geyser of the showerhead, unsure of what to do when he stepped back into the cool darkness of the fire lit bedroom. They had not declared themselves, there was no admission yet of love between them, and he was hesitant to act before those words were spoken. He could see it in her eyes, feel it in her touch, but he did not really know, not without a declaration, and the ambiguity was excruciating.

He had waited. A hundred years almost he had lingered on the cusp of manhood, complacent, but not really content, until Bella had torn through his existence, a burning lance into his very soul, scorching away the careful restrictions he had placed upon himself, revealing the slumbering remnants of humanity that lingered under his frozen exterior. It rumbled and roared within him now, demanding his acquiescence, and even in the face of the last vestiges of his reticence, its clamor outweighed even the smallest twinge of his unwanted inhuman instincts.

Edward leaned his head against the cool tiles of the shower as the hot water cascaded over him, feeling the warm rivulets trickle between his shoulder blades and down his back. He was conflicted, both body and mind: there were choices before the both of them that their tentative reunion had broached that remained as yet unspoken. Bella's renewed presence in his life awakened a multitude of unknowns for the both of their futures, and while Edward would love her until the stars fell, it was not an admission he could force from her though he could see the hint of it shining out through her own eyes.

He did his best not to think of Bella, lying in the cabin's four poster bed, waiting for the potentially amorous advances of her freshly showered erstwhile vampire lover. It was utterly ridiculous, but it was their reality. Sighing resignedly, he toweled himself off. The whole situation was awkward – dressing in flannel pants that he had never before needed, going to lie in the bed of the young woman his heart was irreversibly enmeshed with, to watch her sleep, and wait for the moment of resolution that might never come.

Edward almost tore the door off leaving the bathroom.

Warm shadows danced about the room, and as his eyes adjusted to the diminished light, Edward could see her lying on her back, her eyes fixed on the ceiling, hands crossed over her chest, oddly reminiscent of the posture of medieval death. She turned at the sound of him, rolling onto her side under the thick down comforter, and Edward followed the motion with his eyes, absolutely entranced as the rounded curves of her body shifted pleasantly under the blankets. They both paused for a moment, he hesitating at her bedside, and she, pliant and vulnerable beneath the sheets, their eyes meeting in a moment fraught with crackling desire and indecision, and then Bella stretched out her arms and he lifted the covers and slipped gratefully between them, drawing all of her softness and heat against him, sighing contentedly into her hair as she nestled her head into the hollow below his collarbone.

Home, he breathed against her.

Home, her breasts, her belly, her thighs whispered back to him, hot against his cool frame. Home in her eyes, home in her fingers as they slid along the muscles of his chest, home in her face as he lifted her chin, home in her lips as they parted against his. Everything about her was home, a burning fleshly oasis in a world of loneliness and sorrow and death, and Edward gripped her, his greatest joy, firmly with both hands, knowing full well that that happiness was fleeting, that what he had lost, he could never afford to lose again.

X X X X X

Edward was kissing her, soft and gentle and innocent and sweet, the way he once had in the halcyon days of their childish romance, his lips moving slowly against hers, and Bella could feel his body tremble as they breathed softly into each other's mouths. She cupped his cheeks in her hands, feeling the smooth skin, and the muscles in his jaw as they pulled and flexed, soothing him, holding him, as the warm tide of desire and longing swept through her.

It was as though a bubble filled her breast, swelling in her lungs, pushing against her ribs, finally welling up into her throat and choking her as Edward's lips brushed tenderly against her own. And suddenly her eyes were filling with tears, great brimming drops of them, spilling down over her cheeks, into their mouths and onto their tongues salt and sweet together.

"I missed you," Bella whispered to him once again. "I missed you," against his lips. "I missed you," into the wary wilderness of his coppery hair, her tears baptizing them both, blessing them with the joy that poured, unchecked, from her heart, a great torrent from what had once been a gaping, purulent wound, that was now the epicenter of her healing.

"Don't cry, Bella," Edward's expression was pained. "Please don't cry."

He pulled her ever closer, his hands sliding in comfort and supplication against her, murmuring soothing sounds upon her lips while she shuddered against him, overwrought, and overcome.

"I'm not crying," Bella managed at last, hating the look of sadness and doubt that marred Edward's smooth features. "Not really. It's just . . . my heart is too full."

I love you.

She did not say it; and as yet she could not. But her face could speak the words her mouth failed to frame, and the words shimmered on the air between them.

Their eyes met, golden and umber, molten and liquid in the light of the fire, shining with affirmation, and Edward's mouth was on hers again, rough and exultant, his breaths shuddering against her chest, until they were both panting and gasping like marathoners, as they raced, lips and hands and tongues together, toward the burning fire of their united hearts as it threatened to consume them.

Never had immolation seemed a more joyous occasion.

"God, Edward," Bella gasped through the fullness that constricted her chest, feeling his long fingers trace the arch of her ribs, his palms flat against the raging inferno that seemed to have replaced her belly.

His lips moved in a slow smile against hers, as his thumbs moved over her night shirt in gentle circles on the sensitive skin just beneath her breasts, but his eyes were dark and serious as he held her to him.

"I hope this means what I think it means," Edward's voice was rough, raw with desire, resonating deep and compelling against her. "Because I am never letting you go."

Bella took his words on her lips and in her heart, sliding her hands over his cheeks and into his hair, pulling his mouth down to hers, giving him her affirmation before the silent sleep of exhaustion overtook her.

"I never want to run again."

I love as always to hear from you - sometimes it's the only thing that keeps me going. If I am ever remiss in responding, feel free to slap me around on the Twilighted forum. I am known to play over there.