Isabella Swan
[Author's Note: I am enamored by all the follows I have on this story. I am really enjoying writing this story too and I love love love that you guys are loving it. I have sooo much in store for it. The plan is to do a complete rewrite of the arc of the story. That means, over the course of this ff, the characters will do practically everything I want them to do and it'll all be wrapped up in a nice little bow. Anyways, this is the last full chapter of just Bella before Rosalie comes back in, and it's sort of long. The next few will probably be pretty lengthy. Anyways, thank you so much for the reviews! Let me know what parts you're loving!]
When Bella awoke, Alice was still sitting in her desk chair, having accumulated a couple of shorter classic novels beside her. There was Chopin's The Awakening and Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby. Mary Shelly's Frankenstein lay half finished in her lap. She smiled warmly at Bella the moment she opened her eyes.
Bella yawned, covering her mouth with the back of her hand and forced herself to sit up. "How long was I out? Did you read all of those?"
"Yes," Alice replied brightly. "I'm much more partial to science fiction but-" she shrugged, presenting her current read, "this one is right up my alley."
"Frankenstein? I love Frankenstein. The misunderstood monster, the prosecuting villagers, the-" she stopped, realizing what she was saying. "Sorry."
"Oh it's alright," Alice said. "Vampires haven't been openly persecuted since the late 18th century." She got up, stretched her arms in show and then placed Shelly's book by the others, a little slip of paper holding her place. "Actually, Fitzgerald's novel is an enjoyable read as well. I'm sure if I remembered my human life, I would remember its release. But I don't." She laughed her light twinkling laugh. "You know, Bella, I've always found this book reminds me of your Rosalie. Do you want to know why?"
The brunette park ranger nodded enthusiastically, eager to get more information about the blonde vampire. "Please."
"Well Rosalie is like the titular character in many ways, you see. She's lavish, successful, fabulously wealthy, and loves parties. But still, it's nearly impossible to really know her."
"She likes to party?"
"Yes. Rosalie loves to party. Before you, parties were practically the only thing that made Rosalie actually smile. You must insist she takes you to one of her famous parties sometime. We all have an amazing time. She really knows how to entertain!"
"You all party? Even Edward?"
"Edward is a lot more fun than he looks," Alice explained, her tone amused. "He loves brooding but he's a great dancer as well." She was dreamy-eyed for a moment thinking of him. "Of course Rosalie is too, you'll see."
At that, the small spritely vampire came across the room and sweetly touched Bella's shoulder. "I have to take my leave for a little Bella," she said. "I'm going to go get some of my tools so that I can do surgery on your walkie talkie. That is if you still want me to."
"Yes," Bella's response was quick. "I mean yes. Please. If you want to."
Alice beamed. "Rosalie was so right about you! You're absolutely adorable."
After assuring Bella that Edward would be patrolling nearby for bears, the dainty vampire left as swiftly as she did anything else. Bella started her day with instant coffee and though she missed the delicious brew she had been brought the day before, she was happy to have the baked goods Esme had sent her. It was a mild weather day too, the rain having stopped at least for the moment. She had a great deal of anticipation to see Rose again, but the possibility of spending the day with Alice kept her positive.
She got dressed and retrieved her new field journal from the desk where Edward had placed it. Then, leaving the door unlocked for Alice, she went out to begin her rounds. Work seemed entirely trivial knowing all she knew, but Bella was responsible and thorough. She was anything but focused, however, and caught herself more than once daydreaming, her pen to the paper but not actually writing anything. Mostly, she thought about Alice's comment regarding Rosalie's dancing ability. What exactly did that mean?
Around noon, when she went back to her watchtower for lunch, she found that Alice had already returned and that Edward was with her. He sat on Bella's counter, swinging his legs and looking content. Alice was at her desk again, tinkering with her walkie. She looked up when Bella came in.
"Hello Bella," she said cheerfully, "I've nearly gotten it. And good news- Rosalie has a flight from LAX to Seattle at 2 this afternoon."
Bella mentally did the math in her head again, calculating the flight time and the drive time and the.. run time. Hopefully, she thought, Rosalie would be there by 9 or 10. That made her happy. She just had to get through the rest of the day and then…
"That's good," Bella said, relieved that the angelic vampire she couldn't stop thinking about would actually be coming back. She asked, "Are you sure?" just to be on the safe side. She didn't want to discredit Alice's visions but she was just so eager..
The dark haired vampire smiled at her brightly and stood up from the desk, walkie in hand. "There! Got it!" She came over to the park ranger and put one hand on her shoulder. "Don't worry, Bella," she said. "Rosalie wants to see you just as badly as you want to see her." She took Bella's other hand then and placed the walkie in it. "And when she gets back, after you have your reunion and I get a hold of her phone, you can contact her on this. Just change the frequency down to channel 4 and.. voila!" She looked proud of herself.
"And that's all it takes?"
"Practically," Edward quipped, hopping down from the counter and joining his wife by the desk. "Alice is incredibly skilled when it comes to technology. It's all Greek to me but-"
Alice swatted him playfully. "You speak Greek Edward, so that hardly makes sense."
"You speak Greek?" Bella went over to the kitchenette and began preparing some soup on the propane stove.
"He speaks multiple languages."
Edward put his arm around Alice. "So do you Alice."
"Is being multilingual a..familial trait?" Bella asked, her curiosity peaked. Suddenly she had a lot more questions she wanted to have answered.
"Yes," Edward replied, coming over to help. He opened the can with the hand can opener and then sat it beside her with a grin. "Every member of our family speaks at least 5 languages, in addition to English of course. Carlisle speaks 9. Fluently at least."
"It's strategic," Alice explained, taking a spoon and stepping around Bella to stir her soup. "When we travel as a group, the goal is that at least one member of our family can speak to anyone we come across."
"And what are Rosalie's languages?" Bella asked, stepping back to watch as the vampires surprisingly took over her lunch preparations.
"English, French, Spanish, Russian, Gaelic and.. Arabic?"
"Sanskrit," Edward corrected. "And hieroglyphics, actually, if you want to count that."
Alice's eyes twinkled. "That's right. She got really into Ancient Egyptian linguistics in the 1990s. Though I can't remember what sparked that interest.."
"I can," Edward provided, getting a bowl and spoon and setting it on the counter by the stovetop. "It was a movie she watched. The Mummy. She had a crush on the protagonist.. uh, what was her name?"
"Evelyn Carnahan," Bella said without pause.
"That's right," the male vampire said, nodding. "Come to think of it, she bears a sort of resemblance to you, Bella."
"She does!" Alice exclaimed. "Dark hair, dark eyes, that delicious tanned skin."
"So what you're telling me," Bella said, feeling sort of low all of a sudden, "is that I have to compete with movie stars like Rachel Weisz?"
The vampires worked together to pour the soup into a bowl and sit it on the desk for Bella to eat. Then, patting the back of the desk chair in order to get the brunette to sit down, Alice said, "That is absolutely not what we're telling you."
The park ranger lowered herself into her chair and picked up her spoon. The vegetable beef soup smelled good but she honestly didn't have that much of an appetite. "What are you saying then?" She asked, unable to let it go now that the subject had been brought up.
It was Edward that gave her an answer. He came and leaned against the door, sliding his hands into the pockets of his jeans and fixing her in a very steely gaze. "Carlisle turned me in 1918 but Alice didn't find me until 1950. Until then, I lived in a constant state of imagining her before I even knew she existed. I must have thought I saw her in the streets a hundred times. Women I passed that I now know resembled her caught my eye. Her scent, her voice.. When I experienced anything similar it was like a note being played on a forgotten instrument inside my soul. I spent 32 years seeing Alice without actually seeing her. And it never made sense.. not until she came to me and I realized what I'd been searching for."
Alice slid into Edward's arms then and he embraced her lovingly, kissing the top of her head with affection.
Bella was momentarily speechless. She put her spoon in her soup but left it there and went right on staring at the vampires hugging in her watchtower. It took her a moment to form the words, but when she could, she presented her question in parts. "Do you.. do you think that.. other vampires find their.. their mates like that?"
They answered in unison- "Yes."
Alice convinced Bella to eat by agreeing to tell the story of how Carlisle had found Esme and then.. how Alice had begun having visions about Edward before she first saw him. When Bella's bowl was empty, she turned backwards in her chair and draped her arms over the wooden back.
"So is it just a vampire thing then?" she asked the two vampires. "I mean, did Esme ever dream of Carlisle?"
"It's different for humans as far as I can tell," Edward explained. "Though Esme told us that she had a very strict type." His eyes danced with that comment, as though he found the comment funny. "She said that the human men she took interest in all had very Carlisle-like qualities. I believe one of them was a doctor and the other, a well-to-do socialite with fashionable blonde hair."
"So how about you Bella?" Alice inquired, still wrapped up in her lover's arms. "Did you experience anything in your past that, now looking back, you think could have foretold Rosalie's entrance into your life?"
Bella was thoughtful. She recalled the girls she'd had super-secret crushes on growing up, and though they'd all been blonde, she didn't believe any of them could even hold a candle to Rosalie. Then she remembered the girl she'd had a fling with in college and who had ended up being the only woman Bella had ever actually been with. She had been an absolute self-centered bitch with a terrible case of self-loathing homophobia that kept her very securely in the closet. There had been a time in Bella's life where she was infatuated with the girl, though it had never reached the level she'd gotten to in the last week. And, most importantly, she looked kind of like..
"Wow," the brunette said, shaking her head. "That's spooky. I guess I have."
Alice and Edward looked at each other and laughed.
After that, Bella cleaned up her lunch, washing her bowl with sterilized rainwater from the outside basin. She went back out into the forest and finished taking her daily notes. It had rained nearly a half an inch in the last two days which was a lot, even for Forks. She emptied her rainfall gauge and, with a sudden urge of excitement in realizing her work day was over, Bella went back to her watchtower.
Edward was gone, but Alice was sitting criss-cross again on her bed, finishing up Frankenstein. She greeted her warmly when she entered and then explained that Edward had gone to join Esme on a hunt. As it turned out, Edward accompanied everyone one their walks. His talent to read minds helped the vampires keep away from humans and paired with the other's abilities, the family had experienced a nearly flawlessly human-free hunting record- save for Bella, of course.
Alice offered Bella time to bathe and change, and then she joined her back in the cabin as the brunette snacked on baked goods. The lower the sun got in the sky, the more jittery Bella became, until her clumsiness took over. She was obsessively cleaning the cabin, carrying things here and there and straightening items that really didn't need straightening. When Bella bumped a porcelain bowl and it nearly shattered on the floor before the vampire could catch it, the park ranger forced herself to sit down.
"Bella," the small vampire said, a considerable amount of surprise in her amber eyes. "You are literally shaking. Are you that nervous?"
Bella sighed. "Yes, sorry. I've had a lot of caffeine today and.. I am very nervous. It's just.." She ran a hand through her hair. "It feels like something has changed, you know? Like before.. I didn't know how real it was. I think a big part of me didn't even accept that it was real. Like I'd been up here in the woods long enough to start hallucinating. But meeting you and Edward makes it feel so much more concrete. And now knowing I'm about to see her again.. It's wild." She took a shaking breath and sat down beside the vampire on her bed, aligning herself to fully face her. "Alice, can I tell you something?"
"Of course you can," came her answer. "You can tell me anything, anytime. I'm always here to listen."
The reply was so sincere, so reassuring and kind that Bella felt a rush of affection for her new close friend. She was suddenly very thankful to have met her and to have her to talk to about everything. "Thank you," she offered, "Really."
The vampire smiled. "You're welcome, Bella. Now go ahead."
Bella inhaled and then exhaled trying her best to regulate her breathing and to get ahold of her nerves. "Well," she said, "It's just that.. Sometimes it's so overwhelming because I'm so unbelievably attracted to her. Beyond reason even. And like.. I know what she is- what you all are- and I know she's got the power of charm and I'm pretty much immune or whatever but it's still so strong. And I know there's always this level of risk being around her because of.. Because of how I smell to her, I guess? But.. The way she looks, Alice. I mean.. You are all so insanely beautiful but.. Rosalie is, for the loss of another word, otherworldly. I honestly think that she must be one of the most beautiful women on the planet."
Alice remained silent, listening intently as Bella formed her thoughts into words. And then she nodded and took the human's hand. "I understand," she said. "As far as the danger goes, you're unfortunately correct. Being a human thrust in the center of a vampiric world comes with certain risks. Luckily, you're allied with the most benevolent vampiric family there is and we will keep Rosalie in check. When you meet Carlisle.." she paused and an expression of pride was seen on her lovely face, "When you meet him you'll feel better, I think. But regarding your statement about Rosalie-" she fixed the human in a serious gaze. "Bella, I don't want to freak you out and I am well aware this will come as a shock, as I can't imagine it wouldn't.. But Rosalie isn't one of the most beautiful women in the world."
It was hard to keep the disbelief out of her voice when Bella responded, sort of up in arms, "How?"
Alice laughed very lightly. "Bella," she said, "Rosalie is the most beautiful woman in the world."
All Bella could say was a sort of dumbfounded, "What?"
"That's where the charm comes from," Alice offered as a follow-up. "You see.. As a human, Rosalie Hale was supernaturally beautiful, beyond the capability of human elegance. I'm told she was coveted in some way by every man or woman that crossed her path. She was lavishly showered in gifts and revered by all acquaintances as the sheer definition of sublime. So when she was changed.." She laughed. "Bella I hope you know how truly rare you are. Other vampires meet Rosalie and fall all over themselves. I remember a newly changed male in the seventies cried upon seeing Rosalie for the first time. She's even caused hysteria a time or two. And you.." she squeezed Bella's fingers. "You are able to simply talk to her. That's unheard of."
The explanation was sound but Bella still had trouble accepting what Alice had told her. Or really, she accepted it too quickly. Of course Rosalie was the most beautiful woman in the world.. it made perfect sense. What Bella was actually having trouble wrapping her head around was why Rosalie liked her. Bella was pretty. She'd always gotten the compliments through school and sometimes she could even could see it in the mirror. She had lightly tanned skin, a body fit from yoga and Pilates, wavy dark chestnut hair and big brown dough eyes with thick dark lashes. She'd been called beautiful before, even sexy.. but it had been casual day to day flirting. It wasn't something she was bored of hearing by any means, and it wasn't something she needed to hear. Yet.. She knew where she stood. She'd been asked on more dates than she could count during school and had she not retreated to a life of hermitage, she would have still been receiving offers. But it didn't matter. Next to Rosalie, Bella felt.. Foolish.
"But why me?" the park ranger insisted. "Why would she want me?"
"Bella," Alice chided, shaking her head. "Please try and believe what I'm about to tell you, would you?"
The human nodded bleakly. "Okay, I'll try."
"You are breathtaking."
"How?" Bella asked in blatant disbelief. "I'm wearing a park ranger uniform and I don't have any make-up on and-"
"Materialistic amends have nothing to do with beauty," Alice interrupted. Then she rose from her seat, stood very still, and looked out at the forest. Bella knew right away that she was having a vision. "She's an hour away Bella," she told the brunette afterwards. "Only an hour."
Bella released her breath very slowly, letting the anxiety and anticipation bubble over. "Fuck."
The small dainty vampire took Bella's hands. "You're fine," she insisted. "Just try and relax a little." She guided the human through breathing exercises, as though she ever did them herself. Afterwards, when Bella was a bit calmer, she said, "I'm going to leave now so that I can patrol until Rosalie arrives. I've had a wonderful two days with you Bella and I'm incredibly honored to get to know you. Regardless of what happens- the happiness you have brought my sister even in the last week has given my family a kind of hope they didn't believe existed. Please know that as long as you live, you have a friend in me, in Edward, and in Carlisle and Esme."
"And Rosalie?" Bella said.
Alice's eyes twinkled mischievously at that and her response mirrored her expression. "We're all crossing our fingers, Bella."
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