Everything was so clear.
Sharp.
Defined.
Brilliant.
The light overhead was still blinding-bright, yet I could plainly see the glowing strands of the filaments inside the bulb. I could see each color of the rainbow in the white light, and, at the very edge of the spectrum, an eighth color I had no name for.
Behind the light, I could distinguish the individual grains in the dark wood ceiling above. In front of it, I could see the dust motes in the air, the sides the light touched, and the dark sides, distinct and separate. They spun like little planets, moving around each other in a celestial dance.
The dust was so beautiful that I inhaled in shock; the air whistled down my throat, swirling the motes into a vortex. The action felt wrong. I considered, and realized the problem was that there was no relief tied to the action. I didn't need the air. My lungs weren't waiting for it. They reacted indifferently to the influx.
I did not need the air, but liked it. In it, I could taste the room around me – taste the lovely dust motes, the mix of the stagnant air mingling with the flow of slightly cooler air from the open door. Taste a lush whiff of silk. Taste a faint hint of something warm and desirable. That smell made my throat burn dryly, a faint echo of the venom burn, though the scent was tainted by the bite of chlorine and ammonia. And most of all, I could taste an almost-honey-lilac-and-sun-flavored scent that was the strongest thing, the closest thing to me.
I heard the sound of the others, breathing again now that I did. Their breath mixed with the scent that was something just off honey and lilac and sunshine, bringing new flavors. Cinnamon, hyacinth, pear, seawater, rising bread, pine, vanilla, leather, apple, moss, lavender, chocolate... I traded a dozen different comparisons in my mind, but none of them fit exactly. So sweet and pleasant.
I also heard a faint, thudding rhythm, with a voice shouting angrily to the beat. Rap music? I was mystified for a moment, and then the sound faded away like a car passing by with the windows rolled down.
With a start, I realized that this could be exactly right. Could I hear all the way to the freeway?
I didn't realize someone was holding me in their arms until I heard them breathe. I'd been so used to it. It was not a touch I expected. The skin was perfectly smooth, but it was the wrong temperature. Not cold.
After that first frozen second of shock, my body responded to the unfamiliar touch in a way that shocked me even more.
Air hissed up my throat, spitting through my clenched teeth with a low, menacing sound like a swarm of bees. Before the sound was out, my muscles bunched and arched, twisting away from the unknown. I flipped off my back in a spin so fast it should have turned the room into an incomprehensible blur – but it did not. I saw every dust mote, every splinter in the wood-paneled walls, every loose thread in microscopic detail as my eyes whirled past them.
So by the time I found myself crouched against the wall defensively – about a sixteenth of a second later – I already understood what had startled me, and that I had overreacted.
Edward wouldn't feel cold to me. We were the same temperature now.
I held my pose for an eighth of a second longer, adjusting to the scene before me.
Edward was still sitting on the operating table that had been my pyre, his hand reached out toward me, his expression anxious.
His face was the most important thing, but my peripheral vision cataloged everything else, just in case. Some instinct to defend had been triggered, and I automatically searched for any sign of danger.
My vampire family waited cautiously against the far wall by the door, Emmett and Jasper in the front. Like there was danger. My nostrils flared, searching for the threat. I could smell nothing out of place. That faint scent of something delicious – but marred by harsh chemicals – tickled my throat again, setting it to aching and burning.
Alice was peeking around Jasper's elbow with a huge grin on her face; the light sparkled off her teeth, another eight-color rainbow.
That grin reassured me and then put the pieces together. Jasper and Emmett were in the front to protect the others, as I had assumed. What I hadn't grasped immediately was that / was the danger.
All this was a sideline. The greater part of my senses and my mind were still focused on Edward's face.
I had never seen it before this second.
How many times had I stared at him and marveled over his beauty? How many hours – days, weeks – of my life had I spent dreaming about what I then deemed to be perfection? I thought I'd known his face better than my own. I'd thought this was the one sure physical thing in my whole world: the flawlessness of Edward's face.
I may as well have been blind.
For the first time, with the dimming shadows and limiting weakness of humanity taken off my eyes, I saw his face. I gasped and then struggled with my vocabulary, unable to find the right words. I needed better words.
At this point, the other part of my attention had ascertained that there was no danger here besides myself, and I automatically straightened out of my crouch; almost a whole second had passed since I'd been on the table.
I was momentarily preoccupied by the way my body moved. The instant I'd considered standing erect, I was already straight. There was no brief fragment of time in which the action occurred; change was instantaneous, almost as if there was no movement at all.
I continued to stare at Edward's face, motionless again.
He moved slowly off the table, coming around it – each step taking nearly half a second, each step flowing sinuously like river water weaving over smooth stones – his hand still outstretched.
I watched the grace of his advance, absorbing it with my new eyes.
"Bella?" he asked in a low, calming tone, but the worry in his voice layered my name with tension.
I could not answer immediately, lost as I was in the velvet folds of his voice. It was the most perfect symphony, a symphony in one instrument, an instrument more profound than any created by man...
"Bella, love? I'm sorry, I know it's disorienting. But you're alright. Everything is fine."
Everything? My mind spun out, spiraling back to my last human hour. Already, the memory seemed dim, like I was watching through a thick, dark veil – because my human eyes had been half blind. Everything had been so blurred.
When he said everything was fine, did that include Renesmee? Where was she? With Rosalie? He'd told me an eternity ago that she was going away, but that she would be coming back. How was she? Where was Esmee? With Rosalie?
As I deliberated for one small piece of a second over which question to ask first, Edward reached out tentatively and stroked his fingertips across my cheek. Smooth as satin, soft as a feather, and now exactly matched to the temperature of my skin.
His touch seemed to sweep beneath the surface of my skin, right through the bones of my face. The feeling was tingly, electric – it jolted through my bones, down my spine, and trembled in my stomach.
Wait, I thought as the trembling blossomed into a warmth, a yearning. Wasn't I supposed to lose this? Wasn't giving up this feeling a part of the bargain?
I was a newborn vampire. The dry, scorching ache in my throat gave proof to that. And I knew what being a newborn entailed. Human emotions and longings would come back to me later in some form, but I'd accepted that I would not feel them in the beginning. Only thirst. That was the deal, the price. I'd agreed to pay it.
But as Edward's hand curled to the shape of my face like satin-covered steel, desire raced through my dried-out veins, singing from my scalp to my toes.
He arched one perfect eyebrow, waiting for me to speak.
I threw my arms around him.
Again, it was like there was no movement. One moment I stood straight and still as a statue; in the same instant, he was in my arms.
Warm – or at least, that was my perception. With the sweet, delicious scent that I'd never been able to really take in with my dull human senses, but that was one hundred percent Edward. I pressed my face into his smooth chest.
And then he shifted his weight uncomfortably. Leaned away from my embrace. I stared up at his face, confused and frightened by the rejection.
"Urn... carefully, Bella. Ow."
I yanked my arms away, folding them behind my back. I was too strong.
"Oops," I mouthed.
Were it still beating, his smile would've stopped my heart.
"Don't panic, love," he said, lifting his hand to touch my lips, parted in horror. "You're just a bit stronger than I am for the moment."
My eyebrows pushed together. I'd known this, too, but it was the most surreal part of this ultimately surreal moment. I was stronger than him. I'd made him say 'ow'.
His hand stroked my cheek again, and I all but forgot my distress as another wave of desire rippled through my motionless body.
These emotions were so much stronger than I was used to that it was hard to stick to one train of thought despite the extra room in my head. Each new sensation overwhelmed me. I remembered Edward saying once – his voice in my head a weak shadow compared to the crystal, musical clarity I was hearing now – that his kind, our kind, were easily distracted. I could see why.
I made a concerted effort to focus. There was something I needed to say. The most important thing.
Very carefully, so carefully that the movement was actually discernible, I brought my right arm out from behind my back and raised my hand to touch his cheek. I refused to let myself be sidetracked by the pearly color of my hand or by the smooth silk of his skin or by the charge that zinged in my fingertips.
I stared into his eyes and heard my own voice for the first time.
"I love you," I said, but it sounded like singing. My voice rang and shimmered like a bell.
His answering smile dazzled me more than it ever had when I was human; I could really see it now.
"As I love you," he told me.
He took my face between his hands and leaned his face to mine – slow enough to remind me to be careful. He kissed me, soft as a whisper at first, and then suddenly stronger, fiercer. I tried to remember to be gentle with him, but it was hard work to remember anything in the onslaught of sensation, hard to hold on to any coherent thoughts.
It was like he'd never kissed me – like this was our first kiss. And, in truth, he'd never kissed me this way before.
It almost made me feel guilty. Surely I was in breach of the contract. I couldn't be allowed to have this, too.
Though I didn't need oxygen, my breathing speed raced as fast as it had when I was burning. This was a different kind of fire.
Someone cleared his throat. Emmett. I recognized the deep sound at once, joking and annoyed at the same time.
I'd forgotten we weren't alone. And then I realized that the way I was curved around Edward now was not exactly polite for company.
Oh, well, in for a penny, in for a pound.
"Avert your eyes Emmet," I said before quickly dipping Edward into a kiss. I was overjoyed at my ability to hold my husband like he weighed nothing. I heard Emmet groan while the rest of the family laughed politely.
How different this kissing was! I read his expression as I compared the indistinct human memories to this clear, intense feeling. He looked... a little smug.
"You've been holding out on me," I accused, my eyes narrowing a tiny bit.
He laughed, radiant with relief that it was all over – the fear, the pain, the uncertainties, the waiting, all of it behind us now. "It was sort of necessary at the time," he reminded me. "Now it's your turn to not break me."
Carlisle stepped around Emmett and walked toward me swiftly; his eyes were only slightly wary, but Jasper shadowed his footsteps. I'd never seen Carlisle's face before either, not really. I had an odd urge to blink – like I was staring at the sun.
"How do you feel, Bella?" Carlisle asked.
"Overwhelmed. There's so much. ..." I trailed off, listening to the bell-tone of my voice again.
"Yes, it can be quite confusing." I nodded one fast, jerky bob.
"But I feel like me. Sort of. I didn't expect that."
Edward's arms squeezed lightly around my waist. "I told you so," he whispered.
"You are quite controlled," Carlisle mused. "More so than / expected, even with the time you had to prepare yourself mentally for this."
I thought about the wild mood swings, the difficulty concentrating, and whispered, "I'm not sure about that."
He nodded seriously, and then his jeweled eyes glittered with interest. "It seems like we did something right with the morphine this time – that is, until it wore off. Tell me, what do you remember of the transformation process?"
I hesitated, intensely aware of Edward's breath brushing against my cheek, sending whispers of electricity through my skin.
"Everything was... very dim before. I remember spilling the blood, the intense pain that followed and making Edward promise me that he would save the baby instead of me."
I looked at Edward, momentarily frightened by the memory.
"I'm glad it didn't come down to it."
"How is she? I think you've told me before, but I'm… I'm not sure."
"Renesmee is healthy and well," he promised, a gleam I'd never seen before in his eyes. He said her name with an understated fervor. A reverence. The way devout people talked about their gods. "What do you remember after that?"
I focused on my poker face. I'd never been much of a liar. "It's hard to remember anything before the morphine wore off. It was so dark. And then... the pain began. I'd heard Edward tell me that Renesmee was near, though I couldn't be sure it was real and not a pain induced hallucination. I heard a car leave and I knew that she would not hear me scream."
I turned to Edward, "I'm sorry for that."
"You have nothing to apologize for, Bella."
I'd have to find a way to tip off Carlisle, though. Someday. If he ever needed to create another vampire. That possibility seemed very unlikely, which made me feel better about lying.
"I want you to think – to tell me everything you remember," Carlisle pressed excitedly, and I couldn't help the grimace that flashed across my face. I didn't want to have to keep lying, because I might slip up. And I didn't want to think about the burning. Unlike the human memories, that part was perfectly clear and I found I could remember it with far too much precision.
"Oh, I'm so sorry, Bella," Carlisle apologized immediately. "Of course your thirst must be very uncomfortable. This conversation can wait."
Until he'd mentioned it, the thirst actually wasn't unmanageable. There was so much room in my head. A separate part of my brain was keeping tabs on the burn in my throat, almost like a reflex. The way my old brain had handled breathing and blinking.
But Carlisle's assumption brought the burn to the forefront of my mind. Suddenly, the dry ache was all I could think about, and the more I thought about it, the more it hurt. My hand flew up to cup my throat, like I could smother the flames from the outside. The skin of my neck was strange beneath my fingers. So smooth it was somehow soft, though it was hard as stone, too.
Edward dropped his arms and took my other hand, tugging gently. "Let's hunt, Bella."
My eyes opened wider and the pain of the thirst receded, shock taking its place.
Me? Hunt? With Edward? But...how? I didn't know what to do.
He read the alarm in my expression and smiled encouragingly. "It's quite easy, love. Instinctual. Don't worry, I'll show you." When I didn't move, he grinned his crooked smile and raised his eyebrows. "I was under the impression that you'd always wanted to see me hunt."
I laughed in a short burst of humor (part of me listened in wonder to the pealing bell sound) as his words reminded me of cloudy human conversations. And then I took a whole second to run quickly through those first days with Edward – the true beginning of my life – in my head so that I would never forget them. I did not expect that it would be so uncomfortable to remember. Like trying to squint through muddy water. I knew from Rosalie's experience that if I thought of my human memory enough, I would not lose them over time. I did not want to forget one minute I'd spent with Edward, even now, when eternity stretched in front of us. I would have to make sure those human memories were cemented into my infallible vampire mind.
"Shall we?" Edward asked. He reached up to take the hand that was still at my neck. His fingers smoothed down the column of my throat. "I don't want you to be hurting," he added in a low murmur. Something I would not have been able to hear before.
"I'm fine," I said out of lingering human habit. "But first…"
There was so much. I'd never gotten to my questions. There were more important things than the ache.
It was Carlisle who spoke now. "Yes?"
"I want to see her. Renesmee." It was oddly difficult to say her name. My daughter, these words were even harder to think of. It all seemed so distant. I tried to remember how I had felt not three days ago, and automatically, my hands pulled free of Edward's and dropped to my stomach.
Flat. Empty. I clutched at the dark T-shirt that covered my skin, panicking again, while an insignificant part of my mind noted that Edward must have dressed me.
I knew there was nothing left inside me, and while I faintly remembered parts of the birth, the physical proof was still hard to process. All I knew was loving my little baby inside of me. Outside of me, she seemed like something I must have imagined. A fading dream – a dream that was half a nightmare.
While I wrestled with my confusion, I saw Edward and Carlisle exchange a guarded glance.
"What?" I demanded.
"Bella," Edward said soothingly. "That's not really a good idea. She's half human, love. Her heart beats, and blood runs in her veins. Until your thirst is positively under control... You don't want to put her in danger, do you?"
I frowned. Of course I must not want that.
Was I out of control? Confused, yes. Easily unfocused, yes. But dangerous? To her? My daughter?
I couldn't be positive that the answer was no. So I would have to be patient. That sounded difficult. Because until I saw her again, she wouldn't be real. Just a fading dream... of a stranger... "Where is she?"
"Seattle," Edward said sheepishly.
"You took my newborn daughter to Seattle?!" My voice and anger had risen. How dare he? I was her mother; I'd protected her for so long and he thought that now, she should be protected from me? ME?!
Jasper had been so still and silent that I'd taken no notice of him since he'd followed behind Carlisle. Now he moved again, coming closer, his eyes locked on me. Because I was the danger.
I knew he would be tasting the mood around me, too, and so he must have felt my jolt of shock as I studied his face, looking at it closely for the first time.
Through my sightless human eyes, the scars left from his former life with the newborn armies in the South had been mostly invisible. Only with a bright light to throw their slightly raised shapes into definition could I even make out their existence.
Now that I could see, they were his most dominant feature. It was hard to take my eyes off his ravaged neck and jaw – hard to believe that even a vampire could have survived so many sets of teeth ripping into his throat.
Instinctively, I tensed to defend myself. Any vampire who saw Jasper would have had the same reaction. The scars were like a lighted billboard. Dangerous, they screamed. How many vampires had tried to kill Jasper? Hundreds? Thousands? The same number that had died in the attempt.
Jasper smiled wryly at my assessment and the caution it caused.
I had to get out of there.
Jasper took a step forward, alarmed by my rising anxiety. He knew young vampires only too well; did this emotion presage some misstep on my part?
No one answered my question. I looked away, to Edward and Alice. Both their eyes were slightly unfocused – reacting to Jasper's unease. Listening to its cause, looking ahead to the immediate future.
"I won't harm you, Bella," he said slowly, deliberately, forcing my eyes away from the scars and into his own.
I took another deep, unnecessary breath.
He was right. I was safe.
"I'm fine," I promised everyone.
"She's in Seattle. Why?"
"We didn't want her to be anywhere close. The house and our home were out of the question. Forks again was a no-go. Seattle is relatively close and has good hospitals in case of an emergency."
My anxiety rose again at the last word.
"She's perfectly healthy," Edward said, sensing my rising unrest, "It was just another cautionary measure."
"She's with Rosalie?"
"And Esme. They are sending us updates every fifteen minutes. She was sleeping not long ago."
My heart ached with the desire to see her sleeping. "Wait," I protested again, trying to focus. Tell me everything that I missed. How long was I… gone?"
Edward exchanged a wary glance with Carlisle.
"What's wrong?"
"Nothing is wrong," Carlisle told me, emphasizing the last word in a strange way. "There haven't been many changes – you were only unaware for just a little under two days. As these things go, it was fast. Edward did an excellent job. Quite innovative – he injected the venom straight into your heart." He paused to smile proudly at his son.
"Other things did happen – nothing that cannot wait until you have hunted," Edward concluded.
When he pointed that out, I remembered the burn in my throat and swallowed convulsively.
"But…"
"We have all the time in the world for explanations, love," he reminded me gently.
Of course. I could wait a little longer for the answer; it would be easier to listen when the fierce pain of the fiery thirst was no longer scattering my concentration. "Okay."
"Wait, wait, wait," Alice trilled from the doorway. She danced across the room, dreamily graceful. As with Edward and Carlisle, I felt some shock as I really looked at her face for the first time. So lovely. "She can't go out like this."
"Like what?"
She pointed at my heart. My T-shirt had been ripped. Not enough to make me look indecent, but enough to offend Alice's fashion sensibilities. I wondered if the hole could be fixed. I really liked that T-shirt.
"Alice – ," Edward protested.
"Bad enough, you were the one to dress her–" I shot Edward a grateful look, "But she can't go out for the first time as a vampire looking like she just got out of bed."
"But I did just get out of bed… technically."
Alice closed her eyes and took a deep breath holding a finger in front of my face.
"Bella, I love you, but the time for your fashion adversity is over. Now, you will stay here and wait for me to bring you something more appropriate to wear."
She darted out of the room. I sensed that it would be the only time I could escape so jumped out the opened window. It had been an almost instinctive thing.
The ground seemed to move toward me so slowly that it was nothing at all to place my feet exactly right so that landing was no different than if I'd just done a small hop.
I turned and gave Edward a nod to follow, before darting at full speed away from the house to the edge of the river.
I could hear him behind and a competitive edge took center stage: I wondered if I could keep my lead. It was time for him to keep up with me.
I had a choice to make: I could either swim across the fifty yard river or I could try and jump. The newly discovered daredevil in me decided to jump. Landing in the water would only hurt my pride and nothing else.
In the air I finally felt the raw, massive strength thrilling in my limbs. I was suddenly sure that if I wanted to tunnel under the river, to claw or beat my way straight through the bedrock, it wouldn't take me very long. The objects around me – the trees, the shrubs, the rocks... the house – had all begun to look very fragile.
I was expecting the close-packed trees to be a problem, but they were surprisingly helpful. It was a simple matter to reach out with one sure hand as I fell back toward the earth again deep inside the forest and catch myself on a convenient branch; I swung lightly from the limb and landed on my toes, still fifteen feet from the ground on the wide bough of a Sitka spruce.
It was fabulous.
Over the sound of my peals of delighted laughter, I could hear Edward racing to find me. I could not let him. I was having too much fun.
I flew with him through the living green web and as I ran, I couldn't help laughing quietly at the thrill of it; the laughter neither slowed me nor upset my focus.
I could finally understand why Edward never hit the trees when he ran – a question that had always been a mystery to me. It was a peculiar sensation, the balance between the speed and the clarity. For, while I rocketed over, under, and through the thick jade maze at a rate that should have reduced everything around me to a streaky green blur, I could plainly see each tiny leaf on all the small branches of every insignificant shrub that I passed.
The wind of my speed blew my hair and my torn large T-shirt out behind me, and, though I knew it shouldn't, it felt warm against my skin. Just as the rough forest floor shouldn't feel like velvet beneath my bare soles, and the limbs that whipped against my skin shouldn't feel like caressing feathers.
The forest was much more alive than I'd ever known – small creatures whose existence I'd never guessed at teemed in the leaves around me. They all grew silent after I passed, their breath quickening in fear. The animals had a much wiser reaction to vampire scent than humans seemed to. Certainly, it'd had the opposite effect on me.
I kept waiting to feel winded, but my breath came effortlessly. I waited for the burn to begin in my muscles, but my strength only seemed to increase as I grew accustomed to my stride. My leaping bounds stretched longer and longer. I laughed again, exultant, when I heard Edward falling further behind. My naked feet touched the ground so infrequently now it felt more like flying than running.
"Bella," he called dryly, his voice even, lazy. I could hear nothing else; he had stopped.
I briefly considered mutiny, before enacting it.
I pushed myself even further and went even faster. I mapped my moves, trying to assure that nothing would slow me down. I wondered how long it would take me to reach the Strait of Juan de Fuca. Ever since I saw Edward on our honeymoon swim out and down into the deep blue waters of the South Pacific Ocean I wanted to do the same.
Ironically, I'd never felt more alive.
Despite my best efforts I could hear Edward closing the distance between us.
I decided to surprise him. I turned back on the same path I'd come, before quietly jumping up on a high branch.
I saw Edward wizz below past my tree before doubling back; a confused look on his face.
I jumped behind him.
"Bella!"
I pushed him into a tree and I pressed my lips onto his, inebriating myself on him.
He hesitated at first, but soon responded in kind.
I had missed this intimacy; during the pregnancy, he had refrained from getting physical with me. I understood why and I doubted I would have been able to participate in the weakened state I was in. All the unfulfilled desire from the past few months was coming out to get its due with interest.
Such powerful emotions. I'd been prepared for the thirst, but not for the lust. I'd been so sure it wouldn't be the same when he touched me. Well, truthfully, it wasn't the same.
It was much more electric.
"Bella," he whispered as his lips were on my neck and his hands under my shirt.
"Mhhh…"
"We really━" kiss, "should–" kiss, "get so some–" almost a bite, "hunting."
"You owe me."
I looked at him expectantly.
"You have no idea how much."