THE REMNANTS

Chapter 6: Edward Part I

Throughout his life, Edward always struggled to find contentment in his circumstances. As a boy, he wished to be a man, as a man, he wished to be a soldier, as a vampire, he wished to be a man, and so it continued on and on. Despite his chronic struggles with internal unrest, he still managed to construct some semblance of peace and meaning in his existence. As the only child of his wealthy, doting parents and, later, as the firstborn "offspring" of the compassionate and kind-to-a-fault Carlisle, Edward spent most of his life as the center of attention and devotion. His natural attunement to the thoughts and perceptions of others only made him more adept at ensuring those around him bent to his preferred vision of the world. Despite his relatively untroubled circumstances, discontent still gnawed in his belly like a dog on a bone.

Through the tedium of his new life as a vampire, he found purpose in his family. He lived for them and they filled, at least in part, the void in his heart. There were some seasons he even considered himself moderately happy. He found pleasure in fast cars, his music, their hunting trips, the time spent together as a family, and his own place of respect and leadership within the family. He knew his place and how he fit in the eclectic band that was the Cullen family. That driving sense of purpose and loyalty helped him not feel quite so "itchy" for something else.

One day it all changed. In a single moment, he lost everything and gained everything. One weak, unremarkable high school student turned his world upside down. All it took was one whiff of her rich, pungent scent and he knew he had never truly known happiness in his life. Everything he had experienced, up until that point, was only a pale shadow in comparison with the siren's call that drew him irrevocably onward. He would answer her call, break himself on her rocky shores, and spend his life listening to her song. He would follow her forever, he knew that. He was now hers as much as she would be his.

He followed her from school and called her deep into the isolated, damp pines to a cave high in the mountains. She followed. Farther and farther into the forest, she followed. She never questioned him or fought him and he delighted in the silence of her thoughts, which spared him any further twinges of guilt over his actions.

There, he found an ecstasy he had never known existed or he would have sought her every day of his life before. Heaven and hell, his past and his future, the entire universe, from the widest of galaxies to the smallest of atoms, all were here contained in her. In that one perfect moment when she was his and he was hers and they were one, he soared to heights he had never even dreamed of. Time lost all meaning. He could not tell if he lived or died or if the sun rose or fell. He lost all sense of the world outside of his own mind and he floated, disconnected from all else except pure euphoria.

It was at that moment that Edward Cullen, like Dorian Gray, discovered his one true purpose in life. If he still had a soul to sell in order to pursue this same beauty and unadulterated pleasure for all time, he would gladly exchange it twice over. If he, too, had a portrait that could age and fade and record all his sins and so free him to pursue his heart's desire unhindered, he would exchange all he owned to obtain it.

ooooo

It was over a week before he came back to his senses, though he didn't know it at the time. He struggled to open his eyes as he sensed light gently tapping on his eyelids. Still wrapped like a blanket in a reverie like nothing he had ever experienced, he didn't wish to move lest it break the spell. He sighed at the inevitable and let his eyelids drift open.

He found himself hidden deep within a mountain cave. He had no recollection of how he arrived there. He could hear no thoughts and only the sounds of the forest outside encroached on the treasured sound of silence.

He closed his eyes again to enjoy it and tried to figure out how he came to be in this cave. Then he remembered her. The woman made only for him out of paradise. Then it was as if a frigid avalanche buried him as he realized his moment of eternity was over. His siren lay in his arms, glazed eyes staring into the void, her body already breaking down from the effects of death's relentless fingers. His twice-sold soul tore in half as he screamed in horror.

"No! No! No! My love, my life! You are my everything!" he shouted, caressing her lifeless face and running his nose along her torn arteries to take in her vanishing scent. "Don't you understand? What do I have to live for without you? You must give me more."

A depression as deep as the Mariana Trench swallowed him and sucked him down into its oppressive darkness. It pressed in on him from all sides as he collapsed into sobs on the rocky floor of the cave, cradled his siren in his arms, and wept.

ooooo

He sat on the floor of his room at the family home in Russia. Papery snowflakes fell outside his window like confetti, but he did not see them. He used to notice such things. Not anymore. Now, only one thing in his life still carried meaning. With his arms encircling his knees, he rocked himself back and forth, closed his eyes, and pulled his mind inward. Away from the cacophony of thoughts of his family and their neighbors. Away from the now unbearably unfulfilling facade of life he still must inhabit and into his own special haven.

In this hidden space, he held her in his arms again. Her rich scent assaulted him and he stood under the breakers of her Niagara Falls and let himself be pummeled and carried away in her torrents. There he stayed, reliving each moment, each taste, each fragrance, each emotion. He built all his happiness upon the hearth of that memory and let it burn him from the inside out until he could feel her all the way to his toes.

If it wasn't for Alice's visions, he would have given up hope and despaired decades ago. For three quarters of a century, Alice's vision remained the same. This kindled such a fervent belief in his own success that he knew his phoenix would arise from the ashes and come to fill him with her deliciously excruciating fire again. He could wait. His entire life was bound to that one perfect instant and he didn't care if it cost him the entire world and took him a thousand years, he would have it again.

oooooo

A face as translucent as paper, more gray and gaunt than alive, lay motionless on the medical bed in the Generation Lab. The IV dripped a transfusion of blood into the unused vessels for weeks. Machines and tubes kept the newly formed tissues alive and growing and the organs within functioning. The frail chest rose and fell as it was forced to breathe. Arms so thin and fragile he thought of them more as tentacles than limbs half sat unused and filled with tubes and covered with sensors.

He held his breath and watched.

This was not the first time he sat and watched like this. For over seventy-five years, he researched, prepared, and he plotted his future. He traveled the globe to choose the perfect location-isolated and off-the-grid enough to ensure safety and privacy, but with enough sun for the solar power required for his extensive technology.

He nearly burst with happiness the first day he entered "Masen's Temple," the pet name he lovingly gave his facility. This was his own Taj Mahal built in honor of the death and life of his siren, his muse, his beloved. Here he would worship her daily until the end of his days.

He spoke to her every day as he worked once he transported her frozen remains into his generation lab for DNA analysis. She would be with him forever, providing the basic building blocks to ensure her own immortality, and inspiring him with the secrets of her biology.

"My Bella, my love, we will be together again soon," he told her as he himself built each piece of machinery required to ensure their reunification.

Little by little, perfect copies of bone and ligament, skin and soft tissue knit together through the most ground-breaking (and controversial) research available on parthenogenesis, stem cells, and cloning. His task was both unprecedented and untested: he sought to create an exact replica of a fully grown adult instead of the much simpler route of creating an embryo and implanting the cloned cells within a host to develop through natural reproduction. His chosen route was the more difficult and took a greater investment into developing his methodology, but he would not abide the latter. Even if he could create the technology for artificial incubation of human embryos, he could not escape the moral disgust which plagued him at the thought of farming children for "research" purposes. He had his limits he would not cross and that was one.

Besides, his goal was not entirely ignoble, or so he told himself. The technology, once developed, could be used to create perfect organ transplants and remedy an unimaginable number of diseases and illnesses. How many names could be crossed off the "organ donor" lists at hospitals around the world? How much could the black market trade in human organs be extinguished? His work would further the health and well-being of humanity and save more lives than he had ever taken.

On a personal level, this was his chance to set the world at right. He had stolen the life of an innocent, something he swore he would never do. By giving her a chance at rebirth, he was remediating his past wrong and exchanging a life for a life. He promised himself that his first viable creation he would release back into the world to live the life he had stolen from her and so appease his conscience. That was his purpose, his driving goal which compelled him in all his actions (after which, he could determine how to utilize his findings in other ways more "beneficial" to himself).

The first fifteen years of attempts failed. He worked tirelessly to continue in his life's work. He spent millions pursuing the latest innovations. He contacted experts from around the globe to glean the latest developments from their extensive research and teams of professionals. His synthesis of their information continued to knit together forms that ever more closely resembled the physiology of a human being.

He kept up his strength on the blood of animals, though he knew all sustenance, human or animal, tasted like ash on his lips and no longer remotely satisfied him. He forced himself to hunt; he soothed himself afterwards with memories of his past banquet and his hopes for future feasts.

He still called home to check on his family and inquire into their well-being on a semi-regular basis. He played his piano and composed songs to his siren whenever he needed a break from his research. He listened to music and read more medical journals to pass the time as the first test cases grew and developed. Case after case failed to be viable and he was sent back to the drawing board.

Now, as Edward stared at the torpid face of his most complete replica to date, he nearly burst with joy as hairless eyelids fluttered and he caught sight of dim brown eyes glinting in the florescent lights overhead. He shouted and hollered and danced around his lab and on the tables in his excitement.

He paused to wonder if this was how Carlisle felt when he first saw Edward's eyes open and he knew he had created life. Carlisle, in his desperation for companionship, rationalized away his own moral abhorrence of his decision with a veneer of a promise made to Edward's dying mother. Edward, for decades, felt himself akin to Victor Frankenstein's reanimated corpse. He was doomed to a life of fruitlessly searching for meaning and belonging in a world that would only spit on him in disgust. In Carlisle's own wretched moment of attempted divinity, he unleashed a new monster upon the world and lived to reap the benefit as Edward left a trail of bloodshed behind him in his rebel years. Out of his own misery, Edward inflicted misery upon others, especially upon the compassionate Carlisle.

As Edward looked upon his own creation, was he still the fabricated monster only now begging for an equally monstrous mate? Or had he now become Victor Frankenstein? This grey skinned, breathing skeleton, the reincarnation of a woman once dead was truly awful to behold. In her, he gained power over life and death and the secret to perpetual immortality. In her creation, he, like Frankenstein, crossed the bounds of the handiwork of humanity into the finger of the divine.

As he watched the vein-laced chest rise and fall in a soft, frail rhythm and her eyes flutter open and closed, he wasn't sure if he should bask in the rush of power he felt or be terrified at what he unleashed by opening this Pandora's box. Would she prove to be his own personal monster, revealing everything monstrous within himself? Or would she prove to be his own "Fountain of Youth" and his key to his own earthbound paradise?

He didn't know. He did know that she who was once dead now lived. Eighty-five years after the first took her last breath, her genetic replica now blinked in the lights of the lab.

He did not know where this would lead, but he intended to walk this path until he discovered its end.

Oooooo

His creation was as weak as a newborn kitten and could not so much as move a finger with her completely unused adult-sized muscles. Her silent mind, as guarded as her genetic prototype, revealed nothing about her capacity for cognizant thought. While she was a copy of the biological building blocks of his siren, she had not undergone the same process of socialization. Without the experiences of education, family, childhood, and culture, she could not ever be exactly the same. Did she even have the capacity to live a human life?

It took a week for her newly formed body to replace the donated blood with her own production. The transformation tickled at his senses and gave him time to debate his next course of action.

He meant to release her. He would teach her to talk and to walk and set her up to thrive in the outside world (in a place he could keep an eye on her for her own protection, of course), but with the intoxicating call of her blood growing in strength and barraging his senses, his plan seemed hasty.

She was his first. What if there were genetic abnormalities that prevented her from a normal life? Perhaps he should test further, try again? With the absence of socialization, childhood attachments, and normal human development, would she ever truly be able to cope?

Besides, he could always make another to replace the first and release that one to live. It didn't have to be this one, he whispered to himself.

As he stared at the dim brown eyes that focused on nothing in the world around her, he considered even further. Did she even have a soul? This was a biological creation. He forged an exact replica of her physical form but there was no technological way to recreate a human spirit or place it within a body. That was beyond the capacity of scientific innovation and moved into the realm of the esoteric. Perhaps, this replication had no soul. Perhaps, she was merely a product of science and thus outside the realm of humanity entirely.

He hadn't really recreated the same Bella as before. The original Bella was already dead, her irreplaceable soul was safe from further harm. This new creation would not, could not, ever replace the most important part of what had been lost. He had already taken her life. The evil he committed could not be remedied with a simple replacement. Thus, his misdeeds were irreparable.

He stared at his creation as the wheels spun in his head.

It is impossible to kill the same person twice and so this woman is not really Bella. To end the life of his creation isn't wrong since the wrong has already been committed.

She is not a person. She is a thing. A body without a spirit. A biological automaton. An abnormality that could cause harm if released upon the world. He should do what Frankenstein should have done at first and end his unnatural creation before she could cause him (or others) further harm.

It was as if a fog cleared around him and he no longer debated with the niggling sense of wrongness that plagued him like a burrowing tick. He slammed the door shut on that voice and gave a sigh of relief as he could give in to what he truly desired to do.

Why fight against what he wanted when what he wanted was so indescribably good?

Ooooo

Edward woke, nearly a week later, still immersed in the warm covering of pure ecstasy. His eyes slowly focused on the bright lights of the Generation Lab and onto the blue waters of the generation tank and a broad smile crept across his face.

Here, in his Temple, he owned the entire universe and he had all he would ever need to be happy. He could worship at the altar of his siren's rich bounty for all his days. Contentment sank deep into his bones like finish on porous wood and he crowed to himself. In that moment, he felt grander and more powerful than any king, sultan, tyrant, or emperor in the history of the world because the world was his to rule and command forever.

He needed more.

More would be his.

ooooo

Even with a perfected technique, it took over a year to complete one Bella. For the first decade, he satisfied himself with that. With the taste of her still clinging to his present memories, all he could dwell on was the next time, and count down the days, even as the venom pooled in his mouth in his anticipation. More was within his grasp and that made him work with an even greater fervor than before.

Still why wait so long when he didn't need to?

For the next two decades, he installed additional chambers, slowly growing his collection to enable two and then five and then ten tanks to be growing inhabitants simultaneously. He fine-tuned his machinery and his technique to make it ever quicker and more effective. He staggered their production and development until he reached his goal.

With one Bella fully formed nearly every month, he could leave off hunting animals entirely. He didn't need to anymore. Why waste precious time and energy eating stale, moldy bread when a filet mignon was the next meal? Increasing his thirst would only make quenching it that much sweeter and such perfection was worth the wait.

As he poured more and more time into production, his calls to his family diminished more and more until one day he stopped contacting them altogether. They wouldn't approve of his chosen life and he didn't need them anymore either. He had all he needed in this one perfect universe of his own creation and he determined to enjoy his existence now to the utmost, unhindered by the input or opinion of any other. He embraced his descent into unrestrained sensualism with all his heart without stopping to wonder what his Dorian Gray portrait would reflect from his pursuits.

Ooooo

Decades of decadent perfection followed. His enjoyment was only marred by his fears. As his Bellas continued to grow in number and frequency, his fears also multiplied. To allay his worries and set his mind to rest, he needed to make changes.

Until he built in safe-guards to prevent the accidental siring of vampires, he was plagued by constant worries of waking from one of his feeds to contend with a ravenous and out-of-control newborn. He would not share his treasures with another. He laid this fear to rest through elaborate controls to ensure none survived his feeds.

He also grew in his paranoia over the protection of his Temple and his Bellas. He built walls higher than even a vampire could jump. He installed ever more sophisticated security and surveillance. Still, he felt uneasy.

During his monthly feed, the following trance he fell into left his Temple vulnerable. If a machine malfunctioned or a fire broke out, there was no one who could ameliorate the potential problems for him. He had no wish to avoid his delicious state of indisposition, thus he needed safeguards.

In addition, this kind of production required materials and supplies. A lot of materials and supplies. Initially, he had an arrangement with a charter plane into Koro-Toro and a local Toubou nomad who would pick up his supplies, sometimes by truck and sometimes by camel, and deliver them a few hours from his Temple where he would be waiting in a truck to take them the rest of the way. It worked well enough and it prevented any other set of eyes from falling upon his treasures or to covet what belonged only to him, so long as he kept his deliveries far from the temple. Still, when he drove his truck to pick up the supplies, anyone could stumble upon his Bellas.

After almost 60 years of ever-increasing production, Edward came to the conclusion that he couldn't handle all the work on his own. He decided the best solution was set one apart from all the others and test her capacities to think, learn, and follow instructions. If she proved herself capable, she could be trained to take over the monthly supply runs and serve as another guardian in the Temple. It would cost him, however, it would be worth it in the end if it worked as he hoped it would. He could sacrifice this one Bella so that all the others could remain safe.

On a month he managed to prepare two instead of only one, he took the one which developed her own sweet blood the quickest to his Research Lab and he kept the other in the Generation Lab, but moved her to a bed.

He hadn't known what to expect out of this one creation set apart from all the others. Would she be able to learn to communicate at all? Could she learn to function as a human being at all? He didn't know, but he intended to find out.

It took two months before she could move any of her limbs and another four before she could sit upright on her own and speak.

Eight months in, she could breathe on her own, eat on her own, and speak to him in simple phrases and sentences. Her face had shifted from translucent gray to vivacious ivory. Dark eyelashes and eyebrows grew in to frame her now focused and intent chocolate brown eyes. A few inches of brown hair covered her head and transformed her from a face that resembled a death-mask to one of a cancer patient in remission.

"Come on, Bella," he said to her as he held up a cracker. "You can reach it. Only a few more inches."

He watched as a small "v" formed on her forehead and her eyes gained a glint of steel and determination. She strained with all her strength to lift her heavy, unwieldy arm towards the cracker. She stuck her tongue out slightly and beads of sweat pooled on her shoulders. As her small fingers grasped the cracker, her face flushed with her accomplishment and she fell back on her pillow panting.

"You did it! I knew you could," he said and chuckled as she ate the cracker.

"More?" she asked with all the wide-eyed expectation of a small child.

He held another one up for her and she frowned.

"Tired," she said.

"Last one," he pressed.

He left her with a pile of the small crackers when she'd successful reached another and she ate them as if they were made of gold instead of tasteless wheat flour. She grinned up at him with a face covered in cracker crumbs.

"Thank you!" she said.

He shook his head and used a towel to wipe off her face. He smiled with a sense of paternal pride and amusement. Then he left her to rest.

The possibilities this Bella could open up for him gave him a dizzying sense of freedom. Without having to limit himself by the need to tend to the others, he could indulge himself so much more fully. The venom pooled in his mouth as he thought of how untethered his life could now become and he determined to develop this Bella all the more quickly as his assistant.

This was not his only motivation. What began as a task birthed out of pragmatism-the need for the girl to walk and talk and be useful-had now grown to be something he rather enjoyed. It was a source of constant curiosity and entertainment to watch her grow and develop. As he watched Bella's transformation, he no longer looked upon her as Frankenstein's monster forged from the parts of a reanimated corpse, but more as Professor Higgen's Eliza Doolittle. He was crafting her mind, her language, her manners, and her behavior into the image of his own design.

He could not help the rush of power he felt as he saw her mimic him and obey his directives. He could not avoid the way he enjoyed her desire to please him and her happiness at welcoming his presence each day. In between his usual daily tasks, Edward now looked forward to the times he slipped away to teach his project something new or to test her capacities, both physically and mentally. As he did, he congratulated himself on his own brilliance as he became more and more convinced that his plan would work.

Ooooo

Without any other influences on her and without the natural inborn spark of the human soul, he expected this Bella to encompass all he wished her to become. She was the soft, malleable clay, and he the master potter. She was the marble and he her sculptor.

It was the day he made SpaghettiO's that he first had an inkling this would not be the case. She could nearly walk across the lab now and her appetite was growing as her exertions grew. After a long day's practice, he could hear her stomach growling and he left to prepare her some food. He was not fond of preparing food for his creation and so ordered as many pre-packaged, easily prepared foods as he could. When he returned with her meal, she rather clumsily took hold of the spoon, took one sniff, and shook her head.

"No," she said and she wrinkled her nose in disgust.

Edward gave her an incredulous look and took the spoon. "Come on, Bella. You are hungry. Take a bite. It's wholesome food and will help you grow." He lifted the spoon to her and she shook her head again.

"No," she said. "Don't like."

"You haven't even tried it," he responded. "You need to. At least one bite."

He wheedled and cajoled her until she opened her mouth and reluctantly took a bite.

It was as he grabbed a washcloth to clean the foul-smelling red sauce and noodles off his face from where she intentionally spat them in disgust that he had his revelation. She refused to comply and she exerted an opinion different from his. This revelation unsettled him but he explained it away easily enough.

It's biological, he thought. Something about the food doesn't agree with her and so she refuses it. It has nothing to do with her ability to choose or not.

He told himself this again much later when she refused to wear wool and refused shampoo that smelled of strawberries and when she told him she didn't like the color yellow.

It was much harder to believe it when she told him that Edgar Allen Poe's writings were depressing and depraved or that she preferred music from the 50's to that of the 70's. Could those, also, be attributed to inborn biology and genetic predispositions?

He told himself they were. She was still his statue, his painting, his creation and a reflection of what he wanted. She was not a woman, a person, a separate life-form distinct from him or from her genetic proto-type. She was just like the Others who sustained him each month and none of them had souls.

Ooooo

Edward didn't need to introduce her to music or literature. He didn't need to teach her games and songs. For her to accomplish her ordained purposes, these were unnecessary diversions.

But they won't hinder her progress, he countered. He could enjoy himself a little along the way. If she adds to his pleasure, why not?

He could not help but be flattered by her passionate embrace of his musical gifts. Never before had he so enchanted an audience and it made him even more desirous to play for her and to see her face light up in her delight. He played for her a few times a week, still pretending it was to teach her and enlarge her knowledge, but really knowing it was as much for his amusement as for hers.

Edward set his fingers to dancing across the keys of his piano and filled his room with the jaunty melody. Bella sat on the couch in a light blue dress and tapped her feet as she listened to the song. Edward closed his eyes to listen to the melody and bathe himself in the connotations attached to it. He could still remember his mother and father dancing along as he played this, so many years ago. It was so distant and blurred, but he could still just make out the way his mother laughed as his father spun her and made her long skirts twirl across their drawing room.

His opened his eyes and was caught by movement. He turned in time to see Bella jumping on her toes and prancing across the room in spins and twirls of her own. She turned to him, stuck out her lips like a fish, crossed her eyes, and cocked her head from side to side as she waggled her arms around in time to the music.

He burst into spontaneous laughter in response. Her eyes glowed with her own mirth as she picked up a blanket from the couch to use as her dancing partner and she made it turn circles between her feet as she danced through them. Her cheeks burned with heat and laughter as she collapsed to the floor when his fingers stopped.

"I like that one," she said. "What do you call it?"

"It's not one of mine," he said with a smile. "It was one of the first songs I ever learned on the piano. It's an old rag called 'The Entertainer.'"

"Again!" she said as she sprung to her feet and pushed him aside to sit by him on the bench. "Play it again!"

"I've got a better idea," he said as he nudged her with his hip to force her to get up. He capered across the room to his shelves of music and pulled down an ancient record. He placed it on his nearly-as-ancient-record player and the same song filled the room, though with a tinny, scratchy sound to it.

"Come here," he said and held out his hand. "Let me teach you the 'Rag Time Two Step.'"

She gave his hand an almost wary look before she broke into a grin. "First you have to catch me," she said and she jumped onto the piano bench and gave a shriek as he followed after her. He slowed his steps as much as he could so she could pretend she had a chance. When he crept around and caught her in his arms, she descended into giggles.

"I've caught you," he said.

"I suppose I must now learn how to dance," she said in mock disappointment, as if she wasn't as anxious as he to try.

Two hours later, when she no longer stepped on his toes and she could hum the tune of every Joplin rag he owned, he gave her a light bow.

"It's been a pleasure, miss," he said in the language and cadence of his youth. He translated after so she could understand. He took her arm and escorted her to her room for the night where he gave her a peck on the cheek and bid her a goodnight.

He sat on the floor of the hall outside her room for hours after that, reliving the memories, the swirl of music and dance from times old and new and for the first time in a long time, he felt almost human. He closed his eyes and dreamed of what this day would have been like if he were human. He imagined Bella's hair in a chignon bun at the nape of her neck, a wide-brimmed hat matching the war crinoline dress that flared down to her ankles and how the corset beneath would cause her to stand so elegantly tall and straight. He would come to her in his own suit and hat, bring her flowers, and take her to dances where they could dance all night.

He opened his eyes to see the painting of a small boat on the ocean that hung in the hall and sighed. He was not human. Bella was hardly more human than he. Yet somehow, she had a gift for waking up the long dormant parts of his humanity and surfacing memories he thought long disintegrated by time.

He had to admit that she often took him by surprise. Her silent mind made her reactions and her thought processes a delicious mystery for him and he exposed her to novel experiences simply for the joy of seeing her reaction. He hadn't anticipated how her quiet humor, keen observations, and delight in life would captivate him so and make him realize just how empty and lonely his existence had been without her in it.

He had long since come to admit she had her own subtle charm in her dark hair and rosy cheeks. He never noticed it in any of the Others, especially not the Original. With all the Others, they were but the canopic jars for the safekeeping of the treasure they held within. So transfixed had he been by drinking from their wine that he missed the artistry of the bejeweled jar itself. He could now see and appreciate that, while she was not unpleasant to look at, she glowed with an inner radiance that transformed her into a masterful work of art.

As his creation, all the positive attributes in her came from him, but he still appreciated the outcome. Thus he would pour all he loved most into her even more so he could make her overflowing with even more goodness and beauty than he had already endowed her with. He would fill this canopic jar with all the eternal beauties his own nonexistent soul delighted in.

Ooooo

Long after Bella took over care of both the supply runs and the Other Bellas, Edward still insisted they maintain their "lessons," though by now they both knew they were no longer really lessons. He was working his way through a long list of his literary favorites to share with her and he looked forward to the hours they spent immersed in the imaginary world of the written word.

She didn't care what language he read to her in as long as she was able to listen to the syllables rise and fall, the dramatic flourish with which he spoke and the cadence of his voice. Sometimes he translated what he read into Arabic, other times he read them in the languages they were written in. Her questions were unceasing. He couldn't blame her. The world she dwelt in was much smaller than the world portrayed in the books he read to her and so he did his best to explain concepts he felt were important (or distract her from those he did not think she needed to know).

On this night, she sat on the carpet on the floor of his room while he sat on his couch. He held the massive, elaborately illustrated volume on his lap and watched her as she ate some dried fruit and nuts from a dish. She neatly arranged her emerald green embroidered skirts over the lighter green pants she wore beneath and looked up to him with expectant eyes.

"I thought we could start One Thousand and One Nights," he said. "It's already in Arabic."

She nodded her head enthusiastically and sat on her knees to page through a few of the pictures in the book he held.

"What is it about?" she asked.

"It's a collection of a variety of stories," he said. "However, all the stories are framed within a meta-narrative to capture your interest. It starts with King Shahriyár's discovery that his wife has been unfaithful. He is so angry, he kills her. In his bitterness, he decides to marry a new virgin bride each night and have her killed first thing the next morning. This continues until the kingdom runs out of marriageable maidens.

"The king charges one of his officials to fetch his next bride. The official, who is Shahrazád's father, tells his daughters about his plight and his eldest daughter offers herself as the king's next bride. Her father doesn't approve of the idea, but she convinces him. Shahrazád is very clever and she plots with her sister to tell the king half a story each night. Her plan works. The king wishes to hear the end of the tale so much, he lets her live through the next day and the next day and the next day for a thousand and one nights.

"There are different variations on the end. In some, he falls in love with her and decides to pardon her. Others, he pardons her for her cleverness. In others, she bears him children during that time and then he pardons her. Regardless, the same idea is there. Shahrazád, through story-telling, saves not only her own life but the lives of other women in the country. In the midst of that story, we will get to read many other fantastical stories and adventures."

Bella stared at the pictures in rapt fascination, running her fingers over some of the more colorful pages.

"You have explained to me what a king is when we read the portion of Hamlet you shared. What is a wife? How is that different from a virgin? And what do you mean by marriage? I do not know what a father is either," she asked, her eyes full of bright-eyed innocence.

His eyes grew wide and he released an uncomfortable chuckle. He decided to start with the easiest. "Well, a father is a man who has had a child," he answered.

"Wait," she interrupted. "What is a man and what is a child?"

He sighed. "A man is…you see how I am taller than you and have more muscles? I am a man. My body is different than yours. You have seen how Amir and Omar are also built differently than you are? They have hair on their face and they are not as, well, soft as you are? They are men. You are a woman. Your body is different because you are a woman," he responded.

She stared at him in silence for a few minutes before she ran her hand over the length of his arm and chest, considering him. He closed his eyes and fought how the motion left a trail of fire behind her touch.

Yes. She is very much a woman and I am very much a man, he thought to himself.

"So a father is a man who has had a child?" she prompted as she returned her hands to her side.

"Yes," he said, grateful for her redirection. "A child is a new, very young person who doesn't know how to walk or eat or talk and has to be taught everything. The father's job is to help the child learn and grow to become men or women who can take care of themselves."

She cocked her head to one side as she considered this. Then a light came on in her eyes. "I see," she said. "So you are my father."

He started at this, especially in light of the decidedly non-paternal drift of his thoughts the moment before. "No, Bella. I am certainly not your father."

"But when I was new and very young, you taught me how to walk and eat and talk and now I am a woman."

Edward shook his head and smiled. "I can see how you would think that. In some ways, I suppose I have played that kind of role to you for a time, but we are not related…that means, we do not share the same family line or genetic code…Ok, those are difficult to explain.

"Let me answer your other questions. Sometimes men and women decide they wish to live together and share a bed and produce children together. That is marriage. A woman who has not shared her bed with a man is called a virgin. A married man is called a husband and a married woman is called a wife. I suppose these are important things for you to understand in order for this story to make sense."

She considered him again. "So, you are my husband and I am your wife?" she asked.

He gave her an incredulous expression. "Why would you come to that conclusion?" he asked.

"Because we live together and though you do not sleep, you stay in my room sometimes at night and we take care of the Others together who are still children who cannot eat or walk or talk."

He pinched the bridge of his nose and struggled to put the words together. "No, Bella. We are not married. I am not your husband and you are not my wife. How can I explain this? We do not share a bed in the way married people do and we can never produce children. You and I are very different, not only because you are a woman and I am a man, but also because we are different types of creatures as well. I am cold and do not eat or sleep like you. I will live a very long time. You are warm and weak and need to eat and sleep. Our kinds do not intermarry," he replied.

"I see," she said with a slight shrug. "So what are the kind of men that I would marry?"

Edward hissed internally, suddenly uncomfortable with the thought of her marrying anyone else. "You will not marry," he decided, both as a statement to her and to himself. "Humans marry, my kind mates for life. You are not either. You were created by me and so you are not fully human, but you are not like me either. You are something else."

"What am I then?" she asked, biting her lip as she considered this.

"You are Bella and you belong here with me," he said.

Her dark eyes memorized a drawing of King Shahriyár listening to Shahrazád's story as she knelt before where he sat enthroned above her.

"It is a sad story," Bella responded.

"Why?" he asked.

"All those poor brides who died because the king was angry with his wife-they did not deserve such a fate," she said.

"I suppose it is a sad story," he said, his eyes growing distant.

"She was very brave to sacrifice herself to save all the others," she said.

He decided this book may not have been the best choice. He abruptly closed the book and stood to leave.

"Wait," she cried. "I thought you were going to continue her tales?"

"Not tonight," he said.

"Do I need to tell you half a story to get you to stay," she said, humor in her voice.

He shook his head at her apt reply and fled her presence. He went to the Generation Lab and tried to work to get his mind onto something else, but he couldn't escape the repetition of their conversation that night from replaying in his mind. The mere suggestion, by his own lips, that she could ever marry another left him burning with jealousy and a desire to squash whatever pitiful mortal would dare attempt such a thing. His skin still burned from the memory of her touch.

It's only natural, he told himself. She's his creation and therefore she belongs to him.

He did not pause to consider what it meant that he no more wished to act as her father as he wished to act as her Professor Higgins or her Victor Frankenstein. Those were inconvenient thoughts better left for another day...a day he would procrastinate perpetually. Honest self-reflection did not aid him in his quest for sensual delights. He intended to simply feel without digging so deep into causes, consequences, or morals.

Ooooo

His fingers paused their restless motion across the still vibrating keys as the remnants of his chord still reverberated through his room. He glanced over his shoulder and smiled.

Bella lay sprawled out on his golden lounge, her long hair in wavy, wild tresses around her head. Her eyes were closed in a look so serene he thought she had fallen asleep. The rich blue of her dress highlighted the curves of her shoulders and a happy flush of pink touched each of her cheeks. Her chest gave a light rise and fall with each breath and the sound of her heartbeat echoed her peaceful repose. A light smile pulled across her red lips and she gave her head a lazy turn to face him. Dark, curious eyes met his.

"Finished? You haven't reached the end of this song yet," she said. "The next part is my favorite."

He shook his head. "I thought you were asleep."

"I can never fall asleep when you play," she said and closed her eyes again. "Keep going."

Of course she would remember the entire song. It was something he never expected her to do, but was so very Bella. He never told her he wrote them for her. She didn't need to know that. It was enough that she knew he had another new song for her to listen to. She knew them all and he could hear her hum the melodies to herself as she lay in her room at night.

He stole another glance at her as he continued to play. He shook his head as he fought to pry his unwilling eyes away from the enchanting sight of his siren. The long years only endowed her with greater beauty. Her hair grew into long, soft waves reaching her delicate waist. As the metabolism of the seventeen year old girl she was formed after evolved into that of a woman in her mid-twenties, her hips broadened and her chest filled out. Now the myriad of shades her simple dresses painted across her complexion called attention to the curves and shadows of the woman who he had grown to consider the most beautiful he had ever seen.

She had no idea she was beautiful and that entranced him even further. She did not know the power she held over him and that was his only salvation from the call of her charms. She remained so entirely unconsumed with herself and consumed only with him that he could not help but be drawn to her like a moth to flame.

What began eight years earlier out of pragmatism and grew into a sort of hobby, now was growing into something bordering on a necessity or a compulsion. When he was not with her, instead of anxious anticipation for his next project or his next feed, his thoughts wandered back to those flushed cheeks and gentle fingers and their latest literay adventure. He counted the hours till he could go back and lock himself away with her in their own secret world. He had even gone so far as to avoid feeding for as long as possible in order to spend more time in her company. He dreaded the time he had to spend away from her more than he longed for the Others.

Since she had first come blinking into his life, she had grown like a parasite to require more and more of him and he was her willing victim. Would his siren ever cease to find ways to draw him into his own excruciatingly delicious destruction?

He watched the flutter of her eyelids and the rise and fall of her chest, he felt overcome by a desire to touch her so strong that it took his breath away, as if flaming coals had been thrust into his chest. His fingers uncharacteristically stumbled on his notes, causing her eyelids to flutter open again.

He left his piano bench to kneel on the floor beside where she lay. He stopped fighting temptation and allowed his fingers to trail over her collarbone and across the exposed skin on her neck. Her breath hitched and her eyes burned with her own fire as she met his equally passionate stare in a tense, volatile silence.

As he stared enraptured by the soft contours, he could no longer fight the truth.

He had become Pygmalion.

In his masterful artistry sculpting this woman from ivory, he unintentionally fell in love with his own statue. How could another woman ever compare to her perfection. for, as his creation, she was formed exactly to his whim? She existed purely for his pleasure and to his design.

In her eyes, he was deified-the living incarnation of her creator and he could do no wrong. He was her universe and he basked in her unrestrained worship of him. He was in love with her love and he felt heat curdle in his veins at the thought of laying his offerings at Aphrodite's temple and admitting his wish for his statue to come to life in his arms.

Oooo

Author's notes: Thanks so much for everyone's reviews! You made my week! Reviews are my payment for all the hours I spend writing notes on my phone while overseeing the creation of dirt volcanoes and for the hours I write in my car until my battery dies (yeah, I really, really miss coffee shops), and all the times I jot down notes while cooking dinner. (Props to Jane Austen-if she could work on her writings by hiding them beneath her sewing, I can make notes on Greek mythology with a kid on my lap trying to use my liver as a trampoline).

Thanks so much for reading, liking, reviewing, and joining me on this wild ride. Hope you enjoy this side of things.

Next, there's a bunch of literary (and non-literary) references in this one…in case you are unfamiliar with them, here's a bit of explanation. If you are familiar, then skip.

canopic jars: In ancient Egypt, canopic jars were used to preserve internal organs during the embalming process to ensure they were intact for the afterlife. The jars themselves are pretty spectacular.

Taj Mahal: this spectacular Indian feat of architecture was created by an emperor named Shah Jahan as a tomb to honor his favorite wife. He is also buried there.

Pygmalion: Greek mythology. He's a sculptor who falls in love with his own statue and Aphrodite brings her to life for him. This is also the name of George Bernard Shaw's play (in movie-version it's renamed as My Fair Lady) where the references to Professor Henry Higgins and Eliza Doolittle come from. In this play/movie, an elite English linguist teaches a low class woman how to speak English like an elite (and associated manners and ways of dressing and living and speaking) and transforms her into a high class woman.

Frankenstein: Book by Mary Shelley in which a scientist named Victor Frankenstein puts together pieces from a bunch of corpses and figures out how to make it come alive. His creation is so scary that everyone runs away from it and the monster's feelings are hurt so he kills people.

Dorian Gray: The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde is a book about a guy who is very beautiful and has his picture painted. He decides to live solely for his own hedonistic pleasure and, in exchange, wishes that his picture would age instead of him. The picture takes on all his sins, age, and moral corruption while he remains physically unchanged and beautiful, despite his moral decay.

Pandora's Box: Greek mythology-opening of Pandora's box was the source of all evil and yuckiness in the world.