Now I told you some of this would get strange and with the move I'm making now, I may lose some of my readers. I want Renesmee to exist in my world, but without the weirdo vamp baby thing. Another supernatural creature sprang to mind, and for the life of me I can't get her out of my head. Today you'll meet her.

My mantra as always: remember my end game - Bella and Edward, Jacob and Ness, the happily ever after... just with some hiccups and derailments on the way. :) Enjoy my pretties.

I stood, still on the porch, watching him. Although he was soaked through, he looked as though the rain was something he was wearing with purpose. I thought about what Alice had just said, and pictured her, and Esme standing, watching this exchange with disdain. That helped. My face, hopefully, gave nothing away except consternation.

"Bella, would you mind walking with me, for a little?" he asked and signed, gesturing towards the forest beside the house. I was about to say that I'd rather stay, when he began to walk in that direction anyway. The rain, and my hood, would make it quite hard for me to hear him. Maybe he wanted the privacy so that he could repeat the bad news as loudly as he needed. I followed into the greenery, stumbling my way into the mushy moss that coated the forest floor, the rain, now diminished by the tree coverage, splashing onto my face. We walked for a few minutes, him stopping a few feet ahead of me finally, while I caught up, and caught my breath. I looked down at my shoes, and they were caked in mud, and even some specks of twigs and leaves I had picked up along the way. I looked back up at Edward, he turned towards me, lifting up his hands to begin signing.

...

Elsewhere, exactly 24 miles away, a woman lay, frail and gasping, in a hospital bed. Her eyes were milky white, her cloudy irises ringed with blue. She had outlived her husband, and her only child in this life was asleep slumped in a chair at the foot of her bed. He had been by her side for days, foregoing his job. She felt a sense of relief as she lay alone, knowing that she had set up what she could for him, a wealthy, but not surprisingly lavish inheritance, and she had set aside exactly what she needed to set herself up financially in the next body.

She looked out towards the sound of the rain. A shimmer of light to her right told her approximately where the window was. Her ears were quite frankly, the better sense these days. It wouldn't be long. She could feel her tether on the body loosening. She wondered where exactly she would land next. Close, obviously, as she never lasted too long outside of a host without injury. She heard her son snore lightly and she smiled. Soon. Soon she'd be in a haze of confusion, until she locked onto the next empty vessel. Soon.

...

"Bella. Isabella. You are the most important thing in my world." Edward began.

"And you, in mine." I said. I wasn't sure how croaky my voice was.

"But I nearly killed you." He continued. "The light in my universe was nearly extinguished, by the most vile creature ever to exist in my universe. My deplorable animal self."

"It wasn't your fault." I automatically tried to correct him, "I know I smell differently to you, and that I pushed too fast..."

"You are always trying to take the blame Bella. You cannot blame yourself for existing. You cannot blame yourself for loving. For trusting. For wanting."

"Neither can you."

"Yes actually. I can. I had my chance in this world. My life came to a close, and rightfully so, but my death... Cursed with the vile existence that I have. I reveled in the chance that I might hold onto some happiness. And instead, I corrupted, and turned, and nearly struck it from the face of the earth. I do not deserve you, and cannot continue to besmirch your life."

"You're not leaving." I stated. As if saying it out loud would make it so.

"I am leaving. I have to leave you. And I'm doing my best to encourage my family to follow suit."

My stomach didn't just feel like it was rolling, it felt as though it was being swallowed into a hole. My brain started firing, rapidly.

"I'm as entangled in your life now as you are in mine. Your family is my family."

"I"m sorry that I complicated things so thoroughly. Believe me, it was not my intention to do so."

"Then what was your intention exactly? Because clearly it wasn't ever to keep me around, or I'd be like you by now." I snapped. A single splat of rain slapped me in the cheek.

"I don't want you to be like that. Like me. You're perfect as you are. And fragile. I just... I can't be around you anymore."

"You don't want me like that? Like you? You never wanted me immortal? Eternal love was just a saying to you then?"

Edward ran his hand through his hair.

"No. I didn't." He clenched and unclenched his fists. "If my family truly cared about what was best for you, then they wouldn't either."

"Don't speak for them."

"I won't. But I have warned them. I am leaving, and if they care about you in any form of the word, then they should too."

"Are you afraid I'm going to die if you stay? Because that seems silly to me."

"You nearly died already. Several times. I've brought nothing but danger into your life."

"And I don't know if you've bothered to notice, but I am unafraid of death." I spat back. I missed his mumbled retort and stepped closer to him. "Edward, I am not going to let you do this. You've imagined a scenario in which you are the most dangerous thing in my world. But you're wrong."

"What could be worse than me staying in your life?" Edward laughed, mercilessly.

"You leaving it." I retorted honestly. He closed his eyes.

"I have to Bella. It isn't good for either of us."

My chest felt like it was being sucked away.

"There is nothing I can say to make you stay, is there?" I asked, hollowly.

"No."

My breathing halted for a short moment. Edward was leaving me. Even the promise of Alice's continued presence couldn't stop the torrent of emotions rolling through me. For once I wished direly for Jasper's intruding influence. Something to stop this void from forming. I closed my eyes and tried to focus on staying upright, staying calm. Wetness splashed my face again, and I wasn't sure if it was rain, or my own traitorous eyes. When I opened them, Edward was gone.

The forest around me seemed somehow both larger, and smaller. It felt empty and vast, and oppressive and claustrophobic at the same time. I backed into a tree close by, and rested my head back. I needed time to feel. To think. And to try not to at the same time. All of the progress we'd made, all of the things we had done together, grown together. We loved together, and had begun to think about life together. And he'd taken it all back, all away. He had to. It wasn't good for him. I wasn't good for him. Our love had apparently been very one sided. I was almost utterly obsessed with him, his family, and his future, being hopefully entangled with mine. I had been fooling myself.

My heart was sucked into the abyss as well. I sat, slumping against the tree, breathing hard and fast. My brain almost couldn't keep up. I closed my eyes and tried to empty myself, tried not to feel. Tried to take the sucking pain and push it away.

...

Exactly 24 miles away, the old woman died. Officially, anyway. Her spirit, if you could call it that, rose through the roof of the hospital and spun outwards, searching for the next empty host it could find. Last time, the host she had just left, had been surprisingly young, a brain-dead 12 year old. She had brought the shell to life, and lived it thoroughly and to great extent. But the two times before that, she had barely entered her new hosts, and integrated properly, before they had died anyway. Some of her lives were brief and confusing, some were long. Each was a gift, a treasure, and a loss. Her hosts were varied, and scattered across the country. Most recently, the western half of the united states. That was her soul's new hunting ground as it were. She spiraled out into a world, feeling, she was blind, skittering across the countryside, looking for an empty shell, feeling for the spark of life, without the accompanying sentience and emotion that shells tasted of. And suddenly she found one. It felt young, vibrantly alive, but empty, and void. She dove into the green forest, wrapping herself around the warm orange glow of a new shell.

When she opened her eyes she was confused, and in pain. The shell was empty, but not, as most shells were, in a hospital, a hospice, or even a home. She was standing in the middle of a forest. Her heart was beating quickly, as though she had just hiked out here. How could she be so vibrantly alive, and so mentally and emotionally void that her shell had called out for a soul? Where was her soul? Her mental tendrils began wrapping around the free shell, entirely of their own free will, a survival tactic, and yet, she was forced to the side, pushed out, to look at her new shell from the outside.

...

When I opened my eyes, my head was filled with a ringing presence that caused lights to dance around the edges of my eyes. In front of me was a being, a girl, for what I could tell, with long black hair, coppery skin and strange green eyes. She looked almost transparent, and almost as confused as I was. When she spoke, her voice rang out from my mouth.

"What the hell?"