AN: I've never read 'The Host'. I didn't know it was about possession to be honest with you! I feel like I should read the plot synopsis to make sure I'm not crossing any similar boundaries! I wasn't really going with that, more like the spirit walkers of Jacob's ancestry. Anywaaaayyyy... on we go.

I was staring at this girl, staring back at me in confusion. Her skin was copper, her hair was dark black, and long. She looked like she belonged to the reservation, except for her eyes. They were an ethereal emerald that I hadn't seen before. Her outfit was simple, and upon further examination, I realized that she was wearing exactly what I was.

"What. The. Hell." She repeated. This time, it wasn't through my mouth, it was out of hers, though my mouth had twitched with the effort to not speak. She looked curiously at me, tilting her head as she looked me up and down. "I mean, you were empty. I felt it. You were vacant."

Her voice sounded like mine. Like mine had before I couldn't hear it properly anymore.

"What?" I asked, meekly, searching for some kind of explanation. I'd had a mental breakdown. A complete mental breakdown. I wasn't expecting that. When Edward had... My thought process was interrupted by the void in my chest scraping at my lungs. My breath was short. It was hard to breathe, hard to focus. The girl in front of me winced, grabbing her chest too.

"Jesus. Ouch." She reached forward to touch my chest, and I stood, immobile, slumped in pain against the tree. Her hand stopped where I expected it to, as if she were touching me, but I couldn't feel her. So she wasn't real. I was hallucinating something.

I looked around at my surroundings, and realized that I had no idea where I was. Edward had probably not taken me very far, but without being able to hear the sounds of civilization, I wasn't actually sure where I was anymore. I needed to get home. I turned around, to the direction I thought I'd come, and began to walk away. She jogged to keep up with me, darting around trees, and leaping over felled branches if they were in her way. I tried to not look at her and focus on where I was going. I needed to get home, to think, to process. A lot had happened in the past few minutes. Edward and I had... my thought train was again interrupted with stabbing pain, so much so that I had to slow down and catch my breath again. She slowed too, clutching her chest.

"Stop doing that. Whatever that is, it hurts like hell."

I tried to ignore her. I'd had a complete mental breakdown. I'd gone crazy. My mind had finally cracked on me, after all the things that had happened in my life, it was finally this that pushed me over the edge. I felt like I needed Alice. I felt like I needed my mother. I felt like I needed to restart today.

I looked around me, and the first note of panic slipped into my thoughts. I had no idea where I was. It hadn't been this long a trek into the woods. And I had apparently just gotten myself more lost. I patted my pockets for my phone, and I didn't have it. I bit my lip, and looked around. Should I climb a tree? Would that work? Surely Alice would come and find me, if she noticed I was lost. If she noticed. I'm sure she had one hell of a fight back on her end of town, with Edward, and undoubtedly the family fight and fallout. I'm sure Rosalie was making some excellent points about me. My breath caught again and I crumbled physically this time, scraping my knees on the way down.

"I asked you to stop that." She muttered, although I heard her as clearly as if I had thought the words myself. I risked a look at her. She was rubbing her chest again, as if I'd hurt her. "Whatever you're thinking about that does that. Stop it."

"I wasn't trying to." I muttered back. "I was trying to figure out where I am and how to get home."

"You don't know where we are?" She asked, astonished. I didn't answer, instead trying to see through the foliage, or figure out how to communicate with Alice. A tiny ripple flicked through my chest and she scowled at me.

"Sorry."

"Do you have a cell phone? GPS?"

"No."

"Why were you hiking alone without resources in a forest this dense?" She asked, her expression changing from crass to curious.

"I wasn't hiking alone." I laughed shortly. "I wasn't hiking at all. I just..." I trailed off, trying not to think about it, as the hollowness crept into my chest, shortening my breath again.

She winced, and pursed her lips. "Alright alright, we'll talk about this later. First things first. I'm going climbing. Move over."

Before I could ask what she meant, I had the dizzying sensation of movement, although I hadn't moved at all. Suddenly I was watching myself, my body, grab hold of the closest pine tree. I looked down at my hands and saw that I was the transparent figure beside my own body now. My head was reeling. I was going insane. I watched myself, in my muddy, wet shoes and coat, climb with ease, the tree beside me. She was using hand-holds, and maneuvers that I would not have spotted or known about. She scaled the tree efficiently, and I sat down, with what I was expecting to be a loud thump. Instead I made no sound, and didn't even feel the ground beneath me. I was having an out of body experience, quite literally.

I'd need to do some research on what the hell was happening to my mind. Some kind of schizophrenia? Some sporadic multiple personality disorder? I sat quietly, trying not to think. I probably needed Carlisle. He'd know what was going on with me. If he was even still in town. Had Edward managed to convince him to leave too? The pain crept up, but not so excruciatingly as before. Though my thought train had apparently still stirred some emotion in my body, as I heard a muttered curse from the tree above. I blinked. I'd heard a mutter from above? I took a moment to listen, and realized that I could hear. I could hear birds, hear rain splatters, hear the crack of the trees above as my body moved around the tree. My heart leaped, as I looked around, listening to the slight whistle of the wind, and the noises of the forest around me. Suddenly there was a loud thud beside me. I - rather, she - had dropped down and was staring at me.

"I can't see anything but more trees. Perhaps when it gets dark we'll be able to trace some light sources."

She looked around, confused for a moment, and then I got the dizzying sensation of movement again. Suddenly the world was quieter, I had switched places with her, and was now looking at the dark haired woman, sitting where I had been.

"Are you deaf?" She asked, rubbing her ears slightly. "The world is so much quieter in your body. I'll admit it's been a while since I was forced outside of one for any extended period of time, but I didn't think that my spirit form had such heightened senses."

"Yes. I was in a car accident a while ago. Lost a lot of my hearing." I didn't know exactly why I was answering my delusion, but also figured that I had nobody else to talk to, so I might as well. "What do you mean by 'spirit form'? Who are you?" It didn't seem like a regular kind of delusion - one that didn't even make sense to me.

She sighed, and twisted her hair with her fingers.

"You may as well sit down." she said, gesturing to a log nearby. "This could take a little bit to explain."

I sat down hard on the log, and although I didn't hear the noise, I felt the log this time. I wasn't sure whether or not I felt good about that tiny reassurance. A few moments ago I had sat down and not felt it. Something was certainly wrong with me.

She bit her lip, and thought hard. I could see her trying to collect her thoughts, and start at the beginning of the story, and suddenly, I caught flickers. Flickers of memories, fire, people, languages, death, hospitals. Memories that weren't mine were flashing before my eyes.

"I don't remember my name, my real name. It's been a while. My last name I'd rather not share with you. I hated that one." She squinted at the ground as she thought. "I was born a long time ago. Before the pale faces colonized this continent, that's for sure. The world was a simpler place back then, and the people knew more about how things worked outside of the natural realm. My people, my tribe, we were great warriors. I was the first female shaman in our tribe. Chosen so, because I could walk beyond my body."

She stopped and let go of her hair, it spun out until it lay flat again.

"I taught my warriors how to walk in the spirit world, outside of their bodies, and..." She cut herself off. "And we fought, and won our battles. We could gather intelligence secretly, travel quite the distance in our spirit forms, and we never worried about the ramifications. We conquered, and we were fearless."

"What happened?"

"It took years. Most of my tribal spirit warriors had retired to be with their loved ones, their soulmates. I was an old, and ambitious woman. I still threw myself around the neighboring tribes, hunting quietly, for power, for opportunity. One of the elders of one of those tribes we were at war with also slipped into the realms of supernatural. And they did something to combat my ferocity. I'm sure it was a curse of some kind. Some combative magic. All I know is that I was suddenly unable to find my body. I was thrown out into the world, searching for an empty vessel. I lost a lot of time. I tried to bind with people, but their souls, and emotions were too strong to host us both, so I had to search for empty vessels. People who's bodies had life, but who's souls were weakened, or gone. In more recent years, with the miracle of hospitals, it has been easy to find empty bodies, sometimes even young ones, where I could stay for a long time, before my host died."

"So what happened with me?" I asked. Now she looked flustered.

"That I don't know. My host died. I was thrown out into the adjacent spirit world, honing in towards the first empty vessel I came across. It doesn't look like this world when I'm evicted from a host. It's like a misty ocean, with orange blips of light scattered through. I needed the right kind of orange. I searched for that spark of life, that torrent of feelings usually present, and found nothing. So I attached. Once I'm grounded into a host I slip back into this world, and walk around as a grounded spirit again, the form you see me in now I suppose. It's just that usually I'm inside the host I attach to."

"But I wasn't vacant." I pointed out.

"No. No you weren't." She said, looking down at her hands.

"So are you leaving?" I asked. I didn't mean to be rude, but I had quite enough to deal with at the moment, without a guest in my brain.

"I don't think I can, to be honest with you. I don't have the strength right now. I need time to adjust, before I can leave again. I've just spent all my energy wrapping my mental tendrils around your form. I don't have the energy to undo all that work right now." She flexed her fingers. "I'm sorry. I swear I'll do what I can to get out of you when I can though. I'm not used to sharing."

"If other people's souls were too much to compete with, I don't see how you could have merged with mine." I stated, idly.

She looked at me, and stood up, walking over to look into my face. I wasn't sure what she saw, but her face darkened.

"Part of your soul is gone. I don't know where it is, but I'm guessing that's what the stabbing pain in your chest is. I've never felt anything like it."

My soul. My soul was damaged. And I knew exactly where the piece had gone.

It had left with my soulmate.