"Nice to finally talk to you, Jasper." She said quickly back to him. I thought about how peculiar it was, watching my body having a conversation with someone who knew I wasn't in there. Jasper looked frozen. I wondered if that was a vampire's natural state, and that he was so focused on the perplexing situation before him that he had literally forgotten he was supposed to be looking human. He didn't even look like he was breathing.
"It's a pleasure..." Jasper mumbled at her.
"You can call me Renesmee. Bella does, although I'll ask you to speak louder. I'm not as good at lip reading as Bella, and I can't sign for shit."
I smiled, and continued watching Jasper. The most movement I could see was his clothing and hair. They would quiver whenever a rain drop hit them, other than that he may as well have been a statue in a wig.
"What, or who exactly are you?" Jasper spoke, loudly and clearly, but without much movement.
"Simply put, I'm an aboriginal shaman who couldn't be bothered to die properly. My navushiep, if you will, my free-soul, decided to float around, looking for empty hosts. I began bringing life to the recently deceased, the brain-dead, hell I've reanimated a few stillborns in my time. This is the first time I've ever accidentally latched onto an inhabited body." Renesmee was relaxed, barely even looking cautious in her posturing. She looked as though this was an interesting development in a movie she were watching, and I wondered idly if that was how she saw our arrangement. Perhaps as a videogame character with some super long and unavoidable cutscenes.
"How exactly did you manage that?" Jasper asked. It occurred to me that he sounded quite clinical, much like Carlisle did in 'doctor mode'.
"I believe the question actually falls onto your side." I saw my body say, and Renesmee managed to pull a face I had never before seen in the mirror. It was a terrifyingly angry one that I didn't think my meek face could have pulled off. "How exactly did your brother-" she managed to use a tone that sent a chill down my spirit spine. "Manage to rip all sense of humanity and presence out of her?" My head nodded towards me, a body that Jasper couldn't see, but he understood clearly.
I tried to ignore, tried to not think about what Renesmee was saying. I needed to think about something else. Anything else. I wondered how Jacob was doing. Whether he was completely transformed and capable yet. Wondered if he would ever let me see him change. Would I show him my new bag of tricks too? My thoughts were interrupted by a name that cut deeply.
"Because Edward is infantile, stupid, and incapable of seeing happiness for himself. Only this time his selfishness cost more than he realised."
My breathing was getting faster, the hole in my chest bubbling up. Renesmee looked over toward me, concerned. As expansive as my hearing usually was in spirit form, it felt as though the world was getting quiet, and that a pressure was building up in my ears.
"Cigarette." I heard her say quickly while she furtively threw out her arm, throwing the aforementioned towards me. I watched it fall, just short of me, and bounce, a single time in the moss at my feet. I buckled over, staring at the ugly little roll of paper I'd been toying with for hours. I was on all fours, the only thing in my vision the stupid cigarette on the moss.
"The problem in this equation seems to be..." My voice continued to ring out from my body, cruelly I thought. "Edward Anthony Mason Cullen."
The cigarette on the moss didn't light up. It didn't burn up slowly, or even quickly. It literally exploded, leaving a singed patch of moss beneath it.
The pressure was gone, my hearing was back, and the hole in my chest had been temporarily filled with a sloshing of surprise. I'd done that. I'd set things on fire before, but not a specific thing, not intentionally.
"Well done Bella." My voice was gentle now, consoling. I was actually unnerved to hear how like my mother I sounded. I glared up at my own brown eyes.
"Was that necessary?" I asked, rubbing my chest.
"I've noticed that with you, expulsion is easier than calming. At least, when Jasper here isn't around."
I looked over at Jasper, who had remained immobile, except that his eyes were bright with fevered interest. If the conversation these two were going to have would involve more of that, I felt I was probably better not hearing the conversation.
"Do you mind if I..." I began.
"Leave? You sure you don't want to stick around?" My body asked, pulling a Renee-esque expression. I wasn't sure I liked my face, the more I had to look at it being obstinate and obscure. As I watched her more, I noticed that Renesmee somehow wore my face differently. The microexpressions, the muscles she used were not ones I was used to using.
"I've heard the majority of the backstory. The part Jasper is most interested in is what hurts the most."
"Okay." She acquiesced, relaxing again on the log. "I'll reel you back in when we're done."
She turned back toward Jasper to begin explaining the situation, and I started a nice jog into the wet, green world around me.
I wasn't sure how long I ran for, but eventually I came across a gorge. Normally, I would have halted, afraid of the fall, or of injury. But in this form... My heart felt like it was racing, in a good way, with adrenaline. I'd seen Renesmee basically teleport in this spirit form. One little jump wasn't totally out of the bounds of possibility. I definitely felt like I needed a run up to it. I backed up, and began running at the gorge. I jumped, screamed, and soared far across, clearing it with plenty of room to spare. I laughed at myself as I rolled into a landing on the other side, definitely rolling through a few trees. I stood up, laughing at myself. I looked back toward the gorge, and the river at the bottom of it. I wasn't entirely sure where I was. The awful thing about Forks was that the wildnerness was everywhere, and to me at least, it all looked the same.
I turned around, to continue running, wondering how far I would get before Renesmee reeled me back in, when I came face to face with a pair of dark brown eyes in an impossibly large face of russet coloured fur. I froze, and so did it - the giant wolf - before it made a barking sound which was unmistakably confusion. The wolf was far, far too big to be a real wolf. All of Renesmee's tales came flooding back into my brain, and I just knew, instantly, and without fail, exactly whose eyes I was looking at.
"Jacob?" I asked, in absolute disbelief. The wolf actually fell over backward.