The forest was dense, surrounding me in a sea of nothing but green—green moss, green leaves, green earth, green everything. Believe it or not, I did not feel the slightest bit of claustrophobia in this box; instead, I felt quite the opposite. I had never felt safer, more secure, more sure of anything. Every thought I'd ever compiled seemed that much clearer when I was on this verdant little planet.
Perhaps it was the seclusion, the certainty that came with solitude. Perhaps it was the ambiguity—I wasn't quite sure where I was. Forests weren't this green in Rhode Island, I was sure. I had to be somewhere rainy, somewhere wet and cold, somewhere where the trees could not only stand tall, but breathe. I envied the trees. I wish I was a sturdy as them, I wish I was as infallible.
But, I knew that was impossible.
I would cherish this much of my dreamland for as long as it lasted, because I knew it would vanish by sunrise. I stepped forward, my bare feet squishing the moist earth underneath my soles. And my breathing heightened. This actually excited me—this uncertain, atypical freedom. Yes, being among trees made me feel freer than I ever would be able to feel outside this fantasy. And, no, I was not some sort of insane bohemian. I was far, far away from anything that I knew, anything familiar to me, and that was the most revitalizing feeling that I had ever felt.
My eyes floated about, spinning as the tall trunks loomed hundreds of feet above me into the clouds. I descended slowly back to earth, my heart pounding freely as I smiled and brought my gaze back to the roots. I turned again, wanting to walk higher up the mount to where I could see sunlight showering my face, but something stopped me.
I had the uncomfortable feeling that I was being watched, and never before had the feeling been real enough for me to actually turn around to scope the area. I didn't expect to find anything as I did a 360-degree turn, and I didn't see anything, till I reached the last inch …
And, in that moment, two surprised ocher eyes met mine.
I gasped, recognizing the face itself, yet seeing it for the first time.
I had read of him many times, memorizing his description in order to create my own projection of his being. In my mind, he had been tall, slim yet lean, softly featured and accented with the lightest hint of conviviality to him. But, now, there was that and much more. His jaw was angular, sharply pulling the skin along his cheekbones and shadowing so it seemed that his face was made from stone. He was the palest shade of white I had ever seen—paler than a ghost, paler than snow, paler than anything fit to describe such a pallid complexion. He was tall, about two heads taller than me, and uncertainty bled through his wary eyes.
Every facial motion, every immobile stare, and every sharp blink—it sent a heat wave rushing through me, spiking my senses so that I was crazily swooning. He moved forward, but then reconsidered and stepped back.
"It's alright, Edward," I comforted him, automatically reaching out for him.
Oh, how I longed to touch him. How I longed to get closer. Never had a fantasy, a creation of my own mind's eye, been so tantalizing, so tangible, so real. What was it about him? I couldn't place it. Even after four years of loving his image, had I just now come to the realization of what true beauty meant? Had I just now figured out that he was so much more than perfect—standing here in his presence was sublime.
"How do you know my name?" He wondered, his voice like a thousand angels singing in perfect harmony. How could I imagine that? Where did I find the divine inspiration for such a god? How could I possibly derive this out of thin air—let alone, in my sleep?
"Oh," I gasped, a sound that was nearly orgasmic.
I flinched in embarrassment.
He smirked, figuring then that I must've been a figment of his imagination, as well.
"This is a dream," I clarified.
His eyebrows furrowed, but then he nodded halfheartedly, "Yes, yes, it is. You are from Forks, no?"
"No," I answered honestly, feeling a bit faint.
"Oh, then where have you seen me before?" He wondered.
"I've … I-I am …" I began losing circulation to my brain.
Although I figured it'd be dangerous for my health, I rushed forward, jumping up onto him and placing my lips onto his. It was a gut reaction, something that I had only done out of sheer sake—doing it to do it, I supposed.
What a real feeling dream, I admired. His lips felt real, like he was actually here. His arms around me felt strong, as if I was actually touching them. But they didn't feel like human hands, they felt like a statue's frozen grasp. His mouth rigidly pulling away, that felt pretty real. His gasps, they sounded real; his swears, they sounded like a real voice, like he was truly there and not just a mirage.
"What are you doing!" He shouted. His arms stiffened and he pulled his mouth away, instinctively pressing his lips to my throat; begrudgingly, he lifted his lips and shoved me off, incidentally pushing me three yards back.
I'd forgotten. "Oh, the blood. I'm sorry. That musta been uncomfortable for you."
His eyes grew even wider. "What did you just say?"
"Must've been uncomfortable …"
"No," He annunciated. "About the blood."
"Well, you're a vampire, aren't you?" I looked up at confusedly.
He swallowed hard, his eyes widening. "Who are you?"
"I'm Olivia," I smiled warmly. "Olivia Bellamy. You look awfully upset…"
"You live in Forks?" He murmured.
"No, I live in Rhode Island," I said. "Are we in Forks now? This is such a real dream." I ran my hand across the ground. "It's almost exactly how Stephenie Meyer described it."
He grew unbelievably stiff at the name. "You know her?"
"Not personally," I shrugged. "I've read the books a million times, though."
"What books?" He raised an eyebrow.
"The Twilight books," I answered. "Oh, well, it's all fictional so, of course, you being the main character … you wouldn't know anything about it …"
"I know everything about it," He murmured.
This was the point at which I became furiously confused, to the point that I became almost frustrated. It was not the fact that something was hidden from me—no, it wasn't that. I was used to that. But it was the fact that he stood there with the blankest stare and the gloomiest face, absolutely immobile. It were as if he was a computer and the only way I could get a reaction out of him was if I initiated it; he was in silent, impenetrable shock.
"What do you mean?" I initiated.
Before could respond, something to the east attracted his full attention and he grew a sudden urgency. He was at my side in a flash, lifting me up off the forest floor and pulling me away in the opposite direction of whatever had distracted him.
"We have to get back to my house."
The next few moments happened so quickly that I wasn't quite able to process them, so describing them now is seemingly impossible. He yanked my arm up, so that I moved toward him—and perhaps over him. And then my eyes began to sting painfully, which caused an annoying headache. I blinked in discomfort, slouching away from him and falling onto my feet on a hard, stone surface.
When I regained clarity of my settings, he was already about ten feet away from me, holding the glass door open for me as he lingered uneasily in the doorway. He seemed flustered, his eyes plastered to the woods beyond. His attention was hardly on me, which gave me enough time to observe my new setting.
Almost with the illusion of having grown out the forest floor, the three-story glass house before me seemed a dream in itself, a dream within my dream. The levels of the home were separated by modern angles and lines, the three floors resembling rectangular blocks that had been haphazardly aligned on top of one another. Where there was siding, horizontally grained brown and black wood matched the dark trees around it; where there wasn't siding, there were floor-to-ceiling windowed walls, so wide and expansive around the house that I could see through the rooms to the other side.
The foyer in which Edward waited was covered in exotic, tribal artifacts and ancient European paintings. A staircase hugged the white walls, a transparent railing seeming to be the only thing keeping it together. But the steps were thick, lightly colored oak, four feet long each, I guessed…
It was quite odd. I had never been a dream so realistic that I could assume the dimensions of things. Sure, I could calculate the height of a cliff I'd fallen off of in a dream if I wanted to, but it was not a subconscious thing for a normal person to do. Never was there enough detail perceived in the moment where time and space and inches and feet applied. Odd.
My host was obliging to my awe, letting me get my fill of the place without prompting me even once to come in. Though I could tell he was a bit anxious. When I finally did slowly make my way to the door—still examining the new world around me—he took a moment to quickly appraise me before leading me up the stairs, to a landing, up another set of stair and to the main living area.
There was only one solid wall in the main area, the rest windows, as if the room were a peninsula surrounded by the green, luscious sea. Lots of pale colors were on the walls and in the furniture, as I had expected. Many of the pieces arranged around the room were ornate and antique, some perhaps even older than three hundred years my senior. I looked over my shoulder where the hall led in the opposite direction and I could just see the edge of the kitchen.
It's right where it should be, I thought to myself. It's all exactly where she described it.
Edward moved over to the sofa and gently lowered himself down onto it, so slowly that it was as if he was afraid of offending someone in his own house. He looked up to me, gesturing toward the pale blue armchair across from him with his eyes.
I was hesitant to move forward. Mainly because … observing the scene was one thing, but disrupting it was entirely another. I felt so intrusive breaking into such a supernatural place, almost afraid my ordinariness would ruin the magic of it all.
"Don't be afraid." He shook his head, misinterpreting my reluctance.
To convince him that I wasn't the least bit frightened of him, I took my seat facing him, almost a little too quickly, and leaned back comfortably. Though probably impolite of me to lounge so casually as a guest in a home to which I had never been before, he took to the action with a certain relief. It was comforting for him to know that I was already to terms with the whole situation—even though I didn't quite know what the situation was just yet.
"I must apologize for my haste," He continued to examine my face with furrowed brows, almost as if he were frustrated with me. Yet, despite this, his voice conveyed the greatest conviviality. "My family is out hunting"—he paused to gauge my reaction to this—"and, well, quite honestly, I don't want them to know about you."
"Won't they be able to smell me when they get back?" I assumed.
"They left only a moment ago and should not be back until late. I'm hoping to get you home sooner rather than later…. It's been quite some time since we hunted last, so I'm sure they'll be heading upward toward the Canadian border, where the wiliest of bears and mountain lions are." Again, he stopped to measure my reaction. When the only comprehensible emotions I made were that of bewilderment and admiration, he discarded his assumptions of my fear and waited for my questions to ensue.
But I had to sort through everything naturally. If I jumped to my grander-scale questions straight out of the shoot, I would forget the smaller details in the shadow of the obvious things I was obviously missing. I had to present my thoughts to him as they came and as they flowed, instead of digging through my head for technicalities.
After deciding this, I looked back up at his face, but—this being the most counterproductive first action I could have taken—my thoughts were suddenly a befuddled mess, which he probably understood. So, I had to look away from him in order to remember my objective. My eyes floated around the room: to the grand piano in the corner, to the tall built-in bookshelves, to blankets tossed perfectly across furniture, to the flower arrangements and rusted metallic sculptures perfectly displayed on the end tables, to the modern white canvas with long black line dragged across it… There was so much to look at, so much beauty and intricacy that my mind could not perceive in a single sitting.
"This is dream is so real," I commented.
"This is not a dream," He replied concisely.
He said the words in a fashion that made it seem as if he was my conscience, which made this process much, much easier. He must've overheard my decision to process the thoughts as naturally as possible. So he prompted my thoughts as naturally as he could, as an onlooker rather than an instigator.
"If it's not a dream, then what is it?"
"It's reality."
"That can't be true," I shook my head, scrunching up my nose as if I'd tasted something sour. "You're a character in a book."
"In your reality, I am."
"Then what are you in this reality?" I asked.
He answered, "I'm as real as you are in yours."
"So, all of this actually exists?"
He chuckled quietly to himself. "Sorry, I'm just thinking from a different perspective than you are. I've just now come to remember that I am the foreigner to you, rather than vice versa."
"I'm a foreigner?"
"From another dimension, yes," He nodded.
"Dimensions?" My eyes widened. "Like The Twilight Zone?"
"Conveniently named, of course," He smirked again, a sight too beautiful for my human eyes.
"I don't understand…." I hated to admit.
"Perhaps I should introduce the subject to you more slowly," He proposed, seeing that the natural progression of my thoughts all dragged me further into confusion. "This is real." He tapped on the coffee table with his knuckle. "And I am real." He reached out and brushed my sleeved arm, not ready for our skin to make contact, whether I already knew that truth or not. "And you are real.
"There are plenty of alternate worlds that exist, I suppose. Simply fiction to some, simply reality to others. The greatest of novels, the most masterful of masterpieces—you cannot comprehend—are all inspired by worlds of which only the artist is aware. Dreams are dreams, yes, but visions are separate. Once connected so deeply with a particular place, you are suddenly there. Because it actually exists.
"Stephenie arrived here the spring of 2002, because she had a vision that this alternate world was real. She was offered, by the choice of God, I suppose, a peek into a reality, one that was not her own—a reality that belonged to my wife. And, when the idea became her own, she began to drift between realities. Though only that single moment of the meadow was visually available to her, she received accounts from every last one of us, we confided her, we became close friends…." He smiled. "A book, of all things, was sort of an afterthought.
"We did not think it would be that bad of an idea. And the final product was almost like an account that deserved to be in print. Bella's life, though I had never considered it beforehand, seemed a remarkable tale and, she, a remarkable protagonist. Of course, Stephenie added a bit of hyperbole here and there, but only to patch up sequence … and I must be absolutely honest with you, the joy I felt…. I received access to a part of Bella that I had never known. A part that baffled me and mystified me even more than what I already knew of her—she opened up to Stephenie like she hadn't to any of us. I learned all her suffering, the complexity of her relationships, the facets of her brilliance and compassion…. You haven't a clue how many times I have read those stories. Not a clue. I've examined every last word of them, yet I am still completely unable to fully know her…. Well, perhaps, not to know, but to … wrap my head around her. The thought of finally understanding has enthralled and hypnotized me, to the point of obsession, and I haven't got the faintest idea if Stephenie knows what she's sparked in me … or if she can even imagine…."
He met my eyes apologetically. "How discourteous of me to go on a tangent in front of a guest."
"Monologues are more interesting anyways," I shrugged.
He smiled tiredly. "Yes, well, pointblank, we were rather shocked with the phenomenon that took place only a world away from us. Stephenie returned one afternoon, elated by all that she had to tell us. She described the base that had developed after Twilight's publication. So unbelievable to us was the reaction that Alice prompted her to write another, and another. Which had been Stephanie's original intention, of course, just to round off the story, but never had she dreamed of revealing New Moon or Eclipse to the public. And then, in late 2006, when we got the news of a film … oh, it was the joke of the family for weeks, months even. It was just so amusing to us that our lives could be portrayed in such a way. And, when the cast list was done and decided, we all pried so deeply into the lives of our portrayers that it could right well be classified as a felony."
I laughed.
"Ah, yes, but there is hardly a day that goes by that we don't miss Stephenie. Or the change in pace that she brought us."
"She doesn't visit anymore?" I wondered.
"Every once in awhile we'll find a DVD of final edits on the counter or a maternal note for the family lying around somewhere, so, yes, she comes. But she does not stay. Not long enough for us to be aware of her presence. She's here then gone again." His hand moved with his words. "We want to see her, of course. But it's for the better that we go our own ways."
I nodded, his pensive expression alone enough to warn me that the blooming questions in my head were not appropriate as of yet. His relationship with Stephenie was not something I had business in and it obviously disheartened him, so I kept my mouth—to my dismay—shut.
A smile began to reform as he reached over to the coffee table and picked up a purple CD case with a silver, shiny disc inside. He waved it in his hand. "Have you seen the latest yet? Quite comedic, if I say so myself."
"Breaking Dawn?"
"Emmett was hysteric during the entirety of the Isle Esme sequence. Oh, and don't even get me started on the birth. Rosalie was utterly embarrassed."
I jolted with a start, having forgotten. "Is Renesmee out hunting, too?"
Edward shook his head toward the window, grinning. "An inside joke between the family and Stephenie."
"Renesmee isn't real?"
"Renesmee"—he said the name funnily with a silly look on his face—"isn't real, no. Breaking Dawn is accurate down to the last days of the honeymoon. Some bits and pieces strewn about the rest are true enough, but the context most certainly is not. In the end, all was resolved, but not the way they had according to what you know.
"Alice, Jasper, and Emmett are to blame for the majority of the construction of the final narrative. Emmett was shooting for humor, whereas Alice wanted enough intensity to suit her fancy. And Jasper was left to contain the whirlwind. How Stephenie survived with their counsel is a mystery to me still."
He paused, thinking to himself for a moment, still quite amused. "It's no wonder the book is such an emotional mess."
"I didn't think it was that bad," I mused mainly to myself.
"Because you didn't know the half of it," He said. "To you, it was a piece of serious romantic fiction. I'm sure you were devastated when you discovered Jacob imprinted." He contained his laughter.
"I didn't care." I shook my head.
His eyes widened and he sat up. "You weren't disappointed?"
I shrugged, replying indifferently, "I'm Team Edward."
Edward let a fast breath escape before standing and pacing around the room, with eyes clenched shut, for a few long minutes. He turned to me, his cheeks uplifted and his eyes wide.
With his arms folded across his chest, he said incredulously, "No one ever is."
"Well, I am," I perked up in my seat.
"Thank the Lord," He lifted his hands. "I deeply appreciate it." And, then all of a sudden, he was sitting back where he had been before, his head in his hands. "You have no idea how much it disappoints me when I find your world thinks that he's so much better than me simply because of who his actor is. Do not understand me incorrectly—Jacob is a good friend of mine now. But if only you could see the real Jacob. Not this polished Lautner child." He lifted his head from his hands, smiling, "I'd like to think I'm far more attractive than he is."
"I'd like to agree," I shrugged.
"… But you don't?"
"I'll let you know when I get to meet the real Jacob," I smiled.
He was to his feet in an instant, his fists suddenly clenched. For a moment I thought that his family had returned, but after a moment, I realized that it was my statement that put him on edge.
"I'm not even certain that you're staying."
"What do you mean?" I stood, too.
He pinched the bridge of his nose, moving swiftly away from the couch and taking long strides down the hallway to the kitchen. "I can't believe I even intrigued you. How could I have been so brainless? I told you everything. And, now that you're here, there's not a doubt in my mind that you'll be able to come back." He muttered to himself.
I followed him distraughtly down the hall. "But I want to stay…" I began.
"Exactly," He turned on his heel, his hands shooting down to his sides, restive. "You don't even know the workings of everything."
"Then explain to me…"
"I can't. It will only…." He stopped himself.
Not only did he stop. But he looked emotionally incapable of going any further. His eyes fell to the floor, his fingers back to the bridge of his nose again.
"Do you know why it is that Stephenie cannot come back anymore?"
I reluctantly shook my head.
"Because she became obsessed," He said slowly, painfully. "As opposed to her usual three days here, she started to spend weeks. Months. This world was beginning to become her reality. You see, time here is different than time where you are. If you stay here for an hour, a week, a year—it does not matter—you will return to reality in the exact moment in which you left. Stephenie would stay here for four months straight and return disoriented, forgetting commitments she'd made, losing track of her mental clock and staying up late hours, sleeping during the day, unintentionally estranging herself from her husband and her sons…. When the day came that she couldn't even remember her own home address, Carlisle asked her to leave for her own wellbeing…. Twilight is her only connection that she still has to us."
He took a step closer to me, searching my eyes for a reaction.
I looked forward at him, frozen.
"I cannot have another innocent, little girl become so possessed by something that should not be her reality," He exhaled, his cold breath washing over my face. "Because if you die here … God knows what will happen to your body in your reality."
He turned away from me, briskly walking up the stairwell and stopping at the landing to look down at me.
"To go back to your reality, you just have to consciously concentrate on it," He instructed absentmindedly. "Close your eyes, imagine it, and you'll be back."
"Is that the same way to come back here …?"
"Olivia," He growled. "Go home. And do not come back."
He continued up the steps.
"I'm already obsessed, you know!" I called up after him. "Can't you see my life? Don't you understand what it's like for me on the other side? I hate it. I can hardly bear it. These fifteen minutes here have been the happiest of my entire life."
"I can't read your thoughts," His voice echoed in the stairwell. "Just like I couldn't read Stephenie's."
I first assumed that he'd been lying. How else could he have so easily answered my inquiries a few moments ago?
But he reappeared on the landing. "I've an outstanding aptitude for reading faces and estimating pauses. Bella is magnificent practice."
"Let me stay," I begged.
"It'll be too much for you to handle," He objected.
"How?" I shrugged. "I already know everything there is to know about your world." His face grew wary, but I could tell he was thawing out; he stepped down a stair. "I'm like you. I've read the books so many times, I could give you a play by play, I could tell you the names of the chapters—in chronological order, too. I know everything about this world that Bella knows: the dangers, the surprises… I know it all. So, I'll let you argue with me. But the excuse that I'm not prepared is not a valid case."
My words fueled the opposite reaction that I had wanted from him. He became suddenly depressed, his eyes falling and his lips puckering as if he wanted more than anything to cry. Without thinking much of it, I jogged up the steps to him, trying my hardest to console him.
"I'm sorry, I'm sorry. What's the matter?"
"You're only so young … and you're prepared for this madness?" He scoffed, his voice broken and unsteady. He grew a paternal edge to him, shaking his head in irritated disagreement. "What has the world come to that it is so infatuated with peril? 'Consequence' is not even a factor anymore. Have you even that word in your dictionary where you're from? It's absurd…!"
"Edward," I interrupted, grabbing him by the hand.
He seemed startled by the contact.
"Twilight is considered the more modest side of all that."
His eyes widened in an adorable confusion. "How!"
His hand slipped from mine and he began to make his way up the steps.
This time he did not protest when I followed him.