Legends
So many times, she has seemed so small and fragile to me, that the stubbornness and loyalty she bears for Jacob is always stunning and stinging.
Is it friendship? Is it loyalty? Is it love? I've always believed the "gra dilseacht cairdeas" would be between us, only for us. Yet… I am confused.
I have lost the humanity that allows me to grasp these small differences. She brings them to me, small offerings of friendship and hope, and though they are mine to take and I desire to take them, I do not understand them. Does she speak to Jacob of me as she does to me of Jacob? Surely the answer must be no.
In all the years I have walked this earth, in all the years I have come to know my obsessive nature, I have never been possessed so deeply by any other being as I am by Bella. I see her in every vista, in every painting, in every room of this house; I see her in every page of every book and hear her in every note of every song I've ever heard. When I have just left her side, she is a dull wanting, a loss when not at my side; she is a vagrant word in a chapter or an undertone of a melody; the longer the absence, the most insistent the song, the more riveting the page. I cannot speak to my family without mention of her; I cannot express my thoughts here as each drifting notion carries her voice, her scent, her essence. I am consumed by her; I am enveloped by her, and yet she is not here. Confusing, the strength of it all, for how can I demand more of her and give her the freedom for life she must have, the freedom I must give?
I see myself as clear as I may, and as I peer upon my own visage I know who and what I am. Allow the thought of her beating heart, warm cheek, sweet-scented breath to enter, and the picture shifts; I am no longer immortal, I am no longer vampire, I am no longer man. Reduced to tense, wanton anxiety, I lose my form. I am want of her; I am the need of her.
All this fixation does me no good, yet I seem unable to move away. I am Narcissus who gazes into the pool, but sees not himself, but my heart gazing back to me with deep chocolate eyes. I am not Orpheus, as she is not lost to me, but I cannot turn to be sure of her or I will forever lose her. I am not legend and I am not myth, yet time does not pass in thoughts of her.
At last I begin to see him clearly. His love deforms him as it saves him; cripples him as it frees him. The life his love gives to him is the life he then will give back to his love. Outside the bell jar of his love, his life, he is monstrous, hideous, beast; but within the swirling flow of love he is free and lighter than air, sweet smelling and generous. And though he would damn his rivals, the bell jar blissfully binds him, so that the torrent within will rage only in its absence.
Ah. At last I understand.