Chapter 2: Choices

"What?" I asked in surprise.

"Carlisle has been researching a way to become human again. Ever since I fell in love with Bella." Edward explained.

"And you didn't tell us why?"

"Because you'd get over excited and all want to do it."

"But why is that bad???" I exclaimed. I couldn't see why becoming human could be bad, no matter what the risk.

"Like I said, it's incredibly painful. And extremely dangerous. Carlisle would rather keep everyone a vampire than turn us back to humans."

It must be dangerous then, if Carlisle would rather stay a vampire.

"It is." Edward said.

Has it been tested? I asked him.

"No." he said, "How could it?"

I saw his point.

How did you find this out???

"Carlisle was interested in how the wolves defeated us. He asked Jacob if they had any extra abilities. When he said no, he wondered how they could bite us then.
Looking at the facts he deducted that the wolves, apart from being extra large, had only one different physical aspect than normal wolves: their heat. The wolves are extremely hot - as you know - and he believes that the heat, when concentrated in their mouths, softens our flesh, allowing the teeth to bite through our skin and rip us apart."

But we bite each other and it marks. Just look at Jasper.

"Yes, but we have our venom." He pointed out.

I thought about this for a fragment of a second.

After about two seconds, Edward continued.

"Carlisle reckons that's also the reason we need to be burnt to be destroyed. Our flesh weakens enough to catch on fire and we become a half-vampire, half-human torch."

I thought this through. It all made sense. Then I noticed the flaw.

"But if you were to turn Rose back into a human using fire, how'd you do it without burning her?" I asked.

"That's what I need to ask Carlisle about."

* * *

Later that night I sat in my room, watching the Swan Lake. Ballet was my secret obsession. Not even Edward new about it, though he suspected it, because every time someone mentioned ballet I thought of what Rose and I did at night and drove Edward out of my head.

Tonight though, I couldn't focus on pirouettes and plies, my mind was on what Edward had said this evening. He'd told me not to tell Rosalie about it until he'd talked to Carlisle and I was grateful tonight that Rose was out with Alice. I realised Alice must of seen me talking to Edward when I'd decided to and made sure to keep Rose out extra long. Usually she'd be bored of human men and tantalising them with her vampire beauty and would be home by now. With a sudden jolt of fear I realised Alice had also seen me decide to watch Swan Lake while they were out and probably knew where my secret collection of ballet greats were. But if she knew tonight, she must of known all the other times as well and if she hadn't told anyone, why would she now?

As my mind relaxed, knowing that Alice would keep my secret, my mind drifted to the problem about Rose. She would give anything to be human - I knew that - but would I give up her? She was the first thing I had seen when I first became a vampire and we'd been together for over 70 years. On the other hand, I wanted what was best for her and knew that she'd want this. I didn't want to stop her from doing what she wanted and besides, I've never been able to stop her anyway. So with a decision like this; what should I do?