~ Part 2 ~
T. 1,010
BELLA SWAN
She had been trying to push them together, the vampire and the werewolf, two species that could never work. They were like repelling magnets. Opposite sides of her soul, too far apart over a gap so wide neither could have reached across to grab the other boy's hand, and neither would have tried anyway.
But when she sees them now she doesn't have a comparison to anything. The relationship is just too strange. They had fought together, becoming brothers. And now the wolf had become the vampires son...
In some ways more real then blood, they were family.
JAMES
No words could ever possibly voice the bliss that was her smell. It consumed his very soul and ensnared his senses. Barely any time had passed since he had seen her in the meadow, and already he was insane from not having tasted her. The joy from feeding on random beings had left him; the world now but a pale shadow of thirst.
He had to be clever and cunning, and find some way to bring the girl to his very arms. Or else it would be his horrid demise, spending night after meaningless night without having tasted Heaven …
JACOB BLACK
At first...he loathed it. There was nothing to be desired in morphing into a giant mongrel. He didn't want any of it! Not the legend, not the Pack, not the healing or even the speed could ever compare to being human. He felt he had been robbed. Betrayed by his tribe and ancestors. They had taken from him his most precious treasure, and it wasn't something he could ever get back.
But after a while he realized that it was worth it. Not because of any of the physical mumbo-jumbo. But because he had gained something more than worthwhile in exchange...family.
SETH CLEARWATER
At fourteen he is utterly eager to grow up. Eager to prove himself; to be like the other wolves, to be part of the Pack. He wants all aspects of being an adult so much he feels his bones ache, his skin crawl, and he is so very frustrated at his age that he lets out a series of strangled curses.
But then he sees his sister, and Jacob...and he's not sure anymore. Growing up seems to consist of love. And love seems just another form of pain. A bruising of the soul, ripping you slowly apart.
QUIL ATEARA
He didn't see them anymore. He didn't see their faces. But he saw Claire's face. And it was like the sun, brightly lit and open to the entire world. It lit his path when he ran with his Pack in the dark woods, and it flooded his dreams like a river.
It wasn't romance.
But it was love.
He didn't know anyone who would understand. And he didn't know how to explain. But in the inner most part of his very heart he could only tell himself that this was what true love must be. Simply wanting to bring someone happiness.
ROSALIE HALE
When the baby broke her ribs...she didn't see Bella. When the baby broke her pelvis...she didn't see Bella.
When the baby was suffocating, she finally saw Bella. Bella was the woman killing the baby. Killing Rosalie's only chance at ever having a child. Bella was the problem, not any part of the solution. She needed to be taken out of the picture. The expression on Rosalie's face shifted purposefully as she pulled her lips back in raging thirst. Bella had to die. Bella was the murderer.
But Alice and Jacob, not understanding, forced her out of the room.
BILLY BLACK
He was jealous of his son. Why did the wolf gene have to skip his generation? It wasn't fair. He had watched, wide-eyed with boyish awe, as his grandfather morphed into a beautiful auburn wolf. And he had wanted it. But Jacob didn't want it. Didn't understand. He hadn't listened to the myths all his life, dreaming of being a great legendary chief. He hadn't spent his childhood years wishing with all his might one day to be a Protector.
But Billy had done these things.
Always waiting for the moment of glory which he never received.
KIM (?)
Jacob hadn't entirely been right. It was true that she had had her eye on Jared for a year, and that she had tacked his name with her own all over her diary. But there was drama in their relationship because Kim couldn't help but wonder if Jared loved her for her, or if he loved her because of some wolfish compulsion.
When she told this to Jared, he had burst into tears, begging her to tell him what he could do to prove to her that he loved her either way.
There was nothing she could think of.
CHARLIE SWAN
He wasn't the cleverest of men, nor the most observant. But he did have a great many hunches. And one of those was that he had always thought that there was something abnormal about Edward Cullen.
That feeling only grew worse when he left Bella. There was no way a normal boy could leave a girl feeling like that. Yes, Charlie was surethat there was something odd going on right in front of his eyes.
He was also sure he didn't want to know.
He was even more sure when he met his grand-daughter, Renesmee, for the first time.
ESME CULLEN
She would never be bitter like Rosalie. For with each second she was unbearably grateful for what she had; ALL that she had. She would never have imagined when she was the girl who jumped off the cliff, that she would be so blessed. She had true love that most women never knew, three sons and two daughters who in their own ways could not have lived without her.
Every morning she opened the doors of the house to hear the birds sing, at night she sat and gazed at the brilliant stars she had never seen as a human.
Revisions: 10-23-12