Disclaimer: All the Twilight stuff belongs to Stephenie Meyer. No copyright infringement is intended. I'm just playing in her sandbox.

Author's note: Yes! Here is a new chapter, two in one day!

Hope you enjoy it, and I love all of you that have been worried about little Masen!

Chapter 126 Feeding

". . . let's not worry so much about the temperature or the snow. As for falling and hurting himself, you know he's very nearly as indestructible as I am. He's fine, Bella. He's fine. We just have to find him, that's all," I tried to tell her, fighting to keep my voice calm and reassuring."

~oooOooo~

Esme POV

Even taking into account my very long existence, it was rare that I had ever felt this excited, this content, this . . . everything exactly as it should be. Oh, I had moments, to be sure . . .

I felt as though I were invincible the day I made my first kill.

I had been overjoyed the day Carlisle asked me to marry him.

Rosalie and Emmett had been with me for many happy moments

and I was elated when Alice and Jasper joined our family.

The evening Edward had discovered Bella in their home and had

safely delivered my grandson . . . well . . . that was amazing . . .

There was just something about today that was special. Perhaps it was that our lives seemed to be coming together, making sense. Each of us, in our own way seemed to have found our niche in the family, that place where we filled a need and gained contentment from it.

The gates and entryway were beautifully manicured, as was traditional for a large estate in England and we did, after all, employ a full time gardener. He had done his job well. It was beautiful. I could not help but throw my arms around Carlisle's neck and kiss him soundly, seeming to amuse him.

"Petal, remind me to bring you here more often," he smirked, bending to kiss me again while our chauffeur took the bags into the house, seeming oblivious to the passionate embrace I found myself in.

I had sent drawings to the contractor specifying exactly what I had wanted done in the manor, which walls were to be removed or altered and where the furnishings were to be placed. I had altered the top floor of one wing, the wing where Edwards room and piano had always been. A sitting room as well as a nursery and playroom had been added, not to mention redecorating in a manner more suitable for a woman and a baby. Edward's wing had always been strictly masculine with little other than functional dark wood furniture and chairs with deep leather upholstery, bookcases filled with literature and music and, of course, his Steinway grand piano that sat majestically on the landing at the head of the stairs.

I had used the bits of blue that I had managed to work into the décor in Edward's room and expanded on it, delighted when I had found that he ordered blue curtains, pillows and comforter for the massive canopy bed he sent ahead. Edward had beds matching the one he and Bella shared at their home in Highlands sent to all of the properties, differing only in the color of the linens adorning it. The dark wooden furniture had been there a century but it was little used, still in perfect condition and it went well with the black wrought iron bed. Since Alice had insisted I use the room I had the workers make an archway into as a sitting room for Bella, adjoining their bedroom rather than a nursery, I added feminine drapes in a solid sky blue lace to match the bed and removed the leather chairs in favor of a sofa and love seat in a floral print with a gorgeous Persian rug in midnight blues and gold.

Masen's room was much like the room I had designed for him at our current home in North Carolina, filled with dark furniture to match Edwards and decorated in creams and blues. The rooms were cheery and bright and faced the East to get the morning sun while the playroom across the hall held the afternoon and evening rays bringing the primary colors adorning it to life when ever the sun would make its appearance in the normally overcast English sky.

This was how I had envisioned it in my mind and it was reflected in the drawings I had sent and discussed in the conversations with the contractor and interior design specialist I had employed and I was not disappointed. Through the marvel of modern technology I had been able to see current photographs of the work as it progressed and even the patterned furniture as the girl shopped for it. I knew ahead of time what it looked like and the reality was no less pleasing than the photos had been.

Edward and Bella had told me of the playroom that Edward had built at their home in Bolzano and though Edward had sounded slightly frustrated, Bella had laughed through the story of how the playroom had started out as just that - a playroom for a small toddler with toys and blocks and things to push and build with, musical toys and story books to amuse him - and how, with Masen's input, it had developed into something of a juvenile "man cave", complete with floor to ceiling bookcases, upholstered chairs and a wealth of reading material . . . including some of the classics . . .

Edward had left all the toys, of course, but had cleverly build padded seating areas that were bins to keep them in, out of sight. Well, I was having none of that.

The playroom I had designed for him was indeed recognizable as a childs playroom. It was decorated in vibrant primary colors with geometric designs boldly painted on the wall and an outlandish fire engine red shag rug placed in the middle of the room covering the dark hardwood floor. There were a couple of upholstered chairs, of course, that were adult sized, but they were covered in matching fabric that boasted bright red circles, blue squares, green triangles and yellow rectangles. There was a smaller, child sized green recliner as well as a dark wood table and chairs built for children.

Bookshelves covered the bottom four feet of two of the walls. One wall's shelves were covered with toys for learning - the binomial cube as used my Maria Montessori in her theories for children learning mathematics, several types of building materials including Steel Togs, Lincoln Logs and a vast number of Legos in a size not recommended for small children, but suggested for teens . . . along with the motors and paraphernalia used to make the models move. There were also a large variety of a toy I was personally looking forward to playing with called Capsella, which consisted of various parts put together to form structures that were watertight and designed to float, in fact to motor quite rapidly along when either submerged in the bathtub or taken out to one of the many ponds and fountains the estate boasted.

The shelves of the other wall were covered in children's books. Not the Dick and Jane or See Spot Run or even the Little Golden Books that normal toddlers would have read to them by their parents, but I had placed adult forms of the classic children's tales such as Alice in Wonderland, Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn, Tales from the Brothers Grimm and even the Wizard of Oz and Moby Dick. Carlisle had recommended and obtained copies of children's bible stories and classic tales of the little folk of Ireland and the fairies of Scotland and had them sent over, along with histories of his family and of England itself.

Once Edward had convinced Carlisle that Masen could read and comprehend on a level that was fast approaching adult, my husband's excitement could not be contained and he set about making lists of things he felt it essential that his grandson be familiar with. He was adorable.

Small sculptures and works of art were also present on these shelves, along with art supplies in every form, from crayons and charcoals with unending rolls paper and stacks of parchment for his use to boxes of oils and pastels with an easel and canvases just waiting for him to show interest and fill the palate and brushes with colors.

We had only been here a day or so and I had all the final touches added, having spent the greater part of the morning in town getting last minute items. Carlisle and I were just heading off for a quick hunt but the expression on his face when I met him in the garden told me that something had happened. Worry saturated his eyes and wrinkled his brow as I noticed him clutching the phone tightly to his ear, Rosalie's voice on the other end of the receiver.

"Yes, I think so, Rosalie. Hang up and I'll call on Bella's phone. Yes, get going. No, no. I would . . . yes. Take his snow suit just in case and those packages they sell in the stores to warm your hands. Yes. Those. Well, just get several and throw them in a backpack with the clothing. No, I don't think it will be necessary, but it couldn't hurt . . . along with the first aid kit . . . yes. Yes. Go!" he said emphatically as he hung up the phone, only to quickly dial Bella.

"Carlisle!" I exclaimed as I quickly moved to stand beside him.

"Masen apparently snuck off the train to follow the boys on a hunt. Rose and Bella can't find him on the train anywhere, so they've gotten off in . . ." he stopped abruptly as Bella answered the phone.

"Bella. Yes, Rosalie called me. No, I haven't heard from any of them, just her. She'll find him, Bella, try not to . . ."

I snatched the phone from him, leaving him in mid sentence as he stared at me.

"Sweetheart, you mustn't panic," I told her as I listened to her explain what they knew so far.

"Edward will find him, dear, you know as soon as Rosalie gets through to Edward he'll move heaven and earth to find that little boy. No, no. Masen is resilient, you know that. He's a Cullen, dear. He's only half human, remember? I'm sure he's fine in the cold, and nothing has managed to even scratch him since he was born, has it? Bella . . . has it? No, of course it hasn't. He's like us, Bella. He'll be fine, they have only to find him," I told her, trying to sound confident and comforting. Carlisle extended his hand in a silent demand for the phone, and I said goodbye to her, handing him the phone.

"Where are you?" he asked, not bothering to write anything down. "Fine. We'll give them a couple of hours before we head to you, but we're heading into town now so that we can check the plane schedules and be ready. I insist. Yes. Call if anything changes or if you get through to them. We'll keep the phones with us. Yes. Bella . . . try to calm down, they'll find him," he told her, clicking the phone off and going instantly to grab the car keys.

~oooOooo~

Masen POV

It was just like the stuff I had played in with my mom and dad at the house where dad had built me a playroom. I was surrounded up to my neck in white powder and it felt cold, if I took the thought to notice. Now that I was off the train, I had to somehow find the smell of my dad so I could follow him. Dad and my uncles had jumped off the train with my aunt Alice quite a while ago but all I had to do was to follow the way the train had come. If I followed it long enough I would get to where they had left the train and I could smell them. I just needed their smell, not even their footprints, and I would be able to follow them.

I climbed back up to the tracks, kind of tunneling through the snow that was built up. I could move a lot faster if I could get to one of the tracks and run, without having to move through all this snow. My dad and uncles had longer legs than I did, much longer, and I knew I needed to move as fast as I possibly could to catch them up.

I didn't worry too much about smells for the first hour because it would take me at least that long to get back to where they left the train. I smelled everything though, even without trying. There were lots of smells I didn't know, but the more I thought about it, the more I recognized . . . trees, the smell of water still moving in the cold somewhere off in the distance, smoke from the fireplace of a house somewhere nearby in the mountains, and several different smells of animals like the sheep I had smelled when dad took me up one of the peaks near our house last week.

All of a sudden it was like having water poured over me when I took a bath. The smell of my dad and my family was overwhelming, not just a vague odor but it was so strong it wasn't possible to miss it. There in the snow were footprints as well, but I didn't need them. I hugged my teddy tightly under my arm. It was all going to be okay, just like I thought. I told them I was big enough! I could do this - follow them. It wasn't all that hard!

I jumped off the tracks in the direction of the footprints and immediately realized that yes, it really was going to be hard to follow. Lots harder than I had thought, cause I sank over my head in the snow. How come I sank and they only left footprints on the top? I tunneled along, hoping I was going in the right direction, till I was able to stand on teddy and reach my hand out through the top crust of the snow. Crust...that was it! I had jumped from the tracks, making a hole in the crust! I just had to find a place where I could get back on top and then not jump, just lightly touch the top crust of the snow, light enough that I didn't break it and fall through!

Knowing what the problem was didn't help all that much. I kept stepping too hard or standing in one place just a little too long and sinking. It slowed me down a lot, especially when I accidentally left teddy on top one of the times I fell into a deep spot of snow. When I got out, I had to go back and get him and I had to run really fast and grab him - fast enough that I didn't sink into the snow again. I kind of dove for him and ended up rolling way down the hill, teddy and I making kind of a giant snowball before we came to a stop against a tree. It had been a tree, anyway. I guess I hit it kind of hard and the whole thing tipped over and made a loud crash, sounding like ice breaking into a million pieces. It wasn't a really big tree, but it was kind of cool that I broke it . . .

My dad was headed up a pretty large mountain and they didn't bother to try and go around. I jumped from ledge to ledge moving higher and higher. It was easier to jump than to try and walk or run or climb and I could jump really far. The more I practiced, the farther I could manage to jump till it kind of felt like I was a bird or something. It was hard to remember that I was supposed to be tracking my dad cause I kept laughing and getting sidetracked with laughing and playing.

Snow was stuck to my sleeper and teddy, and there was so much of it I had to stop for a minute and shake it all off, picking the clumps from my bear's fur and from all around my feet. The sleeper I had on kept caking up with the stuff and I thought about taking it off, but it would make my mom mad if I ran around without anything on but my diaper. I needed to talk to dad about losing the diaper. I could go to the bathroom like my mom did when I needed to and I hated having mushy stinky stuff on me, even if it wasn't that often and it didn't stick to my skin at all.

As I was going down the other side of the mountain on a really steep part. I grabbed for a ledge of rock and lost my grip on my bear. I knew I could go and find him, so I had no idea why I was so upset. I sat on the ledge and fought back the tears that welled up in my eyes and made it hard to spot my bear on the snow covered surface below. I wasn't lost, I knew I wasn't . . . and even if I had been my dad would find me. He could probably smell things even better than me and I knew he could track all sorts of things. There was no reason to be upset about my bear, either. I could get him . . . I knew I could. I wasn't cold or hurt or any of the things that i knew my grandpa Charlie and grandma Renee worried about. I laughed out loud thinking about how fragile they thought I was, not wanting to hold me too tight and making sure that even my diaper and clothes were never tight on me and I was always warm and fed.

Fed.

Even my aunt and uncles made sure to give me bottles of the red stuff, or milk like I got from my mom.

Mom.

Thinking about her made me need her. I wanted to snuggle against her and feel warm and full and fed. Huh. I was hungry. I forgot when I left the trail that I wouldn't have anything to drink.

I wiped my eyes and nose and focused on the snow way down the slope from me, looking for my bear. I spotted Teddy and decided against just jumping down to get him, it was a long way down. I circled around the edge of the cliff and slowly made my way to him, slipping and tumbling in places. I had to go the long way kind of around part of the mountain. I was sliding on top of the snow for a little way when all of a sudden, instead of feeling like I was moving on a slope, I was falling straight down. It seemed like there was a wall in front of me and one behind me, but both of them were just out of my reach and I just kept falling till I splashed. It wasn't supposed to be like this. I was supposed to be on the snow finding teddy!

It seemed like I was back in my mom - only it was a different temperature and there was a lot more room to move around . . . and no comforting sounds or heartbeat to listen to and feel. There didn't seem to be any sound at all even. .I kicked and kicked and after a long time I got back to the top of the water and blew water out of my nose . . . yuck! I could see the sky way up above me, like I was looking up through a crack. I don't even know how I did it, but I grabbed the side of the wall and dug my fingers into it and just started climbing.

The pajamas I had on weren't helping because the feet in them kept my toes from digging into the wall of snow. I held on with one hand and reached down, ripping the bottoms of the legs out, not even caring if aunt Alice got mad at me for it. She always had different ones for me to wear anyway. That made it much easier, and after I fell back into the water a couple of times, I got the hang of climbing. I was so mad at teddy! There had to be a better way of keeping him with me than me having to hang onto him all the time!

When I got back up to the top, I walked carefully down the hill, making sure there were no more holes for me to fall in. I just needed teddy . . . and my dad.

Finally, I was on a wide ledge next to where the trees started growing again. There had been no trees at all on the top of the mountain, only snow. I could smell my family all around. It was as if they had stayed here for a while, and it couldn't have been that long ago because the smell was strong. I smelled something else, too . . . kind of a smell like the bottle they fed me, well, kind of. It was a little like that . . . but different, too. I stopped still for a minute, knowing what this was all about. I had finally made sense of it. They had fed. This was what they had meant by going on a "hunt". The snow had been disturbed in a large area next to the rocks, and after I dug there for a little while I found large dead animals buried there. It only made me thirstier for some reason, and I smelled their tracks leading off straight in front of me towards the woods, but I still had to go around to the side of the mountain and get teddy.

I headed off, following the cliff and keeping it on one side of me. I knew my bear should be just a little way around the mountain. I was starting to wish I had just jumped straight off the ledge above and gotten down to him right away, but going around I had found more of my family's tracks and that made me happy. At least my dad wasn't that far away and i was really starting to want him. I didn't care that it was dark out . . . or cold . . . and I didn't care about the noises. I could see almost as well when the sun was gone as I could when it was out . . . I had just never been alone for this long.

Ever.

I just really wanted my dad.

Now.

I walked faster, though I was having to tunnel some of the time when the snow was deep. Jumping from one ledge to another, or even from a tree branch was helping. I saw the clearing up ahead and it looked like where teddy had fallen, my mind remembering everything it had seen. I was on a limb kind of high up by a rock ledge when I spotted my bear . . . my bear and the animal that was making funny noises at him with its nose. I watched as the animal, I think they called it a cat . . . anyway, I watched as it nudged my bear and put his paw on teddy's stomach. It looked like it was going to bite him, or at least lick him and there was no way I was letting anything happen to my bear.

As I made the decision to go get him, I sensed a familiar mind . . . dad . . .

It didn't matter, I was in the air. I didn't even take time to let dad know that I knew he was there. I had jumped off the limb, headed to save teddy.

It was like it happened in slow motion. As I got closer to them, instead of reaching for my bear, my hands clamped down around the fur at the neck of the large cat, my teeth sinking into its neck just under its mouth. I didn't even think about it as I spat out the prickly, furry stuff and bit him again.

Warm. Warm comfort filled my throat and it was like when I was with my family and they had given me a bottle, only warmer . . . better somehow. I felt us rolling around and the animal trying to make me let go, but the feeling was too good, the taste was too good. I just held on and kept drinking, filling up with the warmth and taste. I didn't even know I was so thirsty . . . but I guess I was. I was so full, it was all I could do to grab teddy and drag him over to me as I nuzzled next to the animal's still warmth and dozed off to sleep.

~oooOooo~