Chapter summary: I keep seeing my face in different times, in places where I've never been; I have these memories that I shouldn't have.

Acknowledgements: Thank you, as always, to BelleBiter for asking the right questions at just the right time. And to Winterhorses for unexpectedly providing the linchpin. I couldn't have written this one without either of you. Thanks also goes to Sandprincess for her review last chapter, which gave me quite an idea...

A/N: Last, but not LEAST, thank you to Tinie432 for the wonderful Chit-Chat Spot she featured for me and GeekChic12. You can find it at adifferentforest dot net Campfires slash 31397

The first thing I do on my unexpected vacation is to walk along Venice Beach at the dawn of the next day.

Step by step, I am chasing away another night of disturbing dreams.

It's just me, the water, the wind… and the sun, as it peeks over the edge of the palm trees. My house key is tucked inside my bra, my cell phone in a pocket at my waist, my heavy heart locked down firmly. In my right hand is a bottle of mace that Dad sent last week. He sends a new one every six months.

In my present mood, I wouldn't hesitate for a second if someone gave me cause to use it.

I veer off the boardwalk onto the sand, toward the ocean, heading into the brunt of the wind. There are a few other people out, but they stay on the boardwalk because down at the water's edge, the wind is so fierce that it can sting. Today is no exception; the farther I walk, the more staggered my footsteps grow due to its force. A single brave jogger is running along the shore away from me, heading towards the sun.

I take off my sandals once I reach the water. The sand is flat, hard and cold, but as the water recedes, it takes a bit of it from under my feet, unbalancing my steps. The wind is an underlying roar that peaks and wanes in intensity, an ever present din that steals my thoughts, hurling them somewhere behind me.

It's perfect.

I feel as if I could walk like this forever. Just leave all thoughts behind as I head into the wind, my hair unbound and waving behind me like a flag, uncaring of where I'm going, but ever moving forward. Slowly, though, because the wind and sand are taking turns pushing and pulling at my steps.

But the prickly sense of déjà vu is catching up again, hitting at the back of my heels, even when I pick my feet up and stagger-run, clumsy, with the wind searing the moisture from my throat.

I've been here before.

On this beach, carrying my sandals on the crook of my finger, and feeling this certain pain of not knowing what or who to believe. The early sun in my eyes, all crowded inside, numb on the outside, running and almost falling to my knees, looking at the sky as if searching for answers.

I don't know how I know this; I only understand that it's true, as the thought blossoms like black ink in my soul.

My foot slaps against the sand, and I feel it in my bones.

She feels it in her bones.

I am breathing like a fireplace bellows, the cries I can't hear catching up inside my mind, reverberating, like a chorus of women crying, crying.

The sense that I've done a thing before has never been this powerful or this painful. I'm blinded by it, my steps going nowhere as my mind plays the rippling image of my face when I lean across a pond, my head covered with a veil that I somehow know is a hijab.

"The future comes like death without you," the girl with my eyes says to the water in Arabic.

Without E.

Laughing as the battleship replica in my powdered pompadour gets caught in his cravat.

Dancing the waltz, our bodies briefly touching, my silk gown swinging around my legs. I'm shaming my mother, but I don't care, I don't care.

My fingers trembling as I try to tie the strings of a bonnet. But I can't, so he does it, his touch deliberately close against my skin.

"Why can't you stay with me?" I ask.

And his face, as it falls, his mouth gray and turned down at the corners. "It is not allowed."

He and I standing together, smiling at our reflections in a storefront window, me with my hair bobbed and my scandalous shortened flapper dress with the dropped waist, him in his short suit jacket and jaunty straw boater.

"Je t'adore. Toujours," I say to him.

And then looking down at my granny heels shyly, as we walk down the dusty driveway of my parent's house.

He's beside me, holding my hand with one of his, while the other steadies his bike. And then, because I won't look at him, he lets the bike fall to the grass, and he chases me.

It's a very short chase in my heels. Plus, I want him to catch me.

On and on, these snapshots of life come, zipping through my mind almost too fast to follow. The feeling the images leave is clear and constant, though: my empty arms, a heavy chest, heartbreak, loss.

For E.

He is always there. In the back of my mind.

In the back of those girls' minds.

And I think I'm losing my own.

I'm on my knees at the water's edge, and my face is wet. Someone is beside me. A stranger with a pony tail poking out from a baseball cap. I see her mouth move, I hear her voice. The words don't make sense.

Nothing makes sense.

She's trying to get me to stand, so I struggle to my feet. I see a pair of sandals in the water, bobbing along in their separate ways until the tide comes back in to send them bumping against each other. And then I realize that they're mine.

"I'm sorry," I whisper, and the wind snatches the words away.

"…all right?"

Am I all right?

I pick up my water-logged shoes and smile at her while wiping at my face.

I'm fine.

I'm fine.

I'll make sense of it all, somehow.

Some way.

. . .

Meanwhile, the Mother of the Three Fates, irrevocably and conclusively present in the incarnation of atmosphere surrounding this mortal's misbegotten existence, decides that it is seven times too many for the Girl of the Lost and the Muse of forsaken chances.

It is time they had their own.

Even the gods daren't fight against Ananke.

And so she stays nearby, as she has her own magic to impart; it will have its own consequences, as well – which only a Mother's arms can soothe.

. . .

"Maybe you should go home," Alice says.

It's Tuesday, and we're watching a movie, only I haven't been paying attention and her words snap me out of my trance. I raise my head off of the couch pillow I'm lying on and give her a look.

"This is my home." My words are strong, and laced with hurt that she would suggest such a thing.

Her face softens. "I know, sweetie. But I meant maybe you should go visit your dad. Get a change of scenery. Recharge in your hometown."

I think of my dad's arms, his Old Spice smell, and the rumble of his laugh. How he loves fishing, how he still tries to get me hooked on it, too. And I imagine being back in Forks, in its logging and outdoorsy-centered town, the trees, the green, and quiet everywhere.

There are less people there.

"Maybe," I say, and settle my head back down on the pillow. I'm lying length-wise across our couch, and Alice is sitting in her leopard-print chair. I don't feel like moving. I don't feel like doing much of anything, really.

"I've never seen you this way," she says a while later. "It's not like you to fall so hard, so quickly, for someone you barely know."

I guess neither of us is watching the movie.

"I… couldn't help it," I say. The words come out woodenly, as if I don't care, as if I'm numb. "And I'm sorry I can't tell you about it, Alice. I'm really not… not ready to talk about it. I need to get it all straight in my own head first."

If that's even possible.

So far, I'm having trouble deciding what's real, trying to understand when it all happened, and why I'm having these memories. Because I've had trouble sleeping, I can't even rule out hallucinations.

All I know for sure is that everything seems to center around E. Around these hazy tableaux of the two of us, of the things we've done and said that I just don't remember doing. Why am I seeing them? Did they really happen? Was that me in a past life? Because I know that these insistent images are… almost… possibly mementos of things that happened in the past…

I can't decide if these images are a good thing, or if I'm being punished.

My heartbeats echo his name. My lips crave his liar's mouth against mine again; this time with just a lover's passion, the way my pulse tells me I have in the past. I miss feeling the warm force of his stare, the way it burns me so good inside. And when he says my name in that honeyed lilt of his? I almost shudder just thinking of it.

How is it possible, if all the time he was lying, that his arms could make me feel so safe and real, and like he could love me?

I wish I'd never met him.

It's a thought that is shared by the girls in my memories.

"You're not letting me earn my badge of sisterhood," Alice tells me. "How can I help you to make sense of this if you won't tell me anything?"

I close my eyes and see a girl who looks like me, as she leans over the small pond near her house. Her broken-looking stare is like an open wound.

Am I ever going to be able not to see those faces again?

"I've been having these… thoughts," I say. "They're just… crazy."

I don't look at her as I say this; I can't.

"Crazy thoughts?" she prods me.

Utterly insane.

"Do you, um…" I say and swallow, because this is hard. How on earth do I ask her this? "I don't even know if this would make sense…"

Oh just ask.

"Do you believe in reincarnation?" I ask.

There's a long pause after my question.

But at least she doesn't laugh.

"Well, my aunt insists she was a diva in a past life," Alice answers slowly. "Which is absurd, because she can't carry a tune at all."

I stare unseeingly at the colors and shapes on the TV, deciding that Alice is going to think I'm being ridiculous. I probably shouldn't say anything. After all, I don't know for sure.

I hear her shifting in the seat as she turns to face me.

"Why?"

I shake my head against the pillow. It's rough against my face; I'm not numb after all.

"I've just been having some weird dreams," I say.

And thoughts. And memories.

"You want to tell me about them?"

They scare me.

"They just don't make sense, is all," I say dismissively, hoping she'll drop it.

But she doesn't.

"How so?"

She turns the sound down, and I can suddenly hear each beat of my heart. It's pounding in my ears.

"I keep seeing my face in different times," I whisper. "In places where I've never been. I have these memories that I shouldn't have."

My nose tickles as a teardrop slides down the side.

Great. I'm crying again.

"You do?"

I sniff. "It won't turn off."

And E is there every time.

I hear her slide off the chair, and then she's kneeling in front of me, grasping my hand, looking at me with tender sympathy that just makes me cry harder.

"Don't make me talk about it," I sob.

It hurts too much.

She sits beside me on the couch, and pulls me up and into her arms. And then she holds me.

Just holds me.

. . .

Dad is waiting for me at SeaTac, wearing a small, goofy smile under his mustache. Seeing him sends a twinge of unexpected pain and need through my body, and I'm running the last few feet to reach him.

"Daddy," I choke, and have to swallow back my tears. He'll freak out if I start crying.

"Whoa," he says, but his arms tighten, and he lets me hug him until I'm ready to let go.

"You okay?" He asks, after I finally let him go.

I smile brightly. "Sometimes I just need my dad," I say.

He slings an arm around my shoulders. "That's what I'm here for."

I'm so glad he's still here with me, that I haven't lost him, too. He's in great shape, has color in his cheeks, and his gaze is soft, patient. Last minute visit or not, he's as glad to see me as I am him.

"I didn't check any bags," I tell him. "I'm only staying for a few days."

Just long enough to let reality become the bigger picture in my mind. Long enough to remember the things that really matter: my dad, my painting, my sanity.

It's blissfully quiet in the car, and I drift in the seat until we reach the Bogachiel River. Even though my eyes are closed, I smell the river and the pine trees. Their scents flood my senses like old friends.

After all, home is where the heart is.

Not trapped in a liar's hands.

. . .

My bedroom is exactly how I left it at Christmas: tubes of wrapping paper stashed under the bed, my red cashmere sweater hung across the office chair, a half-eaten candy cane forgotten on the bedside table.

I write my name in the dust on the desk in front of the window, then set my duffle bag down on the bed. The cover is the same one I used all throughout high school: the soft, worn paisley that Dad let the saleslady pick out for his sixteen-year-old daughter.

The violet hue of the designs fill me with unease – as anything that shade of color does nowadays – and I abruptly flip the cover back to reveal the solid purple underside. I sit and finger the worn fabric nubs, wondering if Dad would be hurt if I hauled the comforter out to the trash.

This is stupid.

This is my place. My things.

There's nothing wrong here, except everything needs a good cleaning.

And I lay back against the pillows with a huff, raising a cloud of dust that makes me sneeze.

Later, after doing a load of laundry and making dad's favorite dinner of shepherd's pie, we sit in the living room watching a sports show.

"Ah, c'mon!" Dad yells at the screen. Instead of the beer can I'm used to seeing, he now has a squish ball in his hand that I notice he squeezes when he's yelling at the TV.

A few moments later, his gaze swings to me.

"So are you gonna tell me why you're really here?"

His eyes are back on the TV, but I know he's listening; that he's aware of me. This is just his way of being non-threatening and low-key.

But I wish I had a squish ball of my own.

"Just needed some time away from Los Angeles," I shrug.

He eyes me, then grunts. Squeezes the ball.

"Someone I need to hunt down?"

Before I can take another breath, his eyes dart back to the sports show, releasing me, allowing me my privacy to feel the quick, white-hot sting of pain that his question raises.

"And don't lie," he tells me, driving the pain unexpectedly deeper. "Just talk to me."

I take a jagged breath and shift in my seat. I hadn't intended to tell Dad anything, but his plea to me not to lie hits hard, hits too close.

And so I tell him.

Sort of.

"You know that perpetual motion toy, the Newton's Cradle?" I begin, and my voice is embarrassingly thin. "The desk toy with the five silver balls that each hang by a string, and how when you lift the ball on one end and let it go, it makes the other outside ball swing without moving the ones in between?"

His eyebrows furrow, but he doesn't take his gaze off the TV.

I love you, Dad.

"Damned thing, that," he grumbles.

I swallow. Dig my heels into the thick fabric of the couch.

"Um, lately, I've been feeling like the ball in the middle, getting pounded on both sides. The stagnant one that allows the others to go and do and be. But… I can't seem to move. And the hits keeps coming."

He leans his elbows against his knees, then playfully transfers the squish ball from hand to hand. My eyes follow the movements as if hypnotized.

"Well, if memory serves, you just need someone to do the three ball swing," he says.

"The what?"

He aims a quick smile my way. "You need someone to add you in the next swing. So you can go both ways."

I smile weakly back. As far as advice goes, I don't think I can really use it. But then I watch his own smile turn slowly into a scowl.

"Uh, we're not talking about sex, are we?"

And then I'm laughing.

Because that's when I know this will be okay.

. . .

For dinner the next day, Dad and I drive to La Push to see Jake and Billy.

"I've just been promoted to forest crew supervisor for the Department of Natural Resources," Jake says as soon as he opens the door. Brags, really.

I laugh. "Well, hello to you, too. What's that?"

"I basically make sure everyone's doing what they're supposed to, when they supposed to," he says.

I snort and roll my eyes, then he grabs me up in a quick, hard hug that leaves me breathless.

"Jesus, Jake, under your hands is a living girl," I complain.

"Sorry, Bells. Don't know my own strength, I guess."

I shove him off, then push the palms of my hands down the back pockets of my jeans and study him unobtrusively. He's always been big, but he seems at least two sizes bigger now than when I saw him last.

"You've been working out?"

He flexes a bicep playfully for me. "I'm always working out now," he says. "Not just to egg our dads on, but because there are some tough guys out there working forestry. I gotta look the part, or they'll never respect me."

"Do the same dirty work they do, only better, and they'll respect you," Dad tells him, as we move past the door.

Jake raises his hands to his chest. "Oh, I do, Charlie. After all, I've won the log running contest three years straight now."

"And has the crooked nose to prove it," Billy interjects from behind him.

"Atta boy, kid," Dad laughs.

Jake fingers his nose self-consciously, then leads us to the dining room table. There are plates of fish taco makings and Spanish rice waiting for us. His specialty, he says.

Growing up, spaghetti used to be his specialty. He'd harvest his own tomatoes, then cook them for hours with secret ingredients he shared with no one, into the best tasting sauce I've ever had.

He makes a batch on my birthday, and sends it by UPS. It's one of the best gifts anybody could ever give me.

We've come a long way in twenty-three years.

Growing up as close as siblings, then growing closer… until it became just wrong for me. I loved him, and always would, but ultimately, he was always going to be more like a brother to me.

Although breaking up with him hurt more people than just Jake at the time, it was one of the things I'd done right for a change. His smile today tells me that in more ways than one.

"Hey, Billy," I say, as he wheels behind us into the room.

His neuropathy prohibits walking without pain, so he's been in a wheelchair for almost a year now. Sometimes it hurts to see a proud man reduced to such a state, but he's making it work. His eyes are alive, and as fierce as ever.

"Bella. I was surprised to hear you were here, but it's good to see you."

"Yeah, it was kind of a last minute thing," I say. "How's it going, Billy?"

"Oh, can't complain. Got another order in from Seattle. This store wants a pair," he says with a wink.

"That's great," I say. Ever since he's been retired, he's been carving life-sized wolves out of wood full time.

"He should do some fish. Salmon. Hey, maybe some steelhead," Dad says.

I tune them out as we settle in at the table, and pretty soon we're passing dishes around. I'm glad the sound of Dad and Billy talking covers the embarrassing rumble in my stomach.

I'm hungry.

I'm actually hungry.

This is a very good thing.

"So how's Leah?" I ask Jake. My mouth is full, but these guys don't care, and neither do I.

Jake and Billy trade a look, and I stop chewing.

What?

"We, uh, broke up," Jake says. He wipes the back of his hand across his mouth, then picks up his glass of ice water and damn near chugs the whole thing.

"He just met somebody new," Billy says to me lowly. "Leah's taking it pretty hard."

"Yeah," Jake says, and sets glass back down on the table with a smack. "It sucks, because I didn't want to hurt Leah, but there it is."

His eyes are darker than dark as they meet mine, and in them is an apology. For what, I have no idea.

"I'm… what?" I say. Jake is supposed to be one of my best friends. How is it that I know nothing of Jake breaking up with her?

He places the flat of his hands against the table top. "Meeting Vanessa made me realize what love can be. And I finally understood why you broke up with me. Forgave you completely, too."

Then he picks up his half-eaten fish taco. "So that's it," he says around a mouthful, as if he hasn't just totally rocked my world with that news.

"That's great," I say. "That's… awesome."

"She's a good girl," Billy says around his own mouthful of food. "Knows how to pitch a tent and fillet a fish."

"A real looker, too," Dad says, and shrugs at me.

"We just fit," Jake says of this girl I've never met. "I knew it as soon as I held her hand. There was like this – spark – and it was really weird, but she felt it, too."

He raises his hand as if in disbelief, as if the thought of a girl's touch is ridiculous and to be disregarded; but it's also clear that he believes in the magic of it anyway.

I'm riveted by the lines and curves on Jake's palm, as they intersect and stretch across the width of it. Under the table, my hand flexes in reaction; it's as if I can feel the bumps and curves, the warmth, the impossible pleasing tickle of a finger being drawn down the tender skin inside of my own.

And my fingers… the sensitive skin between my fingers… tingle. Burn, almost.

My mind plays a dance with E: a dance where only our hands touch, even though I long to be physically close in other ways.

His gaze is heavy, sensual, and sends a lick of fire up my back.

I am the Muse of Dance.

You forget the dreams I give you.

You doubt me.

. . .

I remember everything.