I hadn't been here in one hundred and fifty-four years. Not that I remembered the last time. I had been a human then, just a girl, and the memories – well, they're not all gone, but ones that remain are hazy, and the lines between them are unclear. Seeing my hands as I'm opening presents at a party fades into the searing pain during the birth of my child and ends with the heat in my face during a fight with a lover.

Was he a lover? It feels like he was, but there's no one left to tell me, and I don't know what's true and what I've made up to fill the gaps. I think I remember his name and most of his face, but I know his eyes. Those eyes have haunted me for a century and a half. I try not to close my own, because that's when they're clearest. They're usually sad, sometimes angry, and those are the easiest to live with, but it's the times I see them shining, brimming with joy and adoration that kill me. That's what destroyed me, eventually.

The beach feels the same, though I know it's not. The water has risen too much for it to be the same, and I'd passed old foundations of abandoned buildings far too close to the shoreline. The people had moved inland – to higher ground – decades ago, but this was still their land. I couldn't help but feel a twinge of pride and jealousy that their claim remained here, where they'd always been, while I was now an unwelcome visitor. But that was the point; that was why I came here again. I wasn't sure whether there were still wolves roaming the land, protecting the nation, but there likely were at least a few. If so, they would find me soon, and I had no intention of fighting them.

Renesmee was the first to leave, as she should have been. She wasn't meant to stay with us forever. Seventy-two years, six months, and thirteen days ago – that was our last conversation. She told me she loved us too much to watch us stagnate any longer, and I begged her to come home with my words, but not my heart. I never tried to learn what she was doing or where she went. Whatever it was, no matter how mundane or tragic, it was better than she would ever have with us.

I wasn't built for forever, either. They tell me I begged for this. I don't remember doing it, but I believe them. When you promise a child unchanging youth and beauty for all eternity, before she's learned to appreciate the beauty of change, she'll take it. I can accept that I begged. I can't accept that I knew what I was doing, as they insisted I did. How could I have really understood? Even if they told me I would forget my human years, how could I have known what that really meant, or how that would feel? If they knew me at all, they should have known it would only be a few decades before I wished they'd let me stay dead on that operating table. More than my own life, I'd told her – that's how much I loved Renesmee, how I wanted her to live even if it killed me, but they stole my sacrifice from me, and from her. My death meant nothing.

After she left for good, I didn't need to pretend anymore. Eventually, they stopped fretting when I spent days at the window, or sat completely still in the forest, just listening to the sounds and seeing how many weeks it took for the creatures around to accept me as part of the landscape – a boulder that they no longer feared would eat them. I never betrayed their trust. They can thank the hiker for that, though. I still remember the uproar when I came back, moss still clinging to my clothes, and they saw my blood-red eyes. Edward defended my honor valiantly, and convinced them to bring me when they fled, even after the rest wanted to leave me behind. He would watch me; it would never happen again, he promised. We were ready to leave, everything packed, and I said no.

I don't want to come with you.

You don't want me?

No.

That, at least, felt strangely familiar.

I wandered, but there was no adventure in it for me. One day bled into the next and passed slowly and fast all at once. I hunted on instinct only – there was no urgency or pleasure in any of it, animal or human. There was no world I belonged in.

This place. I don't belong in this place, but some part of me does. The fuzzy memories my body carries of a fragile girl, long dead – they belong here. I don't know why, exactly, but they're home now. The sky is getting lighter, and dawn will come soon enough. The fog will allow me to stay here for hours longer. As long as it takes.

I hear them before I see or smell them. They're as quiet as I was told they'd be, but the crunch of a twig gives them away, and now I can hear the padding of paws on soft earth. In less than a minute, I will be free. One last breath of salt air fills my dead lungs, and triggers a memory – real or imagined, it doesn't matter – of living hands in the sand, mine and a boy's, cool and white beside warm and brown, pinkies stretched toward each other in the barely-there, hesitant touch of youth.

The smell hits just before the teeth do, and my head is wrenched from my shoulders. I'm rolling toward the water. I can feel my body being torn apart behind me and smell the fire they've set – the sweet crunch and burning I've longed for. They won't leave my head much longer, and it will be over. I feel a paw roll me and I'm staring into those eyes again. The anger turns to surprise, then that devastating love as they bore into me. As the jaws close over my mouth, it feels like one final kiss goodbye before the flames take over. The last sound I hear is howling, low and mournful, and the wind carries my ashes over the water.