Dialogues of Plato

Days follow nights. Nights follow days. In the land of dreams they walk each other's roads.

The fire that tore white hot down every artery, sinew, and nerve, and only ended when the boy's young heart was run to its frantic death, at 321 beats per minute. The hellish thirst that followed on its heels. The hideous strength. The mayhem on crockery, furniture, walls, and any living being — until one learnt to control it. The intensity of every present sense. The severing of every human past.

The death of sleep.

Two little orange kittens, thrown from the passenger side of the car up ahead. Rescued into a box made soft by the girl's oldest t-shirt. The one that died; and the one that lived … that they had to leave at the animal shelter, because, "We can't have a pet here, Bella."

The packing and the unpacking. And packing again. Each house disappearing in its time from the old car's back window, as the road bent away.

He holds her hand at this, whispers to her, "I know, I know, I know," until she sleeps.

Days follow nights. Nights follow days. In tiny increments, the hours of darkness allotted to them grow slowly shorter. Behind clouds, the angle of the daylight grows gradually steeper.

She is appalled at what Jasper endured in the southern wars. Terrified by the cattle chute of Volterra's "tourist trap."

But there is enchantment, too. Northern lights on the backs of a reindeer herd in Finland. Basking with molas off the coast of Easter Island — and then tearing off to race the flying fish that skimmed by. The tiny, bright tree frog, shown to Carlisle by an Mbuti elder who understood his quest for medicines.

Days follow nights. Nights follow days. They hold nothing back.

The boy tenders forth the depths of his horror hegira from Roaring 20's to Great Depression, and learns that the science books on the girl's shelf were, in fact, pilfered from the library in Salt Lake. Because 11-year-old she didn't want to go friendless to yet another new school.

Last year's halting journey to each other is walked again too, but now, in each other's shoes. All the schoolyard rumors, that no one talks about any more — Jasper's 'hole in his heart', Alice's 'epilepsy' — are explained. Emmett's 'hemophilia' wins muffled laughter under the quilts they share.

She wonders at the providence that he can read everyone's mind but hers.

Days follow nights. Nights follow days. The cloth grows long and beautiful in its hiding place.

Tonight, they lie like spoons on the bed. The mountain lion on the back of the deer.

"Your lives were so hard."

"Yes."

"Did you wish they would end?"

"Carlisle … threw himself into the sea when he was turned. But water … doesn't end us. Not even when we inhale." A soft, rueful laugh. "Neither does starvation. In the end, he had to come back to land."

"How long was he … under?"

"He couldn't say. More than a year. Less than ten. He searched for the wildest place he could find, and just ran to the woods."

"That's how he learned to eat animals."

"Yes. Desperation. And … delirium, really."

"What about the rest of you?"

"Carlisle … was there for us. It was … different. Except Alice. She was orphaned, like Carlisle. But she's … she'd always been our evangelist of hope. And faith. Even when she couldn't see. But Rosalie … Rosalie was angry."

"At Dr. Cullen?"

"Yes. For a long time she had a … fascination … with graveyards. She'd make rubbings of the stones."

"Why did she stay, then?"

"Emmett."

Bella stays silent for a long while after that.

"It's each other that you had."

"Yes."

"Alice wanted you to change me."

"Yes. She … she saw you." He pauses, dips his head behind hers on the pillow, to kiss her hair. His breath is cool against her scalp. "We all did. God help us."

Moments return in Bella's mind. Doctor Cullen's careful ministry. Esme's chicken soup. Emmett winking at her that day in the parking lot. Rosalie flinging the iron puzzle into the fireplace at the family's heedless seduction of a girl who still had a whole human life ahead of her. Jasper's subtle gift.

Most vivid to her is Alice. Holding her hand as they ascended the stair with the cross. Combing and braiding her hair. Breaching like the orca to snatch her from gravity's parabola. Powering through the darkness below. Making the fire.

"It's going to be okay. I promise. I promise." Now Bella understands where Alice's promises came from.

And Edward.

The wraith in her room.

She presses her back into his embrace. Plays with his fingers that are carelessly laced with her own.

"Would you have? Changed me?"

"How could I?"

"If I asked you to?"

"You have no idea what you would be asking for."

"Yes I do. You've told me." In seven flavors of harrowing, tragic detail.

"Eternity is a long time. It makes us cruel."

She has heard, more than she ever wanted, the casual cruelty of his kind. Not only to humans, but to each other. Century after century. Feuds and police actions. Crossing oceans and continents to make their points. She remembers the deaths around Forks. The terror flight from meadow to sea.

"It didn't make you cruel. Nor anyone in your family."

"We're the odd ducks."

"You're not the only ones. You told me."

About Denali. About choice and struggle and holding to humanity. To kindness.

"No. Bella. You can't imagine it. I don't want you to imagine it. Never changing from how you were in that moment of death. Until the damn sun burns out." He sighs. "Rosalie."

"She said that? About the sun?" Bella turns the idea over in her mind. Wonders what it would be like, to outlive all other life on the planet.

Because starvation doesn't end them.

After the long, billion years dance of evolution under a warming sun. After the suffocating eons when rising heat and falling rain, and the accelerated weathering they cause, bring CO2 levels down so far that no plant can survive. And with them, dies all that depended upon their alchemy. Even the air.

She wonders what will be left? Back to iron/sulfur chemosynthesis in the oceans? If there are still hydrothermal vents?

She shivers at the unfathomable, bloodless duration after life dies. "Until the oceans evaporate …" And the superheated clouds dissociate under the UV barrage, H2Os bleeding all their Hs into space, until even the atmosphere is waterless — over a surface more desolate than Mars, and temperatures hotter than Venus.

Starvation doesn't end them. Only the final burning, when Earth is engulfed by her star.

He hears her whispering, feels the journey she is making in her mind, and holds her closer. "Don't think about such things, Bella. That … that day … is not for you. You live here, now, in this world that is full of life."

"Did you and your family let the bad vampires kill you? So you wouldn't have to watch the world end?"

"No! That's … We're not suicides!"

"What happened, then?"

"Our luck ran out."

"And the bad vampires?"

"They were taken care of."

By the Quileutes? she wonders.

"But … what if all of that hadn't happened? What if … if we still had school, and the meadow, and you could play the piano for me at your house. You still wouldn't … wouldn't want to … keep me?"

A small orange kitten mews from a nest of rumpled t-shirt in a cardboard box.

"It's too late. Too late." He soothes and rocks her. "Bella. You need to sleep." Softly, barely at the edge of her hearing, "You need to live."

She holds her peace. The girl in the fairy tale was sworn to silence. The only way that the shirts would bring her brothers back. Fortitude in the face of trials was the mortal thread that bound the magic to the cloth. Graveyards ventured in the dark of night. The nettles stinging and stinging as she picked and split and frayed and spun them. Hands red and raw on the loom. Blandishments and entreaties of a handsome prince. Interrogations and innuendos from the frightened priest. Finally denouncement and excommunication. The stocks. The tumbril. The stake.

The pile of kindling at its base.

She holds her peace. And returns next night to her weaving.

Author's Notes:

Thank you, gentle readers, for every visit, every comment. The wind beneath my wings.

The story of the wild swans: wiki/The_Wild_Swans#Synopsis
A translation: andersen dot sdu dot dk / vaerk / hersholt / TheWildSwans_e dot html
Some video picture book versions here … youtube dot com / watch ? v=uPFthtviX9I ; youtube dot com / watch ? v=JA0ZnIAsjHo

Watching the End of the World ...
youtube dot com / watch ? v=p9e8qNNe3L0&t=3s

Last, but far from least, an offering of gratitude, to my betas, past and present. This chapter, which was written (and supposedly put to bed) MONTHS ago, engaged me for one last wrestling match before I could post it. (Hence the extended hiatus from the previous chapter!) Truly, this story could not be what it is, could not exist, without all of the wonderful, generous, kind, and beautifully HONEST red-pen wielders who have carried me along on this journey.

geo3, averysubtlegift, Woodlily, quothme, Sarita Dreaming, malianani, Alby Mangroves, punz, MeilleureCafe, Delirium01, and Cindy Windy - Thank you all. Even my mom! ️