Issue 1: Spring or Revelations
Act 1. A Hundred Years of Solitude's End
The moon, a sliver of silver in the ink-black sky, casts almost no light and Edward, a being of ineffable stamina, grows weary under it this night. His bare feet barely disturb the fallen leaves as he moves, a shadow amongst shadows in the dense forest that sprawls endlessly before him.
The feral state of his existence is mirrored in the untamed mane of bronze hair he wears, a wild crown that denotes his place among his chosen kingdom. His plump lips are a stark contrast to the sharpness of the rest of his features. Naked, lean and lithe, his ghostly body is a sculpture of efficiency and strength. Every serpentine flex of muscle showcases the sleek, lethal prowess that defines him as the creature he is. He has long given up such frivolity as clothing, he presents himself to no one.
The ancient mossed trees, towering and stoic, bear witness to his torment and they have done so for the last hundred years. He had escaped to the wood a century before, seeking solace in their offered isolation. Besides death, it is as much away from the consequence of his nature as he can get—a monster condemned to an eternity of bloodlust, an existence punctuated by the endless pleas, the thoughts of his victims, forever echoing in his indelible mind.
Eternally youthful and eyes endless as the abyss, he is a vampire of 532 years and the thoughts of others invade his consciousness unbidden. A cacophony of desires, fears, and secrets that he cannot ignore or silence. This curse further separates him and marks him wholly other.
A peerless and invasive monstrosity: taker of thoughts, killer of mother, child, and murderer alike.
Amongst the company of spruce and hemlock, of cedar and fir, he finds as close to silence as he will ever find. The forest around him is alive with the nocturnal symphony of insects and the rustle of small creatures in the underbrush escaping his oncoming presence. He is attuned to every heartbeat, every drop of blood that flows in the veins of the unseen creatures that surround him. Sleeping. Haunting. Weaker predators hunting weaker prey. He has sustained himself on their putrid essence since he imprisoned himself amongst these trees. The thirst always looms, always burns, but it keeps him from their world. Their thoughts, their hot wet pulsing life, the moral complications they bring.
Yet, a singular scent catches his attention, pierces through a hundred years of isolation, restraint, and control. A scent so intoxicating, so utterly consuming that it silences five centuries worth of tumult within him. For the first time, the crushing weight of his existence lifts.
The scent is a beacon, drawing him forward, weaving through the trees with a fatal and sure grace. There are no thoughts but for him to have, acquire, consume, devour. He will and it will be totality. Every cell within him understands this fact.
As he nears, the dense undergrowth gives way to a clearing. Only a slash of light is granted from the ethereal slit of the moon. There, in the heart of the meadow, in the tight slit of light, lay a serene figure so radiant and utterly out of place in his wild.
The predator is passingly paralyzed by her perfection. She is naked, surrounded by a translucent glow, making her appear as if she is wrought from the weak light itself. Her dark hair flows past her hips, she wears it like a cloak. A vision of light and dark.
No matter. Edward leaps toward her, driven by a need he has fought his entire existence to suppress.
No more. Every fiber of his being screams to take her, to drink her essence and quench the insatiable thirst she is a promise to void.
His entire body braces to land over her. As his mouth opens, venom drips. The end of all suffering is nigh-
An unseen force halts his advance, rooting him midair. He cannot move in any direction, an unfathomable weight presses in on all sides.
She sleeps with a smile. A string of venom lands and pools between her eyes. She opens them, revealing divine earth depths, a pearlescent ribbon dances from the left to the right before disappearing.
"Why hello, young vampire."
She floats him against a thousand year old spruce and lifts like liquid until she hovers a mere foot away.
Edward finds himself caught in her gaze, immobilized not only by her power, but by the sheer impossibility of what he is witnessing, experiencing. The fragrance and vision of her is so disorienting that only now does he realize he cannot read her mind. Only now does he understand that she is not human but some other deliriously delicious and terrifying being.
"What are you?" he demands. A growl, a plea, the first words he has spoken since he has come to hide in this forest.
"The Twin of Time," she responds, plainly, through curled petal lips.
He doesn't know if it is her incense or her nonsense that sear his throat worse. He growls and gnashes his teeth, in frustration, in need, in helplessness and dizzying confusion.
"I do not mean to frustrate you. I have been as long as time has passed. Your immortality grants you a better understanding than most…but the oldest of your kind…" She snaps her effervescent fingers by her rosy cheek with a wink. "…are but a blink of my eye."
She continues, "And certainly you haven't been so naive to think your own immortality means you yourself could never die? Haven't you witnessed vampires die? The scent of their smoking ash…quite the perfume, isn't it?"
She leans in, with a luscious sigh of relief, to brush a fingertip against his square jaw. "I will not harm you, though. I have no such want or need."
Her touch is fire. Her touch is life. Pumping, surging, gushing, flowing blood beneath luminescence touching hollow cavern crypt. His jaw aches from the rush of venom that springs from this painful gift.
Through gritted teeth, through agony and anguish, he weeps, "As long as time has passed…?"
She holds that beautiful jaw of his, looks into his aching soul. "Since there was light. Not entirely true…but it works for your understanding. What is important to know is that as long as there is time, there I am."
"What do you want with me?" he pleads.
She asks her own question instead, she is excited for what is next. "What did you want with me?"
She wants to eat him, he realizes, not believing her promise of non-violence. It's a fate he deserves and a part of him longs for such a conclusion. His vampiric nature resists against the idea nonetheless.
He goes still in the way only a vampire can, mind working through any possible solution to save his worthless existence. A thousand different pathways lead to the same instantaneous conclusion: there is no hope for him. Peril.
Her eyes swirl with ribbons of amethyst and pearl as she realizes their misunderstanding, her silky strands curl and straighten.
She holds onto his face then with both hands, looks deep into his lost obsidian eyes, little licks of fire burning into the center of his very being. "No, no, young vampire. My question wasn't an answer… I want to hear you speak your desires. I want to hear you speak how you have come to me."
Her glow-lit fingers do not aim to tame his bronze crown but to revel in its rebellion as they lift and pull and twirl his locks at the root, she leaves be any twigs and leaves she sees. "I do not take offense to what you are. I do not take offense to any creation. What drew you here?"
"I-I have never smelled a sweeter blood!" And she taunts him with it so, he thinks, as she breathes her sweet heat breath in his face. The pleasure of her touch, the pain of it.
His eyes lull in the back of his head and he moans in torment and rapture. "I think I've lost my mind! I can't hear yours… This is my imagining. I've gone mad in these woods alone too long…"
She laughs, twines his hair at the nape, delighted by his current inability to comprehend her defenses. He is not the first vampire she has met. She knows their power. They are a commendable foe for their time and place…and across many more.
And she knows he will be the most commendable of all, that he is only in the dawn of his prime, his beginning. By his end and with grand acceptance, he will be as peerless as he fears he is.
But still no match for her.
She lets him go, pulls her fingers back to give him space so he may hear her. "Your powers will not work on me. No creature's can. No creature may harm me. Until it is over, I will be here to witness."
He finds the absence of her fire touch more agonizing than its presence but her words still find their way into his understanding. "Until it is over?"
She can't keep her fingers free from him, she rushes to comfort. Her thumbs press into his jaw as the rest of her fingers rub his temples, tickle and pull at the roots that frame his face. "Let's move on from that, now. We have all the time that is left and here we are. You are rather beautiful… And I am rather lonely… You asked me what I want with you. Is there any other way you desire me besides your thirst?"
She floats back, her slender feet step out and find purchase on the air as if it were as solid as the ground far below. She runs a finger between pert pink-tipped breasts framed by mahogany waterfalls. "Do you desire me? I have made myself of this human flesh, as you see. It can give and receive quite the pleasure. We could share in that pleasure…"
His eyes stop their flailing to take her in. Her body. Her request. He is surprised to find he wishes it were possible. But is it truly so surprising? He hadn't seen such beauty even before his self-interment. She is the epitome of everything he can't have, everything he's been denied.
"I don't think that I can. My power, my strength, a human's form to mine… my predatory drives…" He groans and then laughs, hysterical sounds that echo back to him. He can't believe he is considering, weighing, wanting… A flash of fire blisters his throat once more, he groans once more.
She leans forward, her heavy hair spilling. She rests her hands on her knees, purposefully pushing up those perfectly full tear drop breasts and tightened peaks. Her pulse thumps just as erotically.
"Oh, you can," she assures. "I've already told you it's impossible for you to cause harm to me."
Even if he can't harm her. This licking slithering, prickling needling, acidic torture of her nearness, her ever maddening and thought-destroying fragrance… The only thing that keeps him from sinking every single one of his razor sharp teeth into her milky throat or breasts that he equally wants to kiss is the gravity she has pushing him in on all sides.
What kind of lover could he be?
"I can't- I'm in hell. My throat burns. It's-"
Before he can finish she is made of the same flesh as his. A vampire, same as him. Her eyes strikingly red, an amethyst ribbon dances through them before disappearing.
"Is this easier for you? Does this form please you as a lover, young vampire?" Her voice is all seduction, earnest wanton lustful hope, as she lifts her breasts and squeezes her hips, same shape as before but now of equal strength as him.
She has her answer at the sight of his risen cock.
His physical relief at the absence of pain inducing blood is immediate and it is accompanied by an existential terror from her very presence, yes… but it is largely connected to his growing state of arousal that is as overwhelming as it is liberating, thrilling, everything.
He never hoped for a companion. Nevermind to be seduced by a goddess dressed only in moonlight and riddles. He can't believe his hellishness has been granted such sumptuous grace.
"Who are you?" he asks, dazed, delicious, dreamily.
"A similar but more personal question indeed than what are you," she muses, throwing her curtain of hair over her shoulder, exposing more of her glowing ivory.
She untwines gravity's forces that tie him high against the tree twice the age as he. Leonine, he falls to the balls of his feet to find her already there.
She smiles, pure invitation. "I'm unknowable but you most certainly may try."
He can see the unending loneliness in her eyes, a mirror of his own pain but wrapped in such preternatural elegance.
Logic is losing.
"I do not understand any of this but my existence held no sense before." He cradles her face tenderly. "I'm Edward," he tells her.
"Edward," she breathes and leans into his touch. A weight she has carried since before beginning finds rest for its first time ever.
"What shall I call you?"
Life? he wonders. Hope? Creation?
Her magic eyes close as she holds the hand that holds her face. "I've already told you my title… If that doesn't please you, there are those that understand me as the ever-ringing bell."
There are those who understand the truth, he thinks. Her essence was a calling, heralding a hundred years of solitude's end.
"You are an enchanting bell. They are right. I will call you Bella. It is fitting. You are so beautiful…my ever ringing Bella."
She hums in approval of her first, only, and most private and sacred name. Her soft white light radiates and grows bright. It warms him, it pulls him closer, a magnet of promise and heat.
They begin to kiss and their tongues slide and dip and tease and twirl. She tastes divine, like the scent that lured him to her without the torment. So delicious. So decadent. So tantalizing. So titillating. He becomes nothing but these sensations that now exist between them.
He pulls and presses her entirety to him, until every line of their bodies connect. His hands roam and squeeze and feel her gifted flesh. Her incandescent arms and hips. Her glimmering neck, her satin throat, satin collarbones and sides. He wonders if she has the power to meld into him, would she if he begged? He thinks he might.
He palms her breasts, his sure fingers sliding over pebbled-for-him flesh, and she exhales a breath that freezes time.
She wonders why he's stopped his searching-having and opens her eyes to find the most gorgeous still sight. His brows pulled, his lips and tongue so pink and needing, he was a marble dedication to wild ravishing desperation.
She looks down to his long fingers, his tender and strong hands paused in the midst of discovering her so well.
She laughs and time continues.
Edward is so lost inside this need to touch every part of her his vampiric senses fail him. He does not notice the rice grain's difference in the alignment of their kiss from one fraction of the second to its next.
He breaks away to trail his tongue and lips up and down her neck with kisses, licks, and nips, feeling like he's found some form of paradise, chanting her name between each. gliding. wet. kiss. His hands find a hold of her hips then the small of her back. He pushes her impossibly closer, his cock rubbing beautifully but not enough between them, on the verge of begging to be one.
Then he remembers he can demand it.
One hand keeps that demand on the small of her back, one finger travels up her spine to find and wind his fingers through her magical cloak of hair. Some strands twine of their own design around his forearm in a sensuous coil.
"Bella. Bella. Bella," he screams. He shoves her against that watching spruce tree.
He comes as he thrusts inside her. And it's a nasty violent thing. Bella, newly ordained, lets him claim her through his ceaseless fucking. Snarls, bites, gripping her so tight, she allows herself to feel the sting he can give even this hardened flesh, the feel of his venom scarring this body. She decides to bind a scar to her hidden-only-her-heart. She's anticipated him so. Her most cherished soul. Tender. Fierce. Alone.
No more.
The spruce whispers its pain and fears of breaking and so she makes it so that he is on his back on the soft green forest floor.
She leans over him, her hair a spilling cascade that surrounds him, it is only her. There is only her.
"There, there," she soothes. "I'm right here," she coos. She grabs his grabbing hands. She holds one in hers on her hip, the other over her now non-beating heart.
Her touch, her words, do their calling and his singular possession lifts. His eyes taste every inch of her. He sees his bites scarring. Proof for him of his evil state, harming such radiant life. He is destroyer of gifts.
"I'm sorry," he cries. He attempts to remove his destructive hands from her perfect being.
The sliver of moon is obscured by a thick and meaningful cloud. She is the only light.
She squeezes his fingers and rides, strings of sapphire find their way in a spiral in her crimson iris. "Don't, young vampire. You only do to me what I allow you to. Stay with me, Edward," she orders.
He does. And it's a beautiful lovely thing.
She takes the hand she loves, the hand he hates, from its place upon her heart. She lifts his fingers to her lips and licks and sucks and takes him all the way in to the rhythm of her pulsing celestial plush vice.
She takes his clutching grasping hand from her hip, places his fingers where they are joined. She needn't instruct him more. What he thinks could only be a touch of death sends shivers of divine knowing through her clit and chest.
She quivers and quakes around him and now he notices what he does to her and time. Nature around them ceases their chirping and humming. His eyes flicker away from her to find not a cloud moves, not a branch on one tree whistles. He continues his loving circles, she comes and comes and comes.
She collapses on top of him with musical moans and time rushes to catch up with them. His arms immediately encircle her. He knows he'll never let her go.
Vampire quick, he flips her on her back. He lifts her soft bright calf against his shoulder. He kisses, bites, then licks. He pushes in as deep as this body she's given to him can take. She clamps him tight each time he regretfully must pull back to give her more, more, more.
Her hips lift to meet his, she keeps falling apart just for him. His hand finds its way to her throat, he grips and its delicious. She lets herself be vulnerable just for him. She's anticipated him so, sometime soon he will know that it was he she chose.
Little tears of amethyst and sapphire well and mingle and float and paint Edward's cheeks in indigo. A twig falls from his hair. It lands on her lips and her tongue pokes out and she bites, chews, and eats it.
Wide-eyed and slack-jawed, Edward laughs the first true laugh in his entire vampiric existence. It's deep and it's restorative. She laughs too and it does wonderful carnal things.
And so was the rest of their evening, and the next morning and night, too, spent. Two lovers loving tenderly, fiercely, together with the rest of time that was left.
A/N: *Blushes* Ahem… Well, thank you for reading the inaugural act of the first issue of The Ever-Ringing Bell: A Sensuous and Lyrical Odyssey. I hope it sparked your imagination and filled your heart with magic and desire. (Once a lone issue, now in two acts.)
This is unlike anything I've ever worked on before, I would love to hear what you all think.
This project began alongside my other fanfic, Inevitability, as a creative retreat from such a grounded first person narrative. This piece allows me to explore storytelling and world-building in a vivid and lyrical style, which is why I describe it as a "comic book told in words."
To ensure this remains a source of joy and high quality, issues will be released quarterly. This schedule allows me to manage the two projects simultaneously and still enjoy the creative process. While Inevitability receives monthly updates, this tale will see a new issue each season, with the next issue release scheduled for July.
Each issue is designed to be a complete story, contributing to the larger narrative of Edward and Bella's Odyssey throughout the rest of time.
Creating this world has been a fun journey, and I hope it is worth the wait each time.
Xoxo,
Phantomsforeverr