by Alicorn
In no time at all we'd come to a little wooden cottage nestled in the trees, looking for all the world like it had been appropriated from an illustrated fairy tale. My hands flew to my mouth as I gasped in delight. It was the most adorable building I'd ever seen. Esme clearly had picked up on my taste.
"You like it," said Edward, sounding pleased.
"I love it," I exclaimed, flying forward to go inside.
"Bella," called Edward.
I stopped short of the door and turned. "What? I want to look at our house!" I almost squealed.
"Are you sure that's all you want to do?" he asked me in a patient voice, and my throat blazed again. I gritted my teeth.
"It's not that bad when I'm not thinking about it," I said plaintively. "I was all excited about the house and now I'm thirsty again." I put my hands in my pockets and mentally poked at the sensation of thirst, trying to make it fade into the background again.
"I'm sorry," he said regretfully. "But I really think you should eat something, soon. I smell a wolf," he coaxed, invitingly. "Carnivores taste better than herbivores."
I closed my eyes and inhaled, trying to find the scent he'd mentioned. There were a thousand to sift through, but eventually I caught something from the north that I thought might be a wolf. It smelled wet, and sort of unappealingly hearty. It wasn't as delectable a bouquet as my old clothes had. Not remotely. If humans smelled like succulent, perfectly ripe fruit, the wolf was like unseasoned and undercooked barley that had gone slightly off - but still food. What would herbivores smell like, to be less pleasant than that? Something with mold on it? I sighed heavily, perked up my ears to aid my location of the animal, and took off into the trees.
* * *
Hunting the wolf was messy. I chased it a few miles up, loping after it slower than I had to be, too full of nerves to spring. Eventually I did attack, and immediately I regretted borrowing clothes: they'd never be fit to wear again. For all that the beast's claws and teeth did nothing but make an unpleasant noise against my marble surface, they were still quite capable of shredding ordinary denim and cotton. I was veering close to indecent by the time I'd gotten enough blood out of the wolf - some down my throat, some onto Esme's outfit - that it stopped struggling.
The wolf's blood was unappetizing. I thought back to the square of chocolate I'd had before turning: I knew I'd liked chocolate, but even the memory of it held no appeal anymore. Even tangy, unpleasantly musky wolf blood was better than anything humans made a habit of eating, now. And it did soothe the thirst, even when I was thinking about it. It didn't completely eliminate it - it would never go away entirely - but it was easier to push it into the unobtrusive corner of my mind, and less raw and insistent when it crept out and bothered me.
"Happy?" I asked Edward, raising one eyebrow and turning to my supervising boyfriend. "Delicious wolf, om nom nom - can I go look at our house?"
Edward's eyes lingered a little on the tears in the clothes. I smirked and posed for him; he blinked rapidly and looked me in the eye. Just a little disappointing. I was all sturdy and indestructible now; there was no particular reason he had to fight the temptation presented by my newfound gorgeousness.
"Are you sure you don't want something else? A moose? There are moose," he prodded.
"Why do you want me to eat so much so soon?" I asked. "Yeah, I'm thirsty, but I'm going to stay that way for all eternity and might as well get used to it, right? The entrée took the edge off. I can check out the salad bar and the dessert cart tomorrow. Besides," I added suggestively, "we have a room to which I believe we were told toget."
Edward pursed his lips together. There was a silence; I waited expectantly for his answer. "You're not acting at all like a newborn," he murmured.
"We knew I'd be extra-special," I pointed out. "Alice is pretty good at noticing that kind of thing. I'd be filling up more enthusiastically if there were anyone around I might hurt, but you said there wasn't. I mean, let me know if someone wanders by, but it's still my first hour of being a vampire! There's so much to do!" I waved my hands at the forest around us. "Everything isbeautiful! I can do anything I want and not fall on my face! I can hear for miles around!"
"It's not just that you aren't as thirsty as you should be, or rather that you don't want to eat as much as you should," Edward said, choosing his words carefully. How often had he picked through his vocabulary like this without my having noticed, the hesitations too brief to register to human ears? "It's that you're too... rational. Even things other than thirst usually can overwhelm newborns. Mood swings are - almost universal."
"Oh, I have been kind of moody," I said.
He stared at me incredulously. "No, you really haven't. You should have heard what Jasper was thinking. He has more experience with newborns than any of us - he knows how you're supposed to work. But you've been reining in errant emotions with the self-possession of a vampire decades old, not minutes."
"I mean compared to how I was when I was human," I clarified. "I don't have any newborns handy to measure myself against. It's like there's a lot more room for emotions to expand, and if I let them get too big, they're hard to put back where they belong - I mostly managed at first because I really don't want Jasper to mess with my head. But if I just don't let them get bigger than they could have when I was human, then they're much easier to deal with, because I have more resources to use to handle them. Also, there's so much to distract me," I exulted, making another expansive gesture. "If I fill up all the space in my head with happiness and beauty that's hardly dangerous, is it?"
Edward listened to this speech with some amount of astonishment. "I can read minds, and it took me years to get that kind of clarity about how the vampire psyche works," he murmured.
"I can read my mind, even if you can't," I said, self-satisfied. "I know what I want. Right now, moose is not at the top of the list. I promise you'll be the second person to know if it makes it up there."
"What is at the top of your list?" he asked, spreading his hands in a defeated sort of gesture.
"You," I sang, and a flash of discomfort crossed his face again. I was confused. I had just drained a wolf. Evidently my earlier conjecture had been wrong or incomplete. "What's wrong?" I asked. "I'm remodeled and reinforced for our mutual convenience. I love you. You love me. We have," I added, "a house. And I saw you peeking," I teased, waving at the rips in Esme's poor destroyed shirt. I probably couldn't have walked out in public without getting arrested, sunshine notwithstanding.
Edward mumbled something. I actually couldn't make out the words - apparently vampires could mangle language so thoroughly that even other vampires couldn't decipher it.
I propelled myself to his side in a flying leap and wrapped my arms around his neck, pressing in close. "I didn't catch that," I purred, finding that I could actually purr.
"We aren't married," he muttered, just barely clear enough for me to comprehend.
* * *
Chapter 14: Self-Control
I boggled at him.
"Well," he said uncomfortably, "I was born in 1901."
"Riiiight," I sighed. "And the fact that it's not 1901 anymore leaves you unmoved?" I wriggled against him, just a little. He took a very deep breath.
Edward laid his palms against my cheeks and kissed me - carefully, chastely, not at all like the passionate delight in the hallway. I tried to follow his face with mine when he pulled back, but didn't fight against the steady pressure of his hands, even though I could have easily knocked them aside and tackled him. If he wanted to be married first and I couldn't talk him out of it - well, Alice was planning a wedding anyway. I could be a little patient. Maybe. If I absolutely had to.
I looked at his darkened gold eyes, which smoldered at me. A fresh bolt of desire struck me, and I couldn't restrain a sad little whine. Oh, this was going to be hard.
"Trust me," he said with a wry smile, "if the fact that you exist leaves me unmoved - well, it doesn't, but I suspect the difference isn't relevant for your
purposes - then the date isn't going to do anything."
"I can't possibly convince you?" I pleaded.
He bit his lip, looking apprehensively at me. "I'd really rather you didn't try," he said.
"Why's that?"
"Because I'm not sure if you can... but if you can... then that would be contrary to my current preferences." His eyes were almost quivering - like he wanted to look down, but caught himself before doing it every time. His wobbly gaze stayed locked on my own eyes.
My eyebrows knitted together. I was pretty sure I could resist the impulse to knock him over and have my way with him. Could I avoid even trying to encourage him?
"I've been waiting and waiting for this day, so it would be safe," I complained, "and you'respringing this on me. You never said "oh, by the way, Bella, unless we actually get married instead of just pretend, you will be obliged to live like a nun". I am not pleased with this surprise." I deliberately attended to the feel of the wind, the smell of the forest, trying to distract myself from said displeasure - it would be very embarrassing to throw an outright tantrum at so inopportune a time.
He gritted his teeth. "I'm sorry. I truly am." He passed his thumb gently over my cheekbone, which did not help.
I pouted, and then closed my eyes and gradually forced my face into a more neutral, less coaxing expression. "Okay," I managed. "I'll do my best. I'll... I'll learn a lot of languages and read all my computer files and clear the area of moose and I will try very hard to wait." My jaw clenched a little. I'd probably need to avoid spending too much time even near Edward to obey his wishes. Maybe I'd fling myself into wedding planning and oust Alice. She'd be irked, but it wasn't her wedding.
Suddenly, Edward dropped to one knee before me and took both of my hands in his, clasping them together. I stared down at him. "Edward?"
"I want to do it properly," he said in a low voice, and freeing one hand, he reached into his pocket and pulled out a little black satin-covered box.
* * *
"How long have you had that?" I gasped.
"Since my mother died. It was the one my father gave her," he murmured.
"How long have you been carrying it around in your pocket?" I clarified.
"Since you said you loved me," he said, looking up at me with those bronzed, darkening eyes. My lips parted slightly in shock. "I was waiting for the right moment," he explained, a little sheepishly. "I'm sorry it's this moment, instead of some candlelit setting where I haven't just offended you by having failed to communicate... but I have to ask, Bella," he said fervently. He didn't physically tremble with anxiety, but I could hear it in the cadences of his voice, that perfect voice...
He flicked the box open with his thumb. His mother's ring was a thing of ensnaring beauty, and my eyes locked onto it, watching the light catch fire in each tiny diamond latticed against the golden oval. The band was thin, delicate, barely enough to support the net of gems.
"If you don't like it, I can get you something else," he told me. It sounded like he found it very urgent that I like my ring, as though that could be an important deciding factor.
"I like this one," I said at once, and he smiled in relief and plucked it from the box.
"Isabella Swan," he whispered intensely, still gazing up at me, still holding my hands in one of his. I was suddenly and acutely aware that I was standing ten feet away from the corpse of an exsanguinated wolf, wearing torn jeans and a barely decent t-shirt, and spattered all over with blood. He didn't seem to care. "I love you. I will love you for every moment of eternity. Will you do me the honor of marrying me?"
There was nothing else to say -
"Yes."
Edward slid the ring onto the correct finger, beaming up at me more brilliantly than I'd ever seen. His smile was full of ecstatic victory. When the ring was in place, fitting perfectly, he bent his head forward and kissed it. And then he was on his feet instantly, arms around me, pulling me towards him with force that would have destroyed a human but that only felt secure and perfect and right to me. I hugged him back, careful as I could stand to be with my newborn strength; if I squeezed him too hard, he didn't complain.
He kissed me, and kissed me, and kissed me - I heard a quiet purr in the back of his throat. I resigned myself to the fact that this would be all I'd get until my ring had a companion. But it was still wonderful - still more than what I could have had unturned, when he'd had to exercise so much caution. I drank in the kisses greedily. All of forever wouldn't contain enough of them.
* * *
We moseyed back to the house - the main house, not our little cottage. He had expressed a desire to carry me across the threshhold in the traditional manner, and I'd said, "Oh, well, as long as I'm waiting for everything else, may as well wait to see the house too," and he'd looked too thrilled for me to take it back.
When we got to the yard, Alice was waiting for us. I thought her grin would split her face open. "Bella!" she cried. "Come inside and try on yourdress!"
Had someone delivered it? I sniffed the air - there was a mouthwatering scent that might have been the remnants of a brief visit from a human during my first hunt. Convenient timing, that he or she was gone. I took a fraction of a second to fight the urge to follow the lure, to hunt down its owner. I hoped it wouldn't cling to my wedding dress - that it had been wrapped up in plastic or heavily starched or something, enough that it would smell only like itself.
I'd spent a couple of hours, as a human, paging through bridal magazines with Alice so she wouldn't veer completely into left field when trying to select elements of the event. I'd pointed out elements of dresses I liked and didn't. But I wasn't prepared for the sheer perfection that was my own white gown.
Alice had it displayed in the front hall on a dressmaker's dummy. It had to be custom made. There wasn't a thread out of place or a bead I didn't approve of. Everything I would have wanted in a dress, if I'd decided to spend a month designing one, was there. A triangle of crisscrossing ribbons pointed down the low back. It had a wide strap over the right shoulder and left the other bare; there were no sleeves. The drapey, shimmery fabric gathered at a rosette at the left side of the waist. Rows of round, crystalline beads, glinting in every color up to and including my new favorite, bordered every carefully placed fold and edge, and clusters of them, rose-shaped, spiraled out from the rosette to a radius of a foot and a half. The skirt looked like it would be ankle-length on me - I had made it clear to Alice that I did not approve of long dragging trains that would inevitably get dirty. It didn't have bulky extra layers or come with a jacket: it was clearly a summer wedding dress, for all that I could have crossed the Sahara in an anorak without experiencing discomfort.
"Alice, it's gorgeous," I declared, and she smiled broadly at me. I noticed that Edward hadn't followed me in, suspected superstition about viewing the dress, and added in a louder voice that I meant to carry outside, "Edward! Just how likely is it that you're going to avoid seeing what it looks like in Alice's head until - when will it be, Alice?" I inquired.
"Next week," she reported, entirely chipper. "Wednesday. I thought at first you'd ask Carlisle to perform the ceremony, but then you were going to decide that it'd make it look to your parents less like you suddenly eloped. So the official story is that you're bringing only me to witness and getting a court official to handle it, although really of course we're all going. To Ukraine, by the way, because we know your parents know how old you are and it would be easy to look up minimum age laws, but we can tell them Edward's just turned eighteen; his Forks paperwork has an early June birthday on it if anyone looks. I rented a plane so you don't have to be cooped up with humans."
"Who is it who flies?" I asked.
"Edward," Alice told me. "Emmett started, but he ate his instructor and we had to run."
"Such charming family anecdotes we have," I said, grimacing. "Edward, I really am very skeptical that you can avoid learning what this dress looks like until Wednesday! I'll give you a hint! It's white!"
; I heard a low grumble from beyond the front door.
"It's not the dress itself you are traditionally not supposed to look at, anyway," I said reasonably, "it's me in the dress on the day of the wedding. Come in, please?"
The door opened, and in meandered Edward, looking oddly long-suffering. "You are the most persuasive creature on Earth," he murmured.
"I don't think anyone's told me that before," I said thoughtfully. I sifted through misty recollections. "I need to read my notes; I don't like having to think so hard to remember things that happened when I was human. Alice, do I have to actually try on the dress? I'm sure if you ordered it, it fits perfectly."
"Please put it on? For me?" pleaded Alice. She looked at me with huge eyes.
"Are you sure this isn't the most persuasive creature on Earth?" I bantered to Edward, pointing a thumb at his sister.
She laughed. "You'll try it on."
I tilted my head, wondering about the flimsiness of Alice's predictions, and her face fell. "Oh. Maybe you won't." She looked so sad - and then suddenly she lit up again - and then she looked annoyed at me. "Stop changing your mind!" she demanded. "I can't use aspirin, you know!"
"Okay, okay," I said. "I'll try it." I picked up the display dummy by the neck, carried it up the stairs, and headed for Alice's room again, since it was her request and I'd agreed to stay out of my cottage until Edward could carry me across the threshhold. He was full of silly old-fashioned preferences like that - but they added up to a certain aesthetic about the whole thing that I could learn to like, I supposed.