Âme Soeur-Chapter 1:Restless

Quick A/N: There's a play list here -playlists
section-that goes with this chapter, if you
want to listen to some music while
you read, or want to listen to what I
listened while I was writing.

DISCLAIMER: Some lucky lady named Stephenie
Meyer owns Twilight!I don’t own a thing,
just playing with her Universe.

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Chapter 1: Restless

“What difference is there between us, save a restless dream that follows my soul but fears to come near you?”

Kahlil Gibran

Rain fell like teardrops from the sky, slow thick drops that bathed the trees and streets of Forks, Washington. Bella sat on her bed with a Jane Austen compilation in her lap but truly, she was lost in thought. The sound of rain reminded Bella of the sound of an ancient grandfather clock, tick tock, tick tock. The hands of the analog clock on the nightstand moved almost at the same rhythm the rain fell. Tick tock, tick tock. With the clock and rain symphony, Bella considered the changes in her life over the last few days. For one she didn’t feel so tired anymore. In spite of the awful amount of rain that seemed to constantly fall from the grey skies of Forks, ever since the first night she spent in the new house she slept soundly, deeply, dreamless.

This was a big adjustment. She used to take long naps after school when she lived in Seattle, because it seemed as if the dreams were strictly a nighttime occurrence. Now, with her sleep patterns finally settling into normal ones, she didn’t have that need. She had plenty of time to spend doing whatever she wanted in the afternoons, now that napping wasn’t a necessity. Frankly, she didn’t know what to do with herself with all the extra time. Yes, writing and drawing, her usual hobbies, served as entertainment, and reading did the trick as well. But now that she had it, time seemed to be, ironically, too abundant.

Bella sighed; the symphony of rain increased in tempo, slowly morphing into a new movement that included the whooshing of wind and the scratching of the claw-like branches of the tree just outside the window. None of those sounds was truly conducive to sleep; none of them were part of Bella’s mental library of sounds. They were all foreign. Yet with all the time she lived in Seattle, she had never felt more at home, more at peace, than she did in Forks, even given some recent developments.

She lay back in bed, staring at the ceiling and finally giving up her attempt to read, the Jane Austen compilation falling with a thud to the floor. She ignored the book and focused on the events of the last two days. The move, how tiresome it was, how complicated and annoying. The new house, the feeling of familiarity that warmed Bella’s heart the moment she entered. Was it because it belonged to her family for generations? Or was there something more?

A clap of thunder signaled a different direction to the music outside, the wind, thunder, rain, branches and clock mingling into a beautiful allegro. Bella smiled at the ceiling, thanking whatever gods decided to end her torment. It was enough with the nightmares. Bella sighed and almost purred in contentment, turning momentarily to snuggle into the duvet. Despite the peace, a nagging feeling reminded her that something was still missing.

Bella closed her eyes and thought about the people she and her parents met while they moved into the new house. A family by the name of Newton was the most irritating of their new acquaintances. The mother would not stop yapping about various topics of gossip in town, and her son ogled Bella like she had two heads. The father seemed resigned to his wife’s antics and just nodded at everything she said. Bella figured he was planning ways to kill himself or turn himself deaf, anything to be freed from the woman he was tied to until death did they part. The thought put a smile on Bella’s lips.

Luckily, Renee used the chaos of the move and the very wearisome drive they had just endured, to get rid of the aggravating duo and its miserable patriarch. Bella almost felt sorry for Mr. Newton.

That incident, and the many other neighbors and people of Forks who had welcomed them, showed Bella that small town life was not what she thought and that her first day at Forks High tomorrow wouldn’t be as easy as she had hoped.

Trying to forget her anxiety, Bella grabbed her notebook and started to draw, one of her favorite hobbies, and one for which she didn’t have to think and almost didn’t have to pay attention. She went into a sort of trance and allowed her fingers to take the lead and draw whatever her mind needed. Outside Bella’s bedroom, the storm sang on.

* * *

On the other side of town a teenaged boy played with the keys of his piano. Edward Cullen wasn’t interested in any melody in particular; he was looking for a distraction from the questions that nagged at him the last few days. Why did the nightmares stop? Why couldn’t he remember them?

Edward ran his hand through his untamable mass of bronze tinged hair, a nervous habit that irritated his mother when he was younger. He knew he should feel grateful, and thank God and all his lucky stars that the dreams had decided to stop, but he couldn’t. An irksome unease in the recesses of his mind pushed him to question the whys and hows of the nightmares now that they had vanished. Why couldn’t he have peace?

“Edward?” he heard Alice call, his eternal accomplice, his best friend. He smiled, welcoming a distraction from his morose thoughts.

“Hi,” he greeted Alice in a soft voice.

“What was that thing you were just playing?” Alice asked, sitting next to him on the piano bench.

“Huh?” was Edward’s brilliant response.

“That melody,” Alice said, pointing towards the keys as if the gesture would help Edward understand. “The one you were just playing when I interrupted you!” Alice huffed in exasperation at her cousin’s cluelessness.

“I have no idea what you’re talking about, Alice! I was just toying around with the keys,” Edward replied in confusion.

“No, you were playing this haunting melody. It was sort of happy and sweet in the beginning, then it morphed into something sad and reflective at the end. I know you hate audiences, Edward, but that song was amazing. You should share it with grandma.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about!” Edward said, irritated by Alice’s insistence as he slammed the piano cover shut.

Alice almost jumped out of her skin at Edward’s sudden impatience. He almost never lost his temper, and he certainly never lost it with her. She had hoped that the abrupt reprieve from the nightmares would loosen him up. But Alice realized that Edward was as worked up now as he had been every day he was unceremoniously awoken by a nightmare.

“Excuse me! Exactly what happened for you to be in such crabby mood?” Alice asked once she recovered from her initial shock. She was not the type to take any bullshit, especially from Edward, and she wasn’t going to start now.

Edward sighed. He was agitated and tried to rein himself in. It was not Alice’s fault that his lifelong feeling of uneasiness had not left with the dreams.

“Sorry, Alice. You’re right to be mad at me. That was completely uncalled for.”

Alice took a resigned lungful of air and turned to look at her friend, who had stood from the piano bench and was currently standing by the window, staring pensively through the glass.

“Seriously, Edward, what’s going on? Why are you like this? I thought that with…you know…the dreams gone…” Alice said tentatively, “you’d be over the moon and composing new songs and…just be happy.”

Edward continued to watch the rain fall. He couldn’t explain to himself what was happening, let alone to his cousin.

“Edward?” Alice called. “Please talk to me.”

He turned to look at his cousin, resting the back of his head on the cool glass of the window.

“I really don’t know, Al. All I can tell you is that the peace I was expecting to feel is not there, I don’t feel it. I feel on edge, as a matter of fact.”

Alice groaned. This was not the cheerful Edward she expected. This was glum, business-as-usual Edward. She abandoned her seat, and walked towards her cousin. Edward smiled weakly at her and Alice tapped his temple with her pointer finger. “What’s troubling you? What’s going on inside that dungeon of yours? Explain it to me. I’m sure I can keep up.”

Edward looked intently into Alice’s eyes, trying to transmit with his gaze the feelings that raged inside. He breathed heavily and said, “Do you ever feel like you’re forgetting something really, really important, that’s imperative for you to remember, and you have it on the tip of your tongue, but it just doesn’t come to you?”

Alice stared at her cousin, shocked at the knotty sentence. She tried to come up with an empathic, comforting answer but couldn’t, and answered as truthfully as she could. “Honestly, I don’t Edward. I’ve never felt like that, but don’t freak-out, okay? It’s only been a couple of days since the nightmares stopped, give it time.”

Edward nodded and turned, defeated, to gaze at the rain, the one true constant in his life.

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A/N I know… it’s short but I did warn you about it, I’m just getting warm.

My gratitude and appreciation to Dante Levine for enduring the often taxing task of correcting my originals, and lemonmartinis, and Rhian0000 who do me the huge favor of reading the chapters ahead to calm my lovely self-deprecating mind. Also thank you to TazzsObsession who was kind enough to feature this story on the New Stories section of the twilight muses Blog ( http : / / thetwilightmuses . blogspot . com / )

I post Teasers on Wednesdays on my Blog, you’re welcome to them if you wish. They are mostly visual, with a few phrases from the chapter. If you go and check the one I posted for this chapter you’ll see what I mean.

If I need to post any pictures, etc., I will also post them on my Blog.

http : / / angedelaube . blogspot . com /

I'm on Twitter as ange_de_laube if you want to follow, I usually tweet any important stuff there.

Thanks for taking the time to read.

Hopefully, see you next Sunday,

Ange

Posted in: Âme Soeur, Fanfiction net