Quick A/N: There’s a play list on this Blog (Playlists link at the top) 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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Prologue
“A soul mate is someone who has locks that fit our keys, and keys to fit our locks. When we feel safe enough to open the locks, our truest selves step out and we can be completely and honestly who we are; we can be loved for who we are and not for whom we’re pretending to be. Each unveils the best part of the other. No matter what else goes wrong around us, with that one person we’re safe in our own paradise. Our soul mate is someone who shares our deepest longings, our sense of direction. When we’re two balloons, and together our direction is up, chances are we’ve found the right person. Our soul mate is the one who makes life come to life.”
Richard Bach
Tears were streaming down the girl’s face but they weren’t typical tears of sadness. They say the eyes are the window to the soul; they are also the means through which your soul bleeds when it’s wounded—or in this case, broken.
The girl hugged herself like she was trying to contain the broken pieces of her soul escaping her body. However, souls once broken cannot be easily glued back together like a broken vase. No, broken souls are almost impossible to mend or contain. They seep out of our bodies, dissolve into space, and get lost. She was a lost soul now.
A boy stood near the door, wearing a pained look. He was struggling with himself. He wanted to console the girl, but his own pain was just too much to allow him the strength to be of any comfort. His soul, too, had left his body. He was soulless, empty.
“I love you…” the girl murmured in a soft broken voice.
“I do too,” the boy answered simply. “But it’s just not enough. You’ve broken every piece of me. I have nothing left to give.”
The girl’s eyes were filled with sorrow, her soul already shattered, breaking into impossibly smaller pieces. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to, I was drunk, I was angry, I’m so sorry…” she repeated. She knew sorry was not enough. What she had done could not be taken back. She had destroyed the greatest thing she had. She always destroyed everything.
As if answering her thoughts he said, “Sorry just isn’t enough anymore,” and turned to leave.
“Please…” the girl whimpered.
The boy sighed deeply, pressing his forehead to the door. It wasn’t a frustrated sigh, or a longing one. It was an exhausted sigh; he could take no more.
“I can’t…” he replied to the girl’s plea. “I just can’t anymore. If I stay I’ll die.”
“If you go I will,” was the girl’s response.
“It doesn’t matter,” the boy added, turning to face her one last time. “I think we’re both already dead, mon amour, and this is just our bodies having a pointless conversation.”
And with that he left the room, closing the door behind him, closing his heart with it.
A wail rooted in the deepest part of the girl’s chest could be heard through the entire house. The last piece of her soul had finally left her body.
Time does not heal all wounds. Some wounds follow us through the centuries. However, life renews itself, and time obliterates all traces of past sorrows, so that only those involved suffer with the memory of them. Their lives might have stopped, but the World doesn’t stop spinning on their behalf.
In another time and another place, a girl sat in her bed, studying a French phrasebook. She had always been fascinated by the language, and had recently decided she wanted to learn it.
She was skimming through the pages when she found a definition that made her stop. The sound of those words in her head gave her an eerily familiar feeling, as if she should remember something she could not. She read the words again, tasting the flavor of them in her mouth. It was bittersweet.
The words read like this:
Soul mate: âme soeur
Why did she feel such a connection to these words? She was about to turn fifteen and had never thought much about love or soul mates. They were foreign to someone so young. They were, to her, only part of story books. Part of fantasy.
But somehow, put together, English against its French counterpart, those words caused in her a feeling similar to something pulling at the depths of her mind, as a soft and warm sensation filled a hidden part of her heart.
“Bella!” she heard her mother call, taking her out of her reverie. “It’s late honey, you need to sleep. The movers will be here early in the morning,” her mother finished, peeking through Bella’s door.
“Sorry mom,” Bella answered, smiling sheepishly and setting the phrase book on her side table.
“It’s okay, hon,” Renee replied, coming closer to her daughter’s bed. Renee loved to tuck her baby girl into bed.
Bella sighed. She sensed that the reason her mom was so overprotective was the frequent nightmares she suffered from, nightmares that had haunted her ever since she could remember, the same one over and over again.
“Goodnight, honey,” Renee said kissing Bella’s forehead.
“Goodnight, mom,” Bella replied slowly letting sleep take over.
Renee crept out of the bedroom. She didn’t want to disturb her daughter or her husband, who was currently working in his office across the hallway. Closing the door silently, she pressed her back against the wall just outside. She needed a few moments to gather herself.
The decision to move to Forks had not been an easy one. All the things that happened there, all of it, was just so tragic. Renee shuddered; goosebumps covered her arms at the thought of the ghosts of the past that waited in her hometown, the lost souls of her loved ones.
She had moved to Seattle hoping to erase the past, to forget it ever occurred. But the past has a funny way of hunting us down no matter where we go. Renee glanced at the door next to her and thought, “It’s worth the pain because I’m doing it for her.”
All of this, the move, the change of air, everything was devoted to seeing her daughter happy. She was determined to see her daughter happy. Like she should have been. Renee’s eyes filled with unshed tears remembering her. She didn’t think of her often, at least when she could avoid it. Thinking of what could have been was just too depressing. She was just about to leave for her own room, to read Cosmo or something equally light and entertaining to keep her mind off such somber thoughts, when she heard the screams. She knew that screaming voice because she had been the one who created it. She knew those cries because she was used to them by now. And she knew that her daughter needed her, to scare the lost souls away. She breathed deeply before turning the door knob, and entered the bedroom where her haunted daughter was writhing in pain.
Meanwhile, a similar scene was taking place in the small town of Forks. In a big house hidden by thick greenery, and with the Olympic Mountains as a backdrop, a boy lay in bed. Sweat covered his body; he was tossing and turning, nightmares haunting his sleep. Suddenly, the boy woke up whimpering. His cries weren’t loud, but they were heartfelt. Not a whole minute after he so brusquely returned to reality, his door was being opened by none other than his best friend in the whole world. A pixie-like girl with pig-tails, dressed in pink pajamas, entered his bedroom and rushed to his bed.
Once there, she stood at the foot, unsure of how to console the sobbing boy. After her first few seconds of hesitation, Alice Cullen sat next to her cousin Edward, and offered her hand, which he gladly took. Just the mere presence of his cousin brought his breathing back to normal. They were both connected by more than a last name. They were connected by friendship and complicity. They were both only children, and almost the same age, so it was no surprise that they came to understand each other so well.
Alice caressed Edward’s cheek with her free hand. The distraught boy welcomed the soothing warmth of his cousin, leaning into her touch. Meanwhile, Alice pondered the nature of Edward’s haunted mind. He was a sweet, caring boy. He did not deserve so much torture. He deserved a decent night’s sleep. The black circles under his eyes were proof enough of that. Alice had always been a sensitive girl, and lately she had felt something looming over Edward. She could almost see the wheels of fate turning, setting things in motion.
As she considered these facts, Edward had slowly sunk back into bed, surrendering to exhaustion and falling into a dreamless sleep. Alice smiled at this, thankful that she had spent the night at his house and that his parents had not heard him cry. It was getting harder and harder to hide this from the adults in the family. But Edward didn’t want to worry anyone. Selfless, always selfless, Alice thought. He really does need a good dose of selfishness, her mind added as an afterthought.
After a few minutes sitting next to her slumbering cousin, making sure he would not wake up again, Alice stealthily climbed down from Edward’s bed and left his bedroom, sighing deeply and hoping that whatever it was that was looming in Edward’s future was a good thing.
The next morning found a tired-looking Bella sitting on her porch, doodling in a notebook, while her parents loaded their SUV with the last items left behind by the movers. Today was the day they were moving to Renee’s hometown. Bella didn’t mind this fact at all. She had always been a loner, closed up in her own mind, either drawing or writing short poems. She felt closer to books than she did to people; the only true connections in her life were her parents. She was losing nothing, and a small town life might be a good thing for a loner such as her. She was sure that people in towns had to be calmer and less intrusive than people in the city.
Renee soon summoned Bella to take her seat in the back of the SUV. It was time for them to leave Seattle behind.
Bella smiled softly at her mother, as her father climbed on the driver’s side. Once she took her seat and fastened her seatbelt, she continued doodling and writing random words and phrases in her notebook, sure that she could use some of them for a short poem or drawing.
As the SUV ventured onto the highway towards Forks, Bella glanced through her window from time to time. The closer they got the more green she saw. Green trees and rocks melted in front of her into an endless rainbow of shades, all green in nature. The only different colors she could see were the black pavement under their car, and the grey skies above their heads. It suited her mood. She sat back after a while, tired of watching green stuff and looked down at her notebook. What she found there shocked her profoundly. It wasn’t just the randomness of the words, it was something else entirely. The words, like the ones in the phrase book she had read the night before, called to a part of her that she could feel was buried deep down. She read them again, whispering them only loud enough for her ears.
“Why do you love me?”
Meanwhile, Edward Cullen was still sleeping in his bed. He’d had a rough night and his mom had allowed him to sleep in, not a common occurrence in Esme Cullen’s military-run house. He turned in his sleep, placing his body face down in the bed. He started to mumble while his mom picked up the laundry that was in the basket just inside his bedroom. When she was about to leave Edward’s room, trying to close the door as quietly as possible, she heard him mutter in his sleep,
“Because I have no choice…”
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A/N so I have posted stuff before, but never with the help of a Beta. For this story, however, I got help and went through the appropriate process that every writer should follow, if possible. If I had to thank every single person that encouraged me to post this story, I would probably set a record in length of A/N. So, just know I thank you, you all know who you are and what participation you had in my process.
However, there are specific people I do want to thank, and who I’ll probably keep thanking. Lemonmartinis, because she made me re-write this Prologue and was my main cheerleader when I had no one else, she’s an awesome person, and very kind pre-reader. DanteLevine, the most amazing Beta I could have gotten, she has the patience of a Saint to deal with my raw material, trust me. Rhian0000, my dear friend, who encouraged me and took time out of her busy schedule to do a final pre-read to sooth my nerves. Thank you for everything, I wouldn’t be posting without your support.
I’ll try to post every Sunday. I posted today solely to mark my birthday. My chapters will be short, probably between 1500/5000 words, depending on where I feel the chapter should end.
Thanks for taking the time to read.
♥
Ange
However, there are specific people I do want to thank, and who I’ll probably keep thanking. Lemonmartinis, because she made me re-write this Prologue and was my main cheerleader when I had no one else, she’s an awesome person, and very kind pre-reader. DanteLevine, the most amazing Beta I could have gotten, she has the patience of a Saint to deal with my raw material, trust me. Rhian0000, my dear friend, who encouraged me and took time out of her busy schedule to do a final pre-read to sooth my nerves. Thank you for everything, I wouldn’t be posting without your support.
I’ll try to post every Sunday. I posted today solely to mark my birthday. My chapters will be short, probably between 1500/5000 words, depending on where I feel the chapter should end.
Thanks for taking the time to read.
♥
Ange
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