Twilight fic: Compass (The Harvest Moon Remix), Alice/Esme, Alice/Jasper
Remix authors have been announced, so I can post this here. soundingsea guessed correctly, so if you will give me a prompt in a fandom I write (see my user info for a list of all the fandoms in which I've written a story), I will make you something.
---
Title: Compass (The Harvest Moon Remix)
Author: escritoireazul
Author's Note: This is a transformative work of fiction for the Twilight series by Meyer.
Written for: Verity for Remix Redux 8: Magic Eight Ball.
Original story: Compass by Verity
Acknowledgments: Many, many thanks to my beta reader, carlyinrome, who absolutely made this story. She smoothed the jagged edges of the story, making things flow and actually have endings and make sense. She helped me turn disjointed scenes -- and sometimes very half-assed notes about scenes -- into a lyrical story that flows. Thank you so, so much, sweetie. I really appreciate all your help.
Rating: 16+ for sex
Summary: Alice sees, bits of the future glittering all like stars, and if she's very careful, she can pluck them from her mind and hold them between her palms, fragile and delicate; if she's very careful, she can make her favorite parts of the future become real.
Alice sees, bits of the future glittering all like stars, and if she's very careful, she can pluck them from her mind and hold them between her palms, fragile and delicate; if she's very careful, she can make her favorite parts of the future become real. Some disappear like smoke between her fingertips, but some she gathers and protects.
Those pieces bring her the greatest of nows when they come true.
In all of them, she looks for love and for a place to call home.
0.
Before the beginning, there is darkness.
Or rather, as good as. She doesn't remember being human. She doesn't remember a time before being a vampire, doesn't remember if her visions were weaker then, easier, or if she has always been like this, a woman caught somewhere between the present and the future.
Sometimes, even now, her visions come sporadically. For awhile, all she sees is a cowboy hat, set at a jaunty angle for all that she cannot see the face beneath it.
1. Esme
You're home now, dear. And she brushes her lips across Alice's forehead so slowly, so softly, it is a double ache, in that moment in the future when it happens and in that moment in the now when Alice sees what will come.
She doesn't know the woman's name. She doesn't know where she is, or where Alice will find her. She doesn't know if they'll have met a hundred times before that moment, or if that is the beginning of the two of them together.
All she knows is that one sentence, so soft and so gentle, and the swell of love that makes her want to press her hand to her breast to make sure her heart truly isn't exposed.
The trouble with seeing the future is that if she catches even but a glimpse of love, it stays with her, it grows while she waits for the future to become now, and by the time it does, Alice has changed herself and therefore what would have been. She carries with her love, always, and real in the present, in the pulse of those next to her, or real in her future, coloring her visions, by the time it comes to fruition, it feels like all she has ever known.
2. Jasper
Jasper says nothing when his eyes meet Alice's. There's a flash in the background, light reflecting off bottles. The rest of the area is dark, shadowy places crowded with humans searching for love and for lust and for the lethargy of alcohol laid down on their bones. She sees no individual person, only their bodies in a dim blur, and Jasper coming toward her, one hand extended, his pale skin made even more so by the dark blue of his shirt.
Her body quakes with lust and for a moment, though she's long forgotten what she was, she knows what it is like to be human and to so deeply want.
3. Esme
She gardens, her skirts spread so carefully around her legs while she kneels in the dirt in the sun, the sparkling of her skin more lovely than any jewel. Beneath her fingers, flowers grow, and when she lifts her head and smiles, it is as if she smiles for Alice, despite the distance between them.
That vision is a wish that plants itself like a weed in the back of Alice's mind and it spreads without thought, but it is a flowering weed and still beautiful.
4. Jasper
Alice arrives every day when the bar opens and doesn't leave until close. She has her own table and the bartenders all know her name. They think she is sweet, with the pretty little books she brings in to help pass the time. She smiles at them and listens to their stories. She fills a book with sketches of them and some of her favorite regulars.
The day Jasper finally arrives is like every other day. She sits down with a glass of wine she will not drink and works on her latest sketch, another of the gentle woman who welcomes her home.
Jasper opens the door and the wind is behind him; it sweeps lightly into the room, carrying the scent of vampire. The humans don't know enough to recognize it, but it stirs their blood.
Alice knows.
When she looks up, his face is turned toward her, his eyes shadowed by his cowboy hat. She smiles then, because it is nice to have a vision fully realized, and he smiles back and makes his way to her.
He stops at her table, towering over her, and rocks back on his heels. He is long-limbed and slender in jeans and a worn cotton shirt. He's so caught up in Alice he hasn't yet thought to remove his hat though it is the polite thing to do.
"Somehow, I knew you would be here," he says, his voice thick and rough with desire, and Alice's body tightens with want. "I just knew."
Alice stands and takes his hand. His fingers are long, her hand tiny against his.
"I've been waiting for you for a long time."
"Sorry, ma'am."
He doesn't try to say anything else. If he is anything like Alice, he can't say anything else. Around them, the humans come together, lust-fast breathing and the quick thrum of blood in their veins.
Alice's throat is scratchy with thirst. Her lips feel tender from phantom kisses. She's seen what it will be like with him, her golden-locked boy, how she will feel in his arms. Jasper stares at her black-eyed with hunger. He could turn and tear into all those around them, but instead he grips her hand tightly.
The sound of skin on skin comes from somewhere behind him, humans caught in the backlash of vampire passion. Alice knows the secrets of this place and guides him out the back of the bar.
In the alley, she presses her body to his, the skirt of her dress swinging against his legs. He's tall enough she can duck up under his hat and kiss him. His mouth is a lush thing against hers, perfect lips and teeth and tongue.
Jasper slips his hands beneath her skirt, his fingers stroking up her stockings. When he reaches their lacy tops and the slender garters holding them in place, the heat that rushes across his face makes her quiver. He lifts her and presses her back to the wall. The bricks and mortar are rough and she will have to replace her fine silk shirt, but this is only the first of many articles of clothing they will destroy together. Jasper holds her in place with the weight of his body and then his jeans are open and he's pushing inside her.
Perhaps she had sex as a human, but she doesn't remember. She has never let another vampire touch her so. But she has seen this moment with Jasper in this alley and in hundreds of visions more. She knows the feel of him against her, inside her, knows the press of his mouth to her throat, the scrape of his teeth though he will not bite her, not ever. She knows how to curl her hands at his shoulders and wrap her legs around him, urging him deeper and faster.
She knows the pleasure growing inside and when she comes and he kisses her through it, she says his name against his lips as if she's said it a hundred times before.
5. Esme
The gentle woman guides her visions north like the brightest of stars. Alice does not worry she will disappear while Alice takes her time, slow as the melting of a glacier, and maps the terrain of Jasper's body, his delicious pale skin and the secret silver scars, his history written into his flesh. Forever the gentle woman waits in land flush with food, formed from the movements of the glaciers.
She is everlasting, magnetic north spinning Alice's compass, and each time Alice wishes for a new adventure and yearns to return to the home she has never visited, she remembers the woman will wait for her forever and always be there to guide her home.
6. Jasper
Jasper is more immediate, his voice stronger, and as he covers her body with his own, Alice wants to lose herself in him, in the rush of his body against hers.
The trouble with seeing the future is that when it is wonderful, Alice gets lost in what she's seen and forgets to experience life in real time. She loves Jasper -- she has loved him from the first moment she saw his cowboy hat in her visions, though she knew nothing of him them, only the way her body felt so full of love and peace when she saw it -- but each moment with him is another moment not following her star north through rain and clear skies, darkness and light.
"I love you." Jasper kisses each word into her skin, branding her with invisible marks of his adoration, and she arches up beneath him, pristine and perfect in his arms. He lingers over her breasts, sinks into the concave flex of her stomach, and settles against her quim as those long, agile fingers of his slip inside and hold her open, baring her innermost self, all soft petals and slick skin, to his kisses.
His tongue strokes across her clit and Alice arches up, her body bending into the air. She presses her mouth closed, stills her tongue, because in that moment she has no name upon her lips.
7. Esme
Does leap away and Alice laughs as she chases them through the forest. For as long as she can remember, she has been the strongest thing in her world. Jasper is more vicious, perhaps, but she knows he will never turn on her, and if her confidence makes her bold, her ignorance makes her bolder still, and she jumps great trees in the middle of the hunt, but it is not excitement enough.
It is while she is airbound during one such leap that she sees the gentle woman and the two of them bent together over a felled doe, their mouths bloody, skin stained a delicious, delightful red-black.
Alice will lift her head and kiss her then, their lips that mix of not quite sweet and just salty enough. She will lick away the stains and cup her hands on the woman's breasts and feel hardened nipples against her palms.
At the end of her leap, she's off balance because her mind is in that clear moment in the future and not the hazy present in which does flee before her and Jasper lurks nearby. She actually falls when she lands and Jasper is next to her immediately, his eyes shining his amusement.
"Did the lady want a mudbath?" he asks, putting a little extra drawl into the words, and she reaches for him, dragging him down with her. Again their clothes must be replaced. She has already seen the lovely things she will buy, as she has bought their replacement clothing before. But that is the future and the past and this is now, Jasper's mouth on hers and his fingers so agile as they strip away clothes and mud so his body can enter hers. She is not quite grounded in this moment, but settled, sure of where she exists in this time and this place, her visions stilled while she arches up beneath Jasper, while she grasps his arms and digs her nails into his skin.
And yet, when she comes with Jasper deep inside, it is that woman's gentle smile she sees.
8. Jasper
He whispers when he tells her of the vampire war. She kisses each scar in turn, perfectly fitting her mouth to the bite marks, careful to keep her teeth away from his skin, and he shudders as she moves along his body.
She curls her hand around him and strokes him through her kisses and his pleasure and in time his voice trails off and she is left with silence and the feel of him beneath her and the sound of her name on his lips in the end.
9. Esme
A beautiful blond man strokes his hand down the woman's cheek and Alice seethes with jealousy. She does not care if he touches the woman; she only wants to touch her too. When the woman smiles for him, for an instant Alice thinks she will shed his blood, but then the love in her eyes stops Alice still.
There is room to love others in her heart, Alice is certain, just as Alice loves Jasper and this unnamed woman too.
10. Jasper
"There are vampires nearby," Alice tells Jasper. Her fingers shake; she does best when she can draw what she sees.
But there is no gentle woman in this vision and she does not protest when Jasper breaks off their path -- they were headed southeast again, deep into the mountains -- and turns away.
She kisses him because she knows he wants nothing of vampire politics and vampire wars, and her love for him has grown so thick in her heart she will give him that with pleasure.
What she does not say is that someday she will ask him to give up their nomadic ways and make his home with others like them and that he, in his love for her, will agree.
It is better for him -- for her -- if he doesn't know until the time has come, when his love for her has vined throughout every inch of him and he would no more cut her away than destroy his own body.
Alice is jealous of what she has seen, the only part of the gentle woman which belongs, in this moment, to Alice alone.
11. Esme
The beautiful blond appears often in her visions after. Alice grows more used to him in time; perhaps even fond, though no one in the visions -- and there are quite a few, the gentle woman's family grows -- causes her to ache the same way.
Only Jasper, perhaps, when he kisses her tasting of love, but she is in the moment with him and it is easy to forget how important that is when she waits so long and longs so hard for what she has seen but not touched.
12. Jasper
"Tell me of the family," Jasper asks. He's stretched out in the sun, his cowboy hat shading his eyes, and Alice lies with her head on his stomach, staring up at the clouds. In them she sees pictures, but not of those to come, and it makes her hurt because she hasn't seen the woman's kiss in so long.
She chooses her words carefully, but she can feel the contentment and love flow through him into her and knows he has heard the adoration in her voice even though she does not ever speak of the gentle woman. She now sees Jasper hunting with the beautiful blond and it is therefore time to tell him some of their future.
When the sun sets, the stars appear slowly. The moon is new but in the darkness is the shadow of its shape. Jasper strokes her hair and Alice trembles. Her thoughts settle on him and the delight of his touch.
13. Esme
I am coming, Alice thinks and starts to run. The miles disappear beneath her flashing feet and she is invisible to the naked human eye, moving too fast for any to catch. Jasper paces her almost lazily, but he is not driven by the memory of that gentle smile and the feel of soft lips on her forehead.
The closer she comes, the more she aches, a low burn where her heart used to beat and a throb in her quim, a delicate pain for the trembling, tenuous moment stretching before her. For so long she has seen but not felt, wished but not dreamed, and now that it is close at hand she fears it will flee her reaching fingertips.
"Alice." The voice is soft and so warm, but it is still a vision and not reality and the difference breaks Alice apart inside even as she runs.
Then a mental stumble and Alice stops in the middle of a cornfield beneath a ripe hunter moon blooming golden and bloated in the dark sky. The gentle woman has never called Alice's name before, does not even know Alice's name, and though Alice doesn't know hers either, it does not matter because Alice knows the shape of her face -- the perfect arch of her brow and the bow of her lips and the curve of her chin -- and the feel of their bodies together.
Alice is cold inside, her thoughts dull and empty of the charm the memories of the visions once held. Jasper draws even with her and waits, because he is always patient in his own way, and he will give her whatever she most desires even though sometimes she pretends he is that woman when he says her name and when he touches her.
What she most wants is to be a part of the woman, the pieces of them separated only by happenchance, licks of fire blown apart by the wind.
It has been a long time since Alice slept and she does not remember the feel of it, but under that glorious, glutted moon she closes her eyes and the breeze feels like the touch of a woman beneath fresh, cool sheets and she gathers it in her fingers, invisible but real, just like the woman who waits at the end of her run.
Jasper bears silent witness until Alice darts forward, eyes closed, trusting in the remembered light of her star to guide her.
14. Jasper
Jasper is nervous and it bleeds into Alice, making her body churn. She moves like the ocean, unceasingly drawn toward the shores. The sun is rising, but she can still feel the pull of the moon and the warmth from her star.
There is a house and that gentle woman is inside. Alice takes Jasper's hand to steady herself and comfort him. He lifts her hand and kisses her knuckles, so gently it's like the brush of a feather.
She has seen the others, knows how they will emerge, the beautiful blond who so easily touches and the others, but Alice spares no thought for them, her heart is too heavy and too light at the same time, her world going dim at the edges but a brightness builds from the door of the cabin from which will emerge that for which she's so long waited.
When the beautiful blond emerges, Alice is suddenly very calm. This is real, finally real, and she knows how it will go. She is so very alive in the moment, not living what she has seen of the future, and her skin feels like lightning gathers in her cells.
"Who are you?" says the beautiful blond. "This is our land."
"Yes, I know. We have come to join you. We have given up what we were, to be like you." And Alice's eyes are gloriously golden, Jasper's too, and she means what she says with every bit of her being.
Her visions slip sideways into reality. She sees the beautiful blond seeing their golden eyes but is unsure if she sees it as it happens or sees it before. Then she sees the bronze-haired boy look into her thoughts, look into her mind, and he sees her seeing the beautiful blond seeing.
"It's safe," he says and Alice turns toward him. She can feel the others turn around her, but it matters not because in that movement, she sees the gentle woman at the door of the house and the timing of Alice's world shifts and changes.
15. Esme
Alice knows there are introductions -- Carlisle and Edward and Rosalie and more -- but all her thoughts are for Esme -- Esme even her name is delightfully soft and giving -- and all her fears, too, because she is waiting for the moment in which Esme will bend over her and kiss her forehead so gently.
At this time when she needs them most, her visions disappear and she can't see exactly when the moment will come. Why can't I see? she thinks and if her heart beat it would race with her terror. Have her visions failed her at last? She smiles and she speaks but she is as a puppet, a very pretty puppet, but she knows not what she does.
Esme is reserved, a polite hostess to perfect strangers, but simply the sound of her voice makes Alice feel warm all over like she feels sometimes when she lies in the sun holding Jasper's hand and basking in the heat of something so outside herself.
"Do you want to hunt?" Jasper asks and touches her shoulder. Alice almost starts, but she sees it coming a moment before his fingers land. If she can see that, why does she not know when Esme will kiss her, will welcome her? Why has it been so long since she saw such a vision? Has she changed so much in the knowledge of Esme's love?
"No." Alice does not remember how to feel hungry or how to want anything but to know when Esme will finally touch her and kiss her and greet her as she has seen. Instead everything has stripped away and she is left empty and numb.
Jasper joins the others, Carlisle and the boys and Rosalie so dazzlingly beautiful next to them, and together they hunt down a bear. The sound of them is loud and she can hear when the boys knock bodies together, the sound of untempered strength colliding.
Alice is allowed into the house which smells so strongly of Esme. She takes it in and tastes it, allows it to curl across her tongue. There is a chaise by the window that is the back wall of the house and she lies down on it and stares outside, at the gray blur of the mountains in the distance and the cattle kept in pens, so many hundred head of them -- she knows that phrase from Jasper and the slow tilt of his cowboy hat in greeting and that deep southern drawl which mutates depending on where they live but is strong when he speaks to her because he knows how much she loves it -- a living pantry right at hand.
That delicious smell increases and with it comes the sound of a soft dress moving against hard skin and Esme bends over her, more delicious than any man or woman has ever been. She hovers for a moment and in that moment Alice sees what is to come, not because she has a vision, but in that way that lovers grow to learn each others' movements and to know what to expect and yet still be surprised and pleased.
Esme brushes her lips so slowly, so softly over Alice's forehead. "You're home now, dear," she says and it is perfectly like the vision Alice once had and so exquisitely different, in the tightness of Alice's throat and the slight upward cant of her hips begging for Esme's touch.
Alice lifts her face as Esme pulls away. She reaches her for her, places her hand on Esme's shoulder, her movement languid as if this is but another vision, as if this is not an immediate moment in which she takes what she's so long wanted.
"Yes, dear?" Esme's voice is warm and her breath so sweet.
"I would like to kiss you." Her voice shakes, surprising her. Alice is so sure of this moment, so sure this is what she wants, but she has seen no farther. She has seen no farther because this is the moment which changes them and the potential of their futures swirls. She is a catalyst, she is change embodied.
Esme's smile is sweet. She sits next to Alice on the chaise and takes her hand.
"You have found your mate." Despite her words, her fingers stroke slowly along the inside of Alice's wrist, making her tremble.
"Oh yes." Jasper is hers in all the ways she's ever seen and more. "But there is -- but you are--" Words fail her in this most immediate, important of moments.
Esme gathers her hand up, cupped between both of hers, and kisses Alice's fingertips. "Edward says you can see the future. Have you seen me?"
"Yes." Alice's voice is weak. "I saw you welcome me home."
"And so you ran all the way to find us."
"Yes." Alice leans forward, lifting her face to Esme's.
"You can see who you will love." Esme's voice is quiet and full, that first warm wind heralding the growing season.
"Yes." Alice can say nothing else, but in that one word, she hears all the things she cannot say.
"I do not know you to love you," Esme says, but even as Alice freezes in that moment, she can hear the unspoken yet and Esme's lips are pressed softly to hers. The kiss is much like Esme, gentle and calm, but as Alice's eyes close, she can see when they will become something more together, something wild as the hunt and bright as the track of lightning across the sky during a summer storm.
Esme's kiss will become so lush it leaves Alice reeling from the vastness of emotion contained within her touch. She cries out as Alice trails her tongue along the curves of Esme's breasts, circles the tiny curl of her belly button, and sinks into her quim to slide against her clit. She arches her back, the storm of pleasure rolling through her body, and Alice feels an answering ache between her own thighs.
The air is warm and humid, a storm growing not too far away. The moon and stars peak through fast-moving clouds skittering across the black sky. Alice sinks into Esme, curls her fingers inside, and the taste of her will ride Alice's lips and tongue for hours after.
When Esme ends the kiss, the vision fades slowly, leaving Alice seeing present and future and her body quivers with the promise of what she has seen.
Again Esme kisses her fingertips. Alice curls her fingers in, catching the kiss against her palm, holding it close in this moment while she waits for what is to come and when and how.
Alice feels alive in this moment, moreso than if she could remember before she was a vampire or if she could still dream, alive and so very loved and Esme is correct: she has finally, after so long searching, come to her lovers and her loves and her home.
---
Title: Compass (The Harvest Moon Remix)
Author: escritoireazul
Author's Note: This is a transformative work of fiction for the Twilight series by Meyer.
Written for: Verity for Remix Redux 8: Magic Eight Ball.
Original story: Compass by Verity
Acknowledgments: Many, many thanks to my beta reader, carlyinrome, who absolutely made this story. She smoothed the jagged edges of the story, making things flow and actually have endings and make sense. She helped me turn disjointed scenes -- and sometimes very half-assed notes about scenes -- into a lyrical story that flows. Thank you so, so much, sweetie. I really appreciate all your help.
Rating: 16+ for sex
Summary: Alice sees, bits of the future glittering all like stars, and if she's very careful, she can pluck them from her mind and hold them between her palms, fragile and delicate; if she's very careful, she can make her favorite parts of the future become real.
Alice sees, bits of the future glittering all like stars, and if she's very careful, she can pluck them from her mind and hold them between her palms, fragile and delicate; if she's very careful, she can make her favorite parts of the future become real. Some disappear like smoke between her fingertips, but some she gathers and protects.
Those pieces bring her the greatest of nows when they come true.
In all of them, she looks for love and for a place to call home.
0.
Before the beginning, there is darkness.
Or rather, as good as. She doesn't remember being human. She doesn't remember a time before being a vampire, doesn't remember if her visions were weaker then, easier, or if she has always been like this, a woman caught somewhere between the present and the future.
Sometimes, even now, her visions come sporadically. For awhile, all she sees is a cowboy hat, set at a jaunty angle for all that she cannot see the face beneath it.
1. Esme
You're home now, dear. And she brushes her lips across Alice's forehead so slowly, so softly, it is a double ache, in that moment in the future when it happens and in that moment in the now when Alice sees what will come.
She doesn't know the woman's name. She doesn't know where she is, or where Alice will find her. She doesn't know if they'll have met a hundred times before that moment, or if that is the beginning of the two of them together.
All she knows is that one sentence, so soft and so gentle, and the swell of love that makes her want to press her hand to her breast to make sure her heart truly isn't exposed.
The trouble with seeing the future is that if she catches even but a glimpse of love, it stays with her, it grows while she waits for the future to become now, and by the time it does, Alice has changed herself and therefore what would have been. She carries with her love, always, and real in the present, in the pulse of those next to her, or real in her future, coloring her visions, by the time it comes to fruition, it feels like all she has ever known.
2. Jasper
Jasper says nothing when his eyes meet Alice's. There's a flash in the background, light reflecting off bottles. The rest of the area is dark, shadowy places crowded with humans searching for love and for lust and for the lethargy of alcohol laid down on their bones. She sees no individual person, only their bodies in a dim blur, and Jasper coming toward her, one hand extended, his pale skin made even more so by the dark blue of his shirt.
Her body quakes with lust and for a moment, though she's long forgotten what she was, she knows what it is like to be human and to so deeply want.
3. Esme
She gardens, her skirts spread so carefully around her legs while she kneels in the dirt in the sun, the sparkling of her skin more lovely than any jewel. Beneath her fingers, flowers grow, and when she lifts her head and smiles, it is as if she smiles for Alice, despite the distance between them.
That vision is a wish that plants itself like a weed in the back of Alice's mind and it spreads without thought, but it is a flowering weed and still beautiful.
4. Jasper
Alice arrives every day when the bar opens and doesn't leave until close. She has her own table and the bartenders all know her name. They think she is sweet, with the pretty little books she brings in to help pass the time. She smiles at them and listens to their stories. She fills a book with sketches of them and some of her favorite regulars.
The day Jasper finally arrives is like every other day. She sits down with a glass of wine she will not drink and works on her latest sketch, another of the gentle woman who welcomes her home.
Jasper opens the door and the wind is behind him; it sweeps lightly into the room, carrying the scent of vampire. The humans don't know enough to recognize it, but it stirs their blood.
Alice knows.
When she looks up, his face is turned toward her, his eyes shadowed by his cowboy hat. She smiles then, because it is nice to have a vision fully realized, and he smiles back and makes his way to her.
He stops at her table, towering over her, and rocks back on his heels. He is long-limbed and slender in jeans and a worn cotton shirt. He's so caught up in Alice he hasn't yet thought to remove his hat though it is the polite thing to do.
"Somehow, I knew you would be here," he says, his voice thick and rough with desire, and Alice's body tightens with want. "I just knew."
Alice stands and takes his hand. His fingers are long, her hand tiny against his.
"I've been waiting for you for a long time."
"Sorry, ma'am."
He doesn't try to say anything else. If he is anything like Alice, he can't say anything else. Around them, the humans come together, lust-fast breathing and the quick thrum of blood in their veins.
Alice's throat is scratchy with thirst. Her lips feel tender from phantom kisses. She's seen what it will be like with him, her golden-locked boy, how she will feel in his arms. Jasper stares at her black-eyed with hunger. He could turn and tear into all those around them, but instead he grips her hand tightly.
The sound of skin on skin comes from somewhere behind him, humans caught in the backlash of vampire passion. Alice knows the secrets of this place and guides him out the back of the bar.
In the alley, she presses her body to his, the skirt of her dress swinging against his legs. He's tall enough she can duck up under his hat and kiss him. His mouth is a lush thing against hers, perfect lips and teeth and tongue.
Jasper slips his hands beneath her skirt, his fingers stroking up her stockings. When he reaches their lacy tops and the slender garters holding them in place, the heat that rushes across his face makes her quiver. He lifts her and presses her back to the wall. The bricks and mortar are rough and she will have to replace her fine silk shirt, but this is only the first of many articles of clothing they will destroy together. Jasper holds her in place with the weight of his body and then his jeans are open and he's pushing inside her.
Perhaps she had sex as a human, but she doesn't remember. She has never let another vampire touch her so. But she has seen this moment with Jasper in this alley and in hundreds of visions more. She knows the feel of him against her, inside her, knows the press of his mouth to her throat, the scrape of his teeth though he will not bite her, not ever. She knows how to curl her hands at his shoulders and wrap her legs around him, urging him deeper and faster.
She knows the pleasure growing inside and when she comes and he kisses her through it, she says his name against his lips as if she's said it a hundred times before.
5. Esme
The gentle woman guides her visions north like the brightest of stars. Alice does not worry she will disappear while Alice takes her time, slow as the melting of a glacier, and maps the terrain of Jasper's body, his delicious pale skin and the secret silver scars, his history written into his flesh. Forever the gentle woman waits in land flush with food, formed from the movements of the glaciers.
She is everlasting, magnetic north spinning Alice's compass, and each time Alice wishes for a new adventure and yearns to return to the home she has never visited, she remembers the woman will wait for her forever and always be there to guide her home.
6. Jasper
Jasper is more immediate, his voice stronger, and as he covers her body with his own, Alice wants to lose herself in him, in the rush of his body against hers.
The trouble with seeing the future is that when it is wonderful, Alice gets lost in what she's seen and forgets to experience life in real time. She loves Jasper -- she has loved him from the first moment she saw his cowboy hat in her visions, though she knew nothing of him them, only the way her body felt so full of love and peace when she saw it -- but each moment with him is another moment not following her star north through rain and clear skies, darkness and light.
"I love you." Jasper kisses each word into her skin, branding her with invisible marks of his adoration, and she arches up beneath him, pristine and perfect in his arms. He lingers over her breasts, sinks into the concave flex of her stomach, and settles against her quim as those long, agile fingers of his slip inside and hold her open, baring her innermost self, all soft petals and slick skin, to his kisses.
His tongue strokes across her clit and Alice arches up, her body bending into the air. She presses her mouth closed, stills her tongue, because in that moment she has no name upon her lips.
7. Esme
Does leap away and Alice laughs as she chases them through the forest. For as long as she can remember, she has been the strongest thing in her world. Jasper is more vicious, perhaps, but she knows he will never turn on her, and if her confidence makes her bold, her ignorance makes her bolder still, and she jumps great trees in the middle of the hunt, but it is not excitement enough.
It is while she is airbound during one such leap that she sees the gentle woman and the two of them bent together over a felled doe, their mouths bloody, skin stained a delicious, delightful red-black.
Alice will lift her head and kiss her then, their lips that mix of not quite sweet and just salty enough. She will lick away the stains and cup her hands on the woman's breasts and feel hardened nipples against her palms.
At the end of her leap, she's off balance because her mind is in that clear moment in the future and not the hazy present in which does flee before her and Jasper lurks nearby. She actually falls when she lands and Jasper is next to her immediately, his eyes shining his amusement.
"Did the lady want a mudbath?" he asks, putting a little extra drawl into the words, and she reaches for him, dragging him down with her. Again their clothes must be replaced. She has already seen the lovely things she will buy, as she has bought their replacement clothing before. But that is the future and the past and this is now, Jasper's mouth on hers and his fingers so agile as they strip away clothes and mud so his body can enter hers. She is not quite grounded in this moment, but settled, sure of where she exists in this time and this place, her visions stilled while she arches up beneath Jasper, while she grasps his arms and digs her nails into his skin.
And yet, when she comes with Jasper deep inside, it is that woman's gentle smile she sees.
8. Jasper
He whispers when he tells her of the vampire war. She kisses each scar in turn, perfectly fitting her mouth to the bite marks, careful to keep her teeth away from his skin, and he shudders as she moves along his body.
She curls her hand around him and strokes him through her kisses and his pleasure and in time his voice trails off and she is left with silence and the feel of him beneath her and the sound of her name on his lips in the end.
9. Esme
A beautiful blond man strokes his hand down the woman's cheek and Alice seethes with jealousy. She does not care if he touches the woman; she only wants to touch her too. When the woman smiles for him, for an instant Alice thinks she will shed his blood, but then the love in her eyes stops Alice still.
There is room to love others in her heart, Alice is certain, just as Alice loves Jasper and this unnamed woman too.
10. Jasper
"There are vampires nearby," Alice tells Jasper. Her fingers shake; she does best when she can draw what she sees.
But there is no gentle woman in this vision and she does not protest when Jasper breaks off their path -- they were headed southeast again, deep into the mountains -- and turns away.
She kisses him because she knows he wants nothing of vampire politics and vampire wars, and her love for him has grown so thick in her heart she will give him that with pleasure.
What she does not say is that someday she will ask him to give up their nomadic ways and make his home with others like them and that he, in his love for her, will agree.
It is better for him -- for her -- if he doesn't know until the time has come, when his love for her has vined throughout every inch of him and he would no more cut her away than destroy his own body.
Alice is jealous of what she has seen, the only part of the gentle woman which belongs, in this moment, to Alice alone.
11. Esme
The beautiful blond appears often in her visions after. Alice grows more used to him in time; perhaps even fond, though no one in the visions -- and there are quite a few, the gentle woman's family grows -- causes her to ache the same way.
Only Jasper, perhaps, when he kisses her tasting of love, but she is in the moment with him and it is easy to forget how important that is when she waits so long and longs so hard for what she has seen but not touched.
12. Jasper
"Tell me of the family," Jasper asks. He's stretched out in the sun, his cowboy hat shading his eyes, and Alice lies with her head on his stomach, staring up at the clouds. In them she sees pictures, but not of those to come, and it makes her hurt because she hasn't seen the woman's kiss in so long.
She chooses her words carefully, but she can feel the contentment and love flow through him into her and knows he has heard the adoration in her voice even though she does not ever speak of the gentle woman. She now sees Jasper hunting with the beautiful blond and it is therefore time to tell him some of their future.
When the sun sets, the stars appear slowly. The moon is new but in the darkness is the shadow of its shape. Jasper strokes her hair and Alice trembles. Her thoughts settle on him and the delight of his touch.
13. Esme
I am coming, Alice thinks and starts to run. The miles disappear beneath her flashing feet and she is invisible to the naked human eye, moving too fast for any to catch. Jasper paces her almost lazily, but he is not driven by the memory of that gentle smile and the feel of soft lips on her forehead.
The closer she comes, the more she aches, a low burn where her heart used to beat and a throb in her quim, a delicate pain for the trembling, tenuous moment stretching before her. For so long she has seen but not felt, wished but not dreamed, and now that it is close at hand she fears it will flee her reaching fingertips.
"Alice." The voice is soft and so warm, but it is still a vision and not reality and the difference breaks Alice apart inside even as she runs.
Then a mental stumble and Alice stops in the middle of a cornfield beneath a ripe hunter moon blooming golden and bloated in the dark sky. The gentle woman has never called Alice's name before, does not even know Alice's name, and though Alice doesn't know hers either, it does not matter because Alice knows the shape of her face -- the perfect arch of her brow and the bow of her lips and the curve of her chin -- and the feel of their bodies together.
Alice is cold inside, her thoughts dull and empty of the charm the memories of the visions once held. Jasper draws even with her and waits, because he is always patient in his own way, and he will give her whatever she most desires even though sometimes she pretends he is that woman when he says her name and when he touches her.
What she most wants is to be a part of the woman, the pieces of them separated only by happenchance, licks of fire blown apart by the wind.
It has been a long time since Alice slept and she does not remember the feel of it, but under that glorious, glutted moon she closes her eyes and the breeze feels like the touch of a woman beneath fresh, cool sheets and she gathers it in her fingers, invisible but real, just like the woman who waits at the end of her run.
Jasper bears silent witness until Alice darts forward, eyes closed, trusting in the remembered light of her star to guide her.
14. Jasper
Jasper is nervous and it bleeds into Alice, making her body churn. She moves like the ocean, unceasingly drawn toward the shores. The sun is rising, but she can still feel the pull of the moon and the warmth from her star.
There is a house and that gentle woman is inside. Alice takes Jasper's hand to steady herself and comfort him. He lifts her hand and kisses her knuckles, so gently it's like the brush of a feather.
She has seen the others, knows how they will emerge, the beautiful blond who so easily touches and the others, but Alice spares no thought for them, her heart is too heavy and too light at the same time, her world going dim at the edges but a brightness builds from the door of the cabin from which will emerge that for which she's so long waited.
When the beautiful blond emerges, Alice is suddenly very calm. This is real, finally real, and she knows how it will go. She is so very alive in the moment, not living what she has seen of the future, and her skin feels like lightning gathers in her cells.
"Who are you?" says the beautiful blond. "This is our land."
"Yes, I know. We have come to join you. We have given up what we were, to be like you." And Alice's eyes are gloriously golden, Jasper's too, and she means what she says with every bit of her being.
Her visions slip sideways into reality. She sees the beautiful blond seeing their golden eyes but is unsure if she sees it as it happens or sees it before. Then she sees the bronze-haired boy look into her thoughts, look into her mind, and he sees her seeing the beautiful blond seeing.
"It's safe," he says and Alice turns toward him. She can feel the others turn around her, but it matters not because in that movement, she sees the gentle woman at the door of the house and the timing of Alice's world shifts and changes.
15. Esme
Alice knows there are introductions -- Carlisle and Edward and Rosalie and more -- but all her thoughts are for Esme -- Esme even her name is delightfully soft and giving -- and all her fears, too, because she is waiting for the moment in which Esme will bend over her and kiss her forehead so gently.
At this time when she needs them most, her visions disappear and she can't see exactly when the moment will come. Why can't I see? she thinks and if her heart beat it would race with her terror. Have her visions failed her at last? She smiles and she speaks but she is as a puppet, a very pretty puppet, but she knows not what she does.
Esme is reserved, a polite hostess to perfect strangers, but simply the sound of her voice makes Alice feel warm all over like she feels sometimes when she lies in the sun holding Jasper's hand and basking in the heat of something so outside herself.
"Do you want to hunt?" Jasper asks and touches her shoulder. Alice almost starts, but she sees it coming a moment before his fingers land. If she can see that, why does she not know when Esme will kiss her, will welcome her? Why has it been so long since she saw such a vision? Has she changed so much in the knowledge of Esme's love?
"No." Alice does not remember how to feel hungry or how to want anything but to know when Esme will finally touch her and kiss her and greet her as she has seen. Instead everything has stripped away and she is left empty and numb.
Jasper joins the others, Carlisle and the boys and Rosalie so dazzlingly beautiful next to them, and together they hunt down a bear. The sound of them is loud and she can hear when the boys knock bodies together, the sound of untempered strength colliding.
Alice is allowed into the house which smells so strongly of Esme. She takes it in and tastes it, allows it to curl across her tongue. There is a chaise by the window that is the back wall of the house and she lies down on it and stares outside, at the gray blur of the mountains in the distance and the cattle kept in pens, so many hundred head of them -- she knows that phrase from Jasper and the slow tilt of his cowboy hat in greeting and that deep southern drawl which mutates depending on where they live but is strong when he speaks to her because he knows how much she loves it -- a living pantry right at hand.
That delicious smell increases and with it comes the sound of a soft dress moving against hard skin and Esme bends over her, more delicious than any man or woman has ever been. She hovers for a moment and in that moment Alice sees what is to come, not because she has a vision, but in that way that lovers grow to learn each others' movements and to know what to expect and yet still be surprised and pleased.
Esme brushes her lips so slowly, so softly over Alice's forehead. "You're home now, dear," she says and it is perfectly like the vision Alice once had and so exquisitely different, in the tightness of Alice's throat and the slight upward cant of her hips begging for Esme's touch.
Alice lifts her face as Esme pulls away. She reaches her for her, places her hand on Esme's shoulder, her movement languid as if this is but another vision, as if this is not an immediate moment in which she takes what she's so long wanted.
"Yes, dear?" Esme's voice is warm and her breath so sweet.
"I would like to kiss you." Her voice shakes, surprising her. Alice is so sure of this moment, so sure this is what she wants, but she has seen no farther. She has seen no farther because this is the moment which changes them and the potential of their futures swirls. She is a catalyst, she is change embodied.
Esme's smile is sweet. She sits next to Alice on the chaise and takes her hand.
"You have found your mate." Despite her words, her fingers stroke slowly along the inside of Alice's wrist, making her tremble.
"Oh yes." Jasper is hers in all the ways she's ever seen and more. "But there is -- but you are--" Words fail her in this most immediate, important of moments.
Esme gathers her hand up, cupped between both of hers, and kisses Alice's fingertips. "Edward says you can see the future. Have you seen me?"
"Yes." Alice's voice is weak. "I saw you welcome me home."
"And so you ran all the way to find us."
"Yes." Alice leans forward, lifting her face to Esme's.
"You can see who you will love." Esme's voice is quiet and full, that first warm wind heralding the growing season.
"Yes." Alice can say nothing else, but in that one word, she hears all the things she cannot say.
"I do not know you to love you," Esme says, but even as Alice freezes in that moment, she can hear the unspoken yet and Esme's lips are pressed softly to hers. The kiss is much like Esme, gentle and calm, but as Alice's eyes close, she can see when they will become something more together, something wild as the hunt and bright as the track of lightning across the sky during a summer storm.
Esme's kiss will become so lush it leaves Alice reeling from the vastness of emotion contained within her touch. She cries out as Alice trails her tongue along the curves of Esme's breasts, circles the tiny curl of her belly button, and sinks into her quim to slide against her clit. She arches her back, the storm of pleasure rolling through her body, and Alice feels an answering ache between her own thighs.
The air is warm and humid, a storm growing not too far away. The moon and stars peak through fast-moving clouds skittering across the black sky. Alice sinks into Esme, curls her fingers inside, and the taste of her will ride Alice's lips and tongue for hours after.
When Esme ends the kiss, the vision fades slowly, leaving Alice seeing present and future and her body quivers with the promise of what she has seen.
Again Esme kisses her fingertips. Alice curls her fingers in, catching the kiss against her palm, holding it close in this moment while she waits for what is to come and when and how.
Alice feels alive in this moment, moreso than if she could remember before she was a vampire or if she could still dream, alive and so very loved and Esme is correct: she has finally, after so long searching, come to her lovers and her loves and her home.