Wednesday is Dancingly On Time!

Casey: I guess #2 as well! And good job with the punishment.

Christina: What did you play in pit orchestras? That’s where the bulk of my theatrical experience lies as well.

Cassie: I vote we have a Firefly week. : ) And if there are any of us that don’t know Firefly, your life will be better once you do.

Now I shall briefly regale you with my various obsessions. The first began when I was about 10. I was bored and had nothing to read, so my mother gave me an old book of hers called The Dolphins of Pern by Anne McCaffrey. Before too long, I was reading and rereading every book from the Dragonriders of Pern series I could get my paws on. I trolled bookstores to find new titles, and I even emailed Anne McCaffrey herself one day—and got a response! (That was a pretty good day…) I will be frank: I got a bit weird about it. I had an imaginary dragon, learned to draw dragon pictures, crocheted sweaters for my stuffed dragons (who came to school with me and sat on my desk), and designed dragon versions of Bead Buddies (remember those lizards?), which I wore on a lanyard around my neck. I’m not sure how I thought that was a good thing… but those dragons were my adolescence. It was intense.

My obsessions these days are more numerous but faaarrrr less in-depth. I tend to find TV shows that capture my fancy, and then I watch all of them that I can on Netflix and other various resources. Notable inclusions are NCIS, Firefly, Futurama, Lie to Me, Arrested Development, 30Rock, and Scrubs. I also tend to fall in love with webcomics relatively easily—current favorites are Natalie Dee (the whole group), xkcd, Buttersafe, Cyanide & Happiness, Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal, and AmazingSuperPowers (among others).

And now, the moment you’ve all been waiting for… 796 words of pure sparkle.

A bit of a disclaimer: I was, once upon a time, a relative fan of Twilight. The first book is really pretty okay. That being said, this was really, really difficult to do. It doesn’t help that I am not used to maintaining narratives for more than about 200 words (I’m a bit of a vignette-er.)

Here goes…

A burst of light.

A brisk breeze that neither cooled nor warmed.

A popping sound, then tearing.

The wind picked up speed.

Her eyes cracked open, and then shut again, exhausted and angry at the brightness that assaulted them.

The tearing sound grew closer and closer, until Bella was forced to open her eyes and expose them to the offensive light that had somehow engulfed her.

There was nothing to see, apart from a blindingly luminous glow. She assumed that she was outside, as that would be the only way to explain the wind that blew with increasing intensity. Bella opened her eyes fully and tried to sit up, but found that she was unable—and sit up from what? She realized with dawning confusion that she was not, in fact, laying down on anything at all, but seemed to be hovering. There was no up, there was no down; there seemed to be no boundaries whatsoever. Bella’s wonder began to mix with panic.

There!—a flash of something… something metallic? Bella tried to turn her head to follow the direction of the flash, but soon found that she was unable to move at all. She glanced around, squinting through the haze that was beginning to form on the edges of her vision. Of her own body, she could only see her arms stretched out in front of her, her skin sparkling like diamonds. She was outside, then, and this was sunlight.

She shut her eyes tightly for a moment, glad to have at least that slight ability of movement. When she opened them again, the ripping sound had grown to a roar, and she saw something in the approaching distance. She couldn’t tell what it was, but it sparkled like diamonds.

Edward.

The haze overtook her.

***

Sudden silence awoke Bella from her unconsciousness. The tearing sound had ceased abruptly. She opened her eyes cautiously, anxiously, tiredly, and saw that the sparkling thing was still approaching. But that’s not all she could see: the blinding light had subsided somewhat, and she could see that she was, in fact, in midair. And, gauging by the rapid movement of the earth below her, she appeared to be flying.

Flying.

Bella knew she did not have the power of flight; the only vampire she had ever met with that particular ability had been a young woman they had encountered at the Massacre of 3015. That had been many centuries ago—a mere drop in the bucket, though, of Bella’s already two-millennia-long life as a vampire.

So why was she flying?

Clearly, that answer would not come of its own accord. She could still not move any part of her except her eyes, so she could see nothing to any side of her save for that which was in front of her.

The sparkling thing continued to approach—or, rather, she continued to approach it, she reasoned. She focused her improving sight on discerning its shape.

Soon, Bella realized that the object had been approaching her after all, just as she had been flying towards it. It was a personal transport pod, a very antique model from the late 4500s. These days, people traveled by mindport. Who would be zipping around in a pod?

The transport pod slowed as it reached Bella, and just as she caught up with it, it changed direction, matched her speed, and flew next to her over the vast expanse of clouds and earth below. Its smooth silver surface glittered in the sunlight.

Bella tried to call out to whoever would be flying the pod, but she found she could not open her mouth. She attempted to call out with her mind, in case the person could read her thoughts (though no one had ever been able to in her entire existence, save one person, and that person was long gone). But to no avail: while her mind could project, all she got in return was the tearing sound that had awoken her mid-flight in the first place, however long ago that had been.

The silver sunshield that covered the pod’s surface retracted partway, revealing a video recorder’s glistening eye. She stared into that eye and, to her surprise, it seemed to blink.

“What the hell kind of video recorder blinks?” Bella wondered. She knew technology had made immense progress in recent centuries, in part because of Edward’s contributions to the fields of technogenetics and electrobiology.

The sunshield folded back along the egg-shaped inner glass windshield. Within the pod was something she never could have expected. The eye was attached to a monstrous face, one she had grown to love, then know, then understand, then hate, then fear:

Renesmee.

Tune in next week [read: NEVER] for a continuation of this Adventure of Bella: Vampire of the 51^st Century!