imagine what he was thinking now, or what he was still doing here. I'd envisioned our reunion - if he could ever forgive me - taking place far in the future, when I was more stable, and time had healed the wounds I'd inflicted in his heart.
I didn't turn to look at him now, wary of my mood swings. It wouldn't be good to let any emotion take too strong a hold on my frame of mind. Jasper's fears had me on edge, too. I had to hunt before I dealt with anything else. I tried to forget everything else so I could concentrate.
"Bella?" Edward called from the woods, his voice moving closer. "Do you want to watch again?"
But I remembered everything perfectly, of course, and I didn't want to give Emmett a reason to find more humor in my education. This was physical - it should be instinctive. So I took a deep breath and ran for the river.
Unhindered by my skirt, it took only one long bound to reach the water's edge. Just an eighty-fourth of a second, and yet it was plenty of time - my eyes and my mind moved so quickly that one step was enough. It was simple to position my right foot just so against the flat stone and exert the adequate pressure to send my body wheeling up into the air. I was paying more attention to aim than force, and I erred on the amount of power necessary - but at least I didn't err on the side that would have gotten me wet. The fifty yard width was slightly too easy a distance___
It was a strange, giddy, electrifying thing, but a short thing. An entire second had yet to pass, and I was across.
I was expecting the close-packed trees to be a problem, but they were surprisingly helpful. It was a simple matter to reach out with one sure hand as I fell back toward the earth again deep inside the forest and catch myself on a convenient branch; I swung lightly from the limb and landed on my toes, still fifteen feet from the ground on the wide bough of a Sitka spruce.
It was fabulous.
Over the sound of my peals of delighted laughter, I could hear Edward racing to find me. My jump had been twice as long as his. When he reached my tree, his eyes were wide. I leaped nimbly from the branch to his side,
soundlessly landing again on the balls of my feet.
"Was that good?" I wondered, my breathing accelerated with excitement.
"Very good." He smiled approvingly, but his casual tone didn't match the surprised expression in his eyes.
"Can we do it again?"
"Focus, Bella - we're on a hunting trip."
"Oh, right." I nodded. "Hunting."
"Follow me... if you can." He grinned, his expression suddenly taunting, and broke into a run.
He was faster than me. I couldn't imagine how he moved his legs with such blinding speed, but it was beyond me. However, I was stronger, and every stride of mine matched the length of three of his. And so I flew with him through the living green web, by his side, not following at all. As I ran, I couldn't help laughing quietly at the thrill of it; the laughter neither slowed me nor upset my focus.
I could finally understand why Edward never hit the trees when he ran - a question that had always been a mystery to me. It was a peculiar sensation, the balance between the speed and the clarity. For, while I rocketed over, under, and through the thick jade maze at a rate that should have reduced everything around me to a streaky green blur, I could plainly see each tiny leaf on all the small branches of every insignificant shrub that I passed.
The wind of my speed blew my hair and my torn dress out behind me, and, though I knew it shouldn't, it felt warm against my skin. Just as the rough forest floor shouldn't feel like velvet beneath my bare soles, and the limbs that whipped against my skin shouldn't feel like caressing feathers.
The forest was much more alive than I'd ever known - small creatures whose existence I'd never guessed at teemed in the leaves around me. They all grew silent after we passed, their breath quickening in fear. The animals had a much wiser reaction to our scent than humans seemed to. Certainly, it'd had the opposite effect on me.