The Edge

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Summary: Bella emerges from her cocoon, as a new, beautiful vampire.

Bella blinked slowly, staring at her reflection in the mirror. She had always been pale, even when she had lived in Phoenix she had been pale, but now ... now she was Cullen pale.

She was Cullen pale, and Cullen flawless. She, Bella Swan, was flawless.

Bella angled her head down, and continued to regard herself.

Her hair, which had always been a rather mousey shade of brown, had darkened into a rich chestnut colour that shone with reddish highlights when light danced over it. Her face was clean and smooth, not a single pore visible.

It was like she had walked off of the cover of a fashion magazine, airbrushed to perfection and impeccably coiffed.

She had always been slim, and she looked to be the same size as she was before, but somehow her body seemed different. Bella couldn't be sure but she thought that everything seem tighter, and more toned.

Bella tilted her head again, half expecting the image in the mirror to turn in the other direction, or scratch its nose. She couldn't quite get her mind to believe that she was actually looking at herself. She felt like she was in one of those mirror-universe episodes of Star Trek where the crew would bump into versions of themselves that were almost identical and yet somehow strange and foreign as well.

"It's shocking, isn't it?" Esme said softly coming up behind Bella.

Bella met Esme's gaze in the mirror and nodded. She was naked, and she thought that she should have felt embarrassed, but Esme had helped her bathe after she had woken up, and so there was really no reason to be shy around the woman now.

Besides, as shocked as she was by her new body, she was kind of proud of it as well, and didn't mind showing it off. She understood better now why Alice would walk around naked without a care in the world and why Rosalie would sigh sadly and muse about how she wished she could be a nudist.

"Very," Bella replied, her voice breathy as she continued to look at herself in disbelief.

"How do you feel?" Esme asked gently.

Presently, Bella seemed steadier and Esme was certain that the disorientation Bella had felt upon waking was over, but she wanted to make sure.

"Fantastic," Bella said, a large smile spreading across her face. "Amazing, wonderful, lovely, terrific ... fantabulous!" she continued, bounding lightly on the balls of her feet. She felt like she could run a marathon, and then swim across the English Channel, and then make love to Alice for three days straight, and then scale a mountain, and then hunt a bear.

She felt invincible.

"Will it always feel like this?" Bella asked suddenly, turning around to face Esme, smiling thankfully at the older woman when Esme handed her a black silk robe.

"Yes," Esme said as Bella pulled the robe on, but her face was thoughtful. "However, it won't always be as overwhelming for you as it is now," she continued as Bella belted the robe. "You'll get used to the feeling as time goes on, it'll become part of you, something normal, ordinary. It won't always awe you."

Bella nodded, that made sense. Decades from now she probably wouldn't remember what it felt like to wake up in the morning with a crick in her neck, or a pain in her back. She wouldn't remember what it was like to have woken up with her shoulder aching because she had slept on it at a weird angle, and so feeling the perfect fluidity of her muscles every time she moved wouldn't astound her.

The feeling wouldn't last, but Bella made up her mind to enjoy it fully for as long as it did.

"My eyes," Bella began a few seconds later, turning towards the mirror once more. "Why aren't they like yours?"