I'm excited to have just posted the first, teaser chapter of To Hold Something Beautiful, the second half of the story begun here with Stepping from Shadows. Note the word *teaser.* The fic itself is still a work in progress. I'm breaking my own cardinal rule and publishing a chapter before the fic is finished, or at least close to finished, but I have good reason. As we've gotten to know Gray during Stepping from Shadows we learned that she was a suffragette during her human lifetime. With tomorrow being election day here in the U.S., I thought this was a good time to remember that not even 100 years ago, women in th U.S. did not have the right to vote, and to say Thank You to all the real life women who risked everything and fought so that all of us could speak our minds. Tomorrow, thank a suffragette and go vote. I wish I could give you an estimate, or at least a guestimate, of when the full fic will be ready, but I just can't. Between work and home, I just don't have the time to write I once had. If you don't want to read the first chapter knowing the rest of the fic won't be coming any time soon, go ahead and Follow and come back later.

Men tell us 'tis fit that wives should submit
To their husbands, submissively meekly,
Tho' whatever they say their wives should obey,
Unquestioning, stupidly, weakly;

Let man if he will then bid us be still,
And silent, a price he'll pay high for it,
For we won't and we can't, and we don't and we shan't,
Let us all speak our minds if we die for it!

"Let Us All Speak Our Minds"
A Suffragettes Song

Now, for the teaser for the teaser!

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"Out of everything you've ever done, tell me what was the one most incredible thing."

They'd finished his eight miles together, and now they were walking through the woods not far from his house, holding hands and talking, trying to snatch as much time together as they could before his father missed him. As always, Edward was lost in her.

She looked at him in surprise. "I met you," she said, as if it should've been obvious.

He laughed. "No, seriously." Grace had lived through the entire twentieth century. Everything she'd experienced, it boggled his mind.

"Meeting you."

Edward rolled his eyes.

"If you were to ask me to name the most amazing ten or twenty or one hundred things I've ever done," Grace looked down at their joined hands, "everyone of them would involve you."

Her voice held nothing but sincerity, and Edward's chest felt warm.

"Before that, then."

Her surprise only grew at the question.

"You have to ask? Edward—I was a suffragette. Apart from meeting you, the most incredible thing I've ever done was vote."

Lost in her memories, her face and voice went dreamy.

"You can't understand what it was like. You've never been told that because of your sex, you weren't entitled to have your own opinions, let alone to express them. A woman was told what her opinions were to be—first by her father, then later, by her husband. To walk into that polling place beside Carlisle that first time and cast my own vote, for my vote to count equally to his . . . There are no words."

Edward tried to imagine it. He couldn't.

She touched the base of her throat. "I wore my mother's brooch." She came back to the present with a smile that held a range of emotions. "I was jubilant, but it was bittersweet. I missed her so much. I'd have given anything for her to be there."

They walked on.

"I think, if I had lived, I should have liked to run for office some day."

Edward could see that.

"I saw Madame Curie speak at Vassar in 1921," she said, changing the subject. "That was . . ." Words failed her, but her face showed him what she couldn't articulate. She was radiant.

Edward scratched the back of his neck. Madame Curie. Grace had seen Madame Curie speak over ninety years ago. At Vassar. Where she'd earned a degree in Greek and Latin.

He had a B+ in Biology II.

"Imagine a dozen World Series, Super Bowls, and NBA Championships, all rolled into one. She was my idol," Grace said. "And Amelia Earhart. I adored her. I was inconsolable when she went missing. We were living in Forks at the time, actually."

Grace clasped her hands together and held them under her chin, grinning and arching an eyebrow.

"And slacks."

I hope you'll go and check it out! Or Follow and read later!