Disclaimer: Meyer owns Bella and Edward's characters. I own the rest.

"The breeze from the mountains

In the wind bell

Makes me want to live." Santōka Taneda 356translated by John Stevens

Epilogue

We had been arguing.

Bella wanted to go back to the Zen Institute. She felt like she needed to apologize to Kennyo Wada.

I told her that that didn't make any sense. It wasn't like she'd hurt anyone.

But she couldn't shake the feeling that she was somehow responsible for disrupting the place. Like she brought something there with her.

"It's like there's a storm inside of me sometimes," she said. "That's why I started going there in the first place. I tried to meditate, thinking it would help. But it just got worse."

"Baker was the one with the problem," I told her. "And he was messed up long before you got there. Him and Murota and the rest of them. It had nothing to do with you."

"You don't think it was strange that I was the one who found Murota? And then Milton?"

"Murota was a coincidence. Baker was targeting you with Milton. It wasn't your fault."

Bella shook her head. "It's part of a pattern though. It's like I do something to people, and I'm not even trying. I make them worse."

I had to stop myself from telling her that I thought that sounded crazy. She didn't need to hear that word from me.

"People are responsible for their own actions," I said.

"Then I took advantage of the place, didn't I?" she asked. "I went a few time and then just dropped it. I used them. Used the place and Kennyo Wada."

"You didn't use them. You tried something. It didn't work. You moved on."

But I could tell that she wasn't convinced.

-100-100-100-100-100-100-100-100-100-100-100-100-

Bella was so adamant about going back to the Zen Institute. I was worried, though. She was getting her life together. She was doing better.

I didn't want her going back if she was just going to be disappointed. I didn't want it to set her back.

So I went for myself.

"It's not for everyone," Wada said, referring to Bella. "It's hard work."

I didn't like his tone. "She's not lazy," I said. "She tried."

He just looked at me, which just annoyed me even more.

"Doesn't it bother you? That all of this happened here? That this place was a part of it? This place is so beautiful. So serene. You meditate for peace. But you had murderers coming here every week."

"Zazen does not make a man good or bad. No more than Christianity or Islam."

Why bother then? I wondered. What was the point of God—or gods or philosophy—if it didn't make moral?

"If they were not coming here," he said, "if they were not meditating, think what bad things they would have done."

I stared at him.

-100-100-100-100-100-100-100-100-100-100-100-100-

"What the fuck is this?" Bella snapped.

She was absolutely furious.

"It's a bonsai plant," I said.

"I know it's a fucking bonsai. Why the fuck did you think I'd want it?"

"I saw you looking at them the other day in the garden center—"

"So you want to tie the branches down?" she yelled. "That's what you're supposed to do with a bonsai, you know. You want to keep it from growing naturally? From doing whatever it wants? From what it's supposed to do? You want to control it?"

Now I was getting angry. "Do you see any string? I just thought we could let it grow. Do whatever it wanted."

"It's alive, you know. It's a living—" Bella broke off.

"You were just going to let it grow?" she asked, sounding much calmer.

"Not anymore! I'll give it to Nichols. Let his daughter have it. Christ—" I reached for the plant.

"No," Bella stopped me. "I don't want you to give it away."

"Could have fooled me." I was still angry. I had no idea what had set her off.

"I want to keep it," she said, a note of determination entering her voice. "I want to let it grow."

"You don't have to keep it just because it was a gift." I was calming down.

She smiled. "No, I like it. I want it just grow."

Little incidents like this told me were evidence that there was just so much that I still didn't know about Bella. So many things that I didn't understand.

But then, I suppose she was kind of like one of those little puzzles. She was like a koan. She didn't make any sense at all. I would try to figure her out, working at the problem, only to stay in the dark.

Except maybe that was the problem. Maybe I wasn't supposed to be able to figure her out.

Like how you weren't supposed to be able to figure a koan out. You just had to—

Well, I wasn't really sure how those koans were supposed to work, but I knew that I didn't have to make sense of Bella to love her. I just did.

It broke my heart sometimes, to see the way she struggled.

It was like she knew that she was a puzzle. Like she knew that she didn't make sense.

She was trying to figure herself out as much as other people were trying to figure her out.

And it tore her apart, sometimes, trying to work the puzzle. It tore her apart because she thought that she was supposed to make sense.

But maybe she wasn't. Maybe she was just her.

Maybe she was supposed to stay that way. Free.

No strings. No explanations. Nothing tying her down.

Wild. Illogical.

And utterly herself.

THE END, REALLY

AN: Thanks for reading.

No offense to fans of bonsai plants. This isn't a commentary on that at all. It's a commentary on what this Bella feels like people want to do to her—with her as the bonsai. Chapter 18 of Book of Monsters discusses why bonsais are a trigger for her.

Of course, it's racist to appropriate the aspects (like the bonsai and the koan) of another people's culture as symbols meant to forward the personal growth of a person from the dominant group. I'm struggling with the tension between telling the truth (the bonsai episode is based on something from my own life—which I freely admit is problematic and possibly exploitative on my part) versus avoiding problematic usages of this kind of imagery. On the one hand, I want to talk about the ways in which multiculturalism enriches all of our lives. On the other hand, I'm struggling with how to do so in a way that isn't just more exploitative. This epilogue is by no means a solution. The main character recognizes the exploitative nature of her behavior towards the Zen Institute, but she's still mired in herself. The last chapter of Book of Monsters represents a more serious effort to confront these problems and their implications. If you didn't read Book of Monsters or gave up because it was too boring, you might consider reading the last chapter (Epilogue 2). It's fairly different from the rest of the story.

Conclusion: I haven't figured out how to talk about these issues in my writing in a way that is entirely satisfactory. I'm working on it. And I hope that my efforts in this regard aren't too offensive.