Note: Title from Samuel Taylor Coleridge's "Christabel"

Sometimes, when Alice closes her eyes, she sees further into the future than usual. Normally, it's only flashes from a few hours from now, a few days, occasionally a few months or a year, but once she gets that far out, of course, her visions can barely be trusted -- too much can happen now to change then.

But occasionally she sees this -- and she isn't entirely certain how far off it is -- it's almost like a memory, from back when she was brand new and full of her own human blood burning through her veins.

Alice has taken a vow. A vow not to be like that again. Not to bite down at long, pale necks and taste the blossom of blood on her tongue, the sharp, full taste blotting out the smell of florid perfume. Not to drink deeply from the thrashing body whose soft limbs and softer breasts are pressed up tight against her, and -- oh, sometimes it's a difficult vow to keep.

She wants to keep human girls and paint them up, slick lipstick on their mouths and paint their toes and eyelids and put them in beautiful dresses. Wants to make them look good enough to eat.

Alice is good at keeping her vows these days -- at least the eating part -- but sometimes when she closes her eyes, the future is like the memory of those early days, and when the vision has run its course she thinks she just maybe might die from how much she misses it.

And those times she's lucky she has Jasper, who understands better than just about anyone else in the family.

Everyone, bar maybe Rosalie, seems to be a little bit in love with Bella Swan, which Alice finds more charming than everyone else does. Bella is awkward under all the attention, and Alice imagines her in the future -- groomed to expect it -- and it's not half as charming as Bella now.

Bella would not look good with the bright red slicked lips of Alice's fantasies, which is unfortunate. Her sharp-boned feet, awkward and knuckly and charming as the rest of her, however, would be greatly improved with the shine of candy-colored polish.

Bella would wiggle her toes back and forth, peering down to look at the reflection of the light off the polish -- red in Alice's mind's eye, but Bella would be equally fascinated by any jewel-tone, and sometimes Alice knows it could be the novelty of deep purple or even blue that catches Bella's eye. Her skinny toes will skate past each other, and Bella will move her foot up to the seat of the chair to peer down more closely at Alice's handiwork, her ankles shifting beneath her pale skin.

It's perfect, of course, this image of Bella slowly blossoming, in shorts and a too-baggy tee-shirt, her knees knobby and coltish, the picture of an innocent girl, and her feet all done up like she's some sort of foot model -- a woman's feet.

Alice doesn't think it will be difficult to make the image -- not a vision, just a thought -- into the future after all.

"Is it weird?" Bella asks, out of nowhere, from the other side of the dressing room door.

"Is what weird?" Alice asks, leaning over to peer at Bella's bare feet, toes curling into the carpet of the small room -- just to make certain she's still there. She hasn't had any visions, but sometimes Bella is impulsive.

There's a pause, and Alice hears the slick noise of Bella biting her own lip in thought. She's about to interrupt, to encourage Bella to continue, but is beaten to the punch by Bella herself. "Being with Jasper," Bella says. There's another pause before Bella adds, "Because he can, like, mess with your emotions. And stuff," she finally finishes, drifting off somewhat lamely.

The cloth of the dress Alice picked out for Bella rustles, muffled a bit by the door, and Alice considers for all of two seconds before she says, "Not really," which isn't entirely what she means.

"It would be weird. If Edward could read my mind," Bella says. Then, "I don't think this is going to fit."

"Sure it is," Alice replies. "I told you I saw us buying it."

"Maybe we bought it for you," Bella says, sharply.

Alice rolls her eyes. "It did come in bigger sizes, you know. Here, let me see."

And when the door swings open, Bella half in her dress, the zipper down the back undone, exposing what seems like miles of warm, pale, lightly freckled skin, Alice only finds herself thinking that if Edward were here, he'd pop a blood vessel somewhere important.

Alice steps into the small space, the door swinging back shut behind her, and she lifts her hands to situate Bella properly in front of the mirror. "This is going to fit fine," Alice says. Bella shivers a little at Alice's fingers along her shoulders, and a part of Alice realizes that if Edward doesn't do something soon, Alice might have to.

Their eyes meet for a moment in the mirror, and Alice has to smile, doesn't want to scare the girl off, scare her back to no one but Edward, who's far too scared himself, or worse, to La Push and the werewolves. "Here, suck in a bit," Alice says, and drops her hands to work the zip up along Bella's back, more slowly than she really needs to, but given Bella's propensity for accidents, it's best Alice leave as little chance as possible of her skin getting caught in the zipper.

"So it's really not weird?" Bella asks again, and when Alice looks up from Bella's back, zipper still only partway done up, Bella is looking away from the mirror, down and off to the side, at her jeans, tee-shirt, and hoodie rumpled on the floor of the dressing room. Alice isn't certain if she's uncomfortable with the question or the dress.

"It's really not weird," Alice replies, with as much certainty as she can muster, focusing on getting the dress zipped. "Think about it; sometimes I get upset about things I can't change, or want things I shouldn't want, and Jasper is" Alice trails off. "He's good with that."

"Do you think Edward will be able to read me, too? If I change?" Bella asks.

Alice is no longer taken aback utterly by the visions she gets of Bella as a vampire: in some ways altogether unfair -- too beautiful and powerful by half -- and in other ways almost a disappointment, because so much of Bella is that she's all potential, all awkward teenager who could become anything. The image was startling at first, but Alice is used to it now, finds it almost reassuring, because then Bella will be there and Alice won't find her half as --

"I don't think so," Alice says. "But he can read all of us and he still loves us, so don't worry about it so much. He's a big boy. He can handle whatever it is you're so worried about."

Bella looks up, back over her shoulder to meet Alice's gaze, and says, "You really think so?" with a tentative smile.

"I really think so," Alice says as reassuringly as she can, then pulls back, cutting off the tension she's feeling as quickly and suddenly as she can bear. "You're right, we should go up a size. I'll go get it for you."

Alice pulls herself out of the dressing room and lets the door shut behind her again. She's three steps from the door before she says, "And don't go running off on me again, yeah?"

Bella just laughs; the thought hadn't even crossed her mind.

Alice wishes Jasper were here.

"You shouldn't tease yourself," Jasper will say, just before he presses kiss after kiss across her collarbones.

"I know. I know," Alice will reply, burying a hand in Jasper's hair. She will tug just a little, not because she has any reason to other than that he likes it. "It's not really like that. We're friends."

"I can feel it, pouring off you. You're wound so tight," he will say. His fingers will skate along her sides, light touches in contrast to the way he'd rather be manhandled. Alice is never certain if he's so gentle with her because he knows she likes it soft and sweet most of the time, or because he just thinks he should, because he's a gentleman. She doesn't want to ask and ruin the whole surprise, though.

She will tighten her hand in his hair and pull his mouth from her skin. His mouth looks swollen, too dark against his pallor. Jasper has been, is, and will probably always be gorgeous. Alice notices that his eyes will be light, perhaps he has just returned from a hunting trip. She almost likes him better when his eyes are near black, just before he leaves, needy for anything.

"I can't take it with you and Edward being like this, Alice," Jasper will say, his words coming out in a gasp, and Alice still will not have let go of his hair. "You keep picking at it and it's never going to heal."

"This is how it's always going to be," Alice will reply.

And Jasper will say "Let me" like he's not sure what Alice will let him do to her, even though he knows that the answer is "anything he wants to."

Instead, she will just say, "Please."

Bella takes a bite of a French fry, then says, "Do you ever think you and Jasper are going to get tired of each other?"

"He is a bit predictable," Alice offers with a knowing smile.

They're sitting at a table in the food court and Bella is working her way through a small fry disastrously slowly. Alice can't stop watching her eat, doing this deliciously human thing. Edward told her, long ago, that Bella had asked if she could watch him hunt, so Alice's own fascination with Bella taking the tiniest bites out of her fries is not something she's going to feel ashamed of. It's a perfectly natural curiosity. Besides, Bella hasn't seemed to notice yet.

But now Bella is frowning, and saying, "That's not what I mean."

"I haven't foreseen it, if that's what you mean," Alice says.

"Have you foreseen me and Edw--"

"It changes. A lot."

"Oh," Bella says, and reaches for another fry. "Because I keep changing my mind? About stuff."

"Yeah."

"What happens? If he doesn't change me?" Bella asks, and Alice notices that Bella doesn't ask if I'm not changed.

Which is remarkably perceptive of her. Jasper says she wants it so badly, at least when she's not around her wolf, that he can practically taste her desire for the kind of lives they have. He says this offhandedly, but Alice knows he's ambivalent about it -- not angry like Rosalie, but uncertain about it. If Edward won't, Alice will, just like everything else.

Instead, Alice just says, "He will. Don't worry about it." Because if she's playing the odds, they are in favor of it being Edward whose venom snakes through Bella's bloodstream.

Bella doesn't look especially consoled, so Alice grabs her hand, ignoring the three fries left on the tray, and says, as seriously as she can muster, "I'm bored and I need shoes."

She is painting Bella's toenails -- dark red at Bella's insistence -- Bella's warm feet keep shifting in Alice's hands, and Alice is certain that Jasper was -- will be -- is right about the tease being a bad idea. Even as badly as Bella needs a friend. Even as much as Alice genuinely likes her, for all her insecurities and naivete.

Bella smells like flowers, but the kind, maybe, that people put into salads. The kind of flowers for eating.

Alice is lucky that she knows Bella is about to start speaking, so she isn't startled when Bella does, and doesn't jump, ruining the polish.

"What if we get married and, um." Bella stops, and Alice looks up at her. Bella is blushing faintly, glancing away when Alice meets her eyes. After a moment, Bella continues. "And it, you know. Isn't any good?"

Alice feigns innocence. "The marriage?" she asks, focusing back on the task at hand.

"The," Bella hesitates again. "You know. The sex."

And Alice wants to laugh, because it sounds so much like the teenage girls in movies, talking about sex and boyfriends, except it's so different at once. She wants to say, meanly, like the kind of knowledgeable friend in those sorts of movies, that it probably will be bad. She loves Edward, but his lack of experience in this department will probably inevitably lead it to be bad. The chastity is part of his appeal, but for Bella it is certainly also a concern.

Instead she says, "You'll learn as you go along, like everybody else." Which is as close as she can come to telling her the truth.

Bella snorts at that, and Alice can only imagine she's rolling her eyes as well. It was sort of a sappy way of putting it. "It's just. It seems like something we should do before we make this sort of commitment." Bella doesn't say it, but Alice hears it; she doesn't mean the marriage, she means the change.

The wet polish on Bella's toenails glistens, and it takes Alice a moment to respond. "I'm sure you've noticed that Edward's a bit old-fashioned about that sort of thing."

"Maybe a bit," Bella says, thick with sarcasm, and Alice laughs a little at that.

"He only has your best interests at heart," Alice replies when she's finished laughing. "He genuinely thinks he's going to hurt you."

"Will he?" Bella asks.

And Edward had asked Alice that last year, but when she looks the answer's no different. "It's about fifty-fifty," she answers, which isn't what Bella wants to hear.

"Well what can I do to make the odds land in my favor then?" Bella's voice is desperate, and Alice doesn't remember being a human teenager, but Jasper and Edward have told her what they're like, needy and aching and now-now-now all the time, either fully convinced they're never going to die, or, more frighteningly, not caring if they do. Bella is like that right now, and it's beautiful. "Seriously, what can I do, because I just think that--"

Alice drops her hold on Bella's foot, and lets her fingers slide up, along the bone at the inside of her ankle, feeling the delicate movement as Bella's foot twitches at the touch.

"What are you doing?" Bella asks, alarmed, but, Alice notes, doesn't pull her foot back.

In response, Alice only hums and drags her fingertips up along the back of Bella's calf. When she blinks, she can see how this is going to go, Bella's body laid out beneath her on the carpet, arching into her touch. Nothing too serious, just a thigh between Bella's and their mouths pressed together. She knows Bella's mouth will be slick, will taste waxy with lipgloss. Her body will be so warm compared to Alice's own.

Bella will try to clutch at Alice's hair, shoulders, waist, will let out needy, gasping hiccups, and finally shudder beneath her, trying to catch her breath.

At first Alice sees streaks of red and thinks, oh no, what am I going to do? But then she notices the mess of Bella's toenails, polish streaking along the skin of her own legs and feet, along the backs of Alice's own legs.

She will do nothing wrong.

Jasper expects it, and it's easier to ask forgiveness than permission with Edward.

All that in a momentary blink, and when her eyes are open again, Alice lets her fingers slip up to Bella's knee, just to hear the start of Bella's noises.