Beyond The Dawn - A Twilight Fan Fiction

Book 1 - Bella - Chapter Three

                                                                                          3

                                                                            "Blurred Vision"

I'd never seen Alice act this way before. Then again, I'd never seen her have this much trouble with her visions. The more she tried, the worse it got; her visions were now frequent, and worse...distorted beyond comprehension. This infuriated her, and rightfully so. She'd always had a hard time seeing Jacob and Renesmee, but as she grew to love Jacob as a member of the family and became more familiar with her niece, she was able to see them a little more clearly, although never perfectly. And since the announcements went out, Alice's blurred vision had taken a turn for the worse.

In the past few days since she'd seen Aro reading the announcement about Jacob and Renesmee, she'd only been able to see the Volturi. Her visions of them had become maddening, blurred often to the point that she couldn't tell Aro from Caius, or Felix from Demetri. Trying to look around them, as she'd once put it, proved worthless as well. She couldn't see us properly either. Whenever she tried to focus on one of us, the images in her head would flicker, and then blur. She'd growl in frustration, only for her visions to involuntarily return to the Volturi. It reminded me of a computer virus, only none of us had a clue as to what was interfering with her ability.

According to Alice, her visions were unsteady, and often nonsensical; she would see Aro staring at the engagement announcement with a smile on his face. Just as quickly as the vision would appear to her, it would blur and distort until she could barely see his face, much less what he was doing. We'd all begun to fear that something was wrong. Unfortunately, none of us could confirm that the Volturi were up to anything sinister. We were blind, and that was the scariest part of the whole thing.

But Alice refused to believe that her abilities were fading or that she couldn't find some way to see what her visions were trying to show her. The constant tension in the house, along with Nessie and Jacob's steady presence only added to the confusion of the visions, so she began to separate herself from the family. To our shock, that meant Jasper too. He would continuously attempt to calm her and, given the state of her visions, he only succeeded in aggravating her more.

So I was stuck staring at Jasper now, unable to look away out of sheer empathy. I knew how he hurt he must have been; I knew the unwanted feeling that plagued him, having experienced it myself long ago. He sat on the couch, looking lost and dejected as Alice held her post beneath a large tree in the front yard. She sat with her knees drawn to her chest and her fingers pressed against her temples. Her eyes were closed, and her face was scrunched up in determined concentration. Nessie stared out of the window in concern at Alice, whom she often called her 'fairy godmother'.

"I think I should spend a few days at the reservation," she frowned.

"Don't even think about it," Edward growled from upstairs, "You're not going anywhere."

"Dad, she can't see because of me," Renesmee complained, standing up.

Edward was in front of her a half second later. "There's more to what's going on with Alice than that minor detail which frankly, really isn't even an issue anymore. The fact remains that we don't know what's happening. We don't know what they're up to. It concerns me that Alice's visions, however distorted, keep pushing her back to the Volturi. We need to stay together."