People ask if I’m Team Jacob or Team Edward. Sometimes I respond I’m Team Carlisle, but most of the time, I say, “I’m team ‘Everybody hold on, grow up, and revisit this decision when you’re all adults.’”
I was a different person at twenty-seven than I was at seventeen. Not in core, fundamental ways, but in little ways that tweaked my understanding of the world and where I fit in it. I fully expect the same will be true at thirty-seven.
I’ve always thought Bella would choose differently if the right situation and the right maturity presented itself. To me, the relationship as it was presented in the saga never truly went beyond infatuation (whether this was due to SM not knowing how to characterize them more maturely or due to true faults in the characters themselves, I don’t know), and so the decision to base all of eternity seemed foolhardy at best.
So when A Different Forest ran another 1,000-word vampfic contest (love those, and love that they keep asking for vampfic!) with the prompt that the fic be set ten years after the end of Eclipse, I knew where I was going with it. What happens when a human changes, and the vampire can’t go with her?
Nothing good.
With “Souls,” I added to the story in the second draft, and I think it ultimately landed at 1,200 words. With “Seventeen,” I decided to keep the final draft at exactly 1,000. It’s a short foray into an AU that never should’ve happened–and which we can be glad did not.
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