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Celebrian could see the wheels turning in the girl's mind as they walked together toward the big red truck. Her shoulders were slightly hunched and her posture unconsciously defensive, and her aura, which seemed mostly an unexcitable teal color, was full of little spikes of nervous (and incredulous) green.

"Don't be afraid, Bella," said the Elf comfortingly. "I wasn't at first altogether sure what to make of WIlliam's little indiscretion back there, but he did tell us - my husband and me - that you were familiar with the Cullens and were aware - "

Bella stopped walking and turned so pale that Celebrian thought she could almost see through her skin to the bones underneath. Her face looked thin and hollow, and her too-large brown eyes were overly luminous and full of pain. "Are you all right?" she asked anxiously.

Bella's lips moved, and no sound came out. Celebrian reached tentatively for her thoughts, and to her surprise found them locked away and guarded as by an impenetrable wall. Wondering if the Cullens had taught Bella how to shut her mind, Celebrian opted for simply pulling the girl into her arms and gently rubbing her back. She very much wished then for Elrond's extensive knowledge and power in healing*, for Bella obviously needed it.

"I - I'm sorry," murmured Bella weakly after a moment, clearly embarrassed but also somewhat calmer.

"Don't be," said Celebrian gently. "Will you talk to me about it?"

Bella huffed a short laugh. "I have to go home and feed Charlie."

"I'm not sure you should drive just yet," said Celebrian. "Let me take you, and you direct me."

Bella looked surprised, but she handed her keys over without protest and went around to the passenger's side while Celebrian climbed into the driver's seat and started the car. The engine coughed and spluttered only a very little (but very loudly) before turning over with a roar, and Celebrian turned to Bella. "Directions?" she reminded her.

"Oh yeah," said Bella, and reached for her phone. As soon as she saw the screen, she gasped and her hand went up to her mouth. "Impossible," she whispered.

"What's impossible?" asked Celebrian cautiously.

Bella pressed a few buttons and put the phone to her ear without answering, and Celebrian could clearly hear the automated voice say, "You have one new message," and then the voicemail itself: "Bella, if you check your voicemail, this is Alice, and I'm so sorry for not saying goodbye to you when we left - in fact, I'm sorry for everything, but if you get this message, please, please, please call me back as soon as you get a chance."

Bella hit her callback button as if in a trance, and after a few rings Celebrian heard a voice on the other end of the line. "Bella?" it said cautiously.

"Alice?" croaked Bella, her eyes filling with tears. "Is that you?"

Instantly the phone seemed to explode with noise - Celebrian could hear five other voices in the background all talking almost at once - and over it all came the voice of the aforementioned Alice: "Bella, where are you? You completely disappeared! I can't see you at all right now!"

"You - you can't?" quavered Bella.

"No! You're a total blank, and have been for the last five minutes! Bella, you aren't trying to kill yourself, are you?"

"Uh, no," said Bella completely bewildered under whatever shock had her crying. "I'm sitting in my truck in front of Billy Black's house about to go home. Alice - who's there with you?"

"W-well, most of the family," came the voice of Alice, seeming suddenly rather hesitant. "I - I'm really sorry, Bella, about everything - technically I'm not supposed to be talking to you right now - " ("To hell with it, he's not here to order us around!" said a second female voice that sounded very annoyed) " - in fact, I'm not supposed to be looking for your future - why can't I see you?!"

Looking into her future?! What was this?

"Alice - " Bella sniffled and wiped her streaming eyes. "Alice, is - is he there?" The desperate, pleading note in her voice made Celebrian look at her sharply.

"No, Bella," said Alice, and she sounded very unhappy. "He's gone tracking Victo- "

"Shh, Alice! Don't frighten her!" hissed a third female voice, and Alice trailed off. But even if Bella couldn't hear what was going on in the background, Alice had clearly said enough.

"Victoria?" she asked sitting bolt upright and looking horrified. "He's tracking Victoria? Why?"

"I don't know - he needed something to occupy him and he wouldn't let any of us come with him - "

"Why would he do that?!" cried Bella becoming quite agitated. "It's too dangerous - he could get hurt - "

"Now see what you've done," said a deep male voice. "She won't stop worrying about him until she knows he's stopped."

"Oh, for the love of all life," cried the second female voice. "he left her! Didn't he tell us that he told her he didn't want her and - "

"Bella," said Alice over all the noise. "You have to believe me. I didn't want it to happen this way, none of us wanted this except for Edward - "

"Why we let him boss us around is more than I know," said the second female voice sourly.

"We did as he requested because he sincerely believed that it was best for her, Rosalie," said a second male voice.

"Sometimes I think he doesn't appreciate the depths of his own idiocy," went on Alice. "Don't say it, Carlisle, you know he can be an idiot - "

Carlisle? Carlisle Cullen?

"Alice," Bella seemed to have listened enough. "Do you know if he's all right?"

"Yes, he's fine," said Alice. "He's not doing very well in tracking her, so he's not in any danger, does that make you happy?"

"Yes," said Bella with a deep sigh. "Just as long as he doesn't get hurt."

Teenagers and their melodrama. Celebrian just barely refrained from shaking her head. She now was quite sure by now that this Alice was part of Carlisle's coven, as Billy had told her and Elrond that not only did Bella know the Cullens' secret, she also had to all appearances developed quite an attachment to one of them.

Billy had also confirmed what they'd already heard from Cedric, that the Cullen coven had left quite suddenly in the early autumn, and under rather suspicious circumstances. Apparently Bella had been found lying unresponsive in the woods that surrounded and permeated the tiny town of Forks, which was quite close to the La Push reservation. Billy also knew from Charlie, Bella's father and the chief of police, that Bella had left a note saying that she was going for a walk with Edward that day, and as she did not return that night Charlie had sent out a team to search for her. It was the day after that that the Cullens were discovered to have left the area.

And now Celebrian knew why they had left, if all that she was hearing over Bella's phone was true, and was wondering what exactly this Edward had said (or done) to Bella to leave her in such a state as Samuel Uley, one of the young Quileute men, had eventually found her.

"And you're really okay right now?" asked Alice rather disbelievingly. "This is so unsettling, hearing you talk to me and at the same time not seeing you."

"I'm sorry, I don't know what else to tell you," said Bella. "I'm not even doing anything right now other than talking to you and - holy crow, I almost forgot! I just met two Elves today!"

"Huh?" Alice seemed thrown off balance. "Bella, what are you talking about?"

"You have to see it to believe it," said Bella. "Carlisle would have a field day. But anyway, where are you?"

"In Ithaca, New York," said Alice. "Carlisle's a practicing doctor again and Jasper's going to Cornell. But that doesn't mean we can't come back to Forks."

"Oh, would you?" cried Bella. "You'd really come back?"

"I'm coming back, if no one else does, just to make sure nothing terrible is happening to you," said Alice. "Of course Jasper's coming with me."

"Wait, he is?" said the deep voice in amusement.

"I guess I am," said a voice that Celebrian had not heard speak before and which must have been Jasper's.

"I'm sure we'd all love to go back," said the gentle female voice, the one that had warned Alice not to frighten Bella.

"I'm fine where I am, thank you very much," said the other female voice.

"In fact, I think everyone's going to end up coming back, eventually," said Alice. "It's hard to tell - everybody's gone so blurry suddenly! I don't like this at all. I'm going to get some plane tickets, and hopefully we'll be back as soon as we can - and please, please keep me posted, will you? Let me know you're alive?"

"Yeah, okay," said Bella, and the call disconnected with a click. Bella pulled the phone down from her ear and stared at it.

"That was the Cullens, then?" said Celebrian.

"How would you know?" asked Bella suspiciously.

"I had heard that Carlisle and his coven had left the peninsula, and that you had known them well before they had gone," said the elleth. "And I heard everything that they said, you know."

"How? My phone wasn't on speaker, was it?" asked Bella.

"Of course it wasn't," said Celebrian. "Elvish hearing, you know." Thank heaven for Ronald and for publishing agencies! "By the way, are you going to direct me to your house or not?"

"Holy crow, it's almost five!" cried Bella. "Charlie's going to think I've left him to starve. Okay, I don't remember the way too well, so. . ." she opened her rudimentary GPS program and mapped the directions to her home, and Celebrian revved the engine and began the drive.

"So you're an elf," said Bella after a few minutes of silence.

"Yes," said Celebrian. "I'm an Elf."

"So Tolkien didn't make you up?" asked Bella.

"No, dear," said Celebrian. "Because we don't often write our stories down, every thousand years or so we ask someone to write them down for us. Ronald Tolkien had the idea of publishing them as stories that people would want to read. There aren't too many legends and tales in general that are very far from being true, you know."

Bella arched her eyebrows. "Like mermaids?"

"Certainly."

"And dragons?"

"Of course."

"And unicorns?"

"Yes, indeed."

"Fairies too?" - rather skeptically.

Celebrian laughed. "Yes, Bella, fairies too. They're not at all impressive, but they're certainly real."

Bella shook her head. "Wow. Just. . . wow."

"Let's see, what else?" mused Celebrian with amusement. "Hum - Dwarves, of course, and Hobbits, and centaurs, and goblins, and giants, and ogres, and vampires, and werewolves, and pixies, and gryphons, and House-Elves, and winged horses, and skin-changers - "

"Skin-changers?" Bella seemed confused.

"Haven't you read The Hobbit?" asked Celebrian arching her eyebrows. "Don't you remember Beorn?"

"Beorn - oh, that's right," said Bella. Then suddenly she gasped and her eyes widened. "Wait!" she said. "Wait - there've been stories floating lately about these huge bears being seen in the area - in the open, sometimes - are those actually people like - "

"Like old Beorn's kind," said Celebrian. "You're right, Bella."

Some thought passed behind her eyes which made her shiver slightly and lapse into silence for the rest of the ride. Eventually Celebrian pulled up in front of the small, one-story home and handed Bella her keys, and both of them climbed down out of the truck. "Thanks for driving me," said Bella, and walked up to the front door, where she paused as the obvious suddenly occurred to her, "Wait - how are you getting back to Billy's house?" she asked, turning around.

"Well, as it happens," said Celebrian. "Elrond and I were actually coming to Forks anyway, to visit a friend of ours - I don't suppose you know a Cedric Montgomery?"

"Cedric?! He goes to my school!" cried Bella. "Does he know about - you know - "

"Yes, he knows," said Celebrian. "We'll leave it at that for the present. Good evening, Bella." And without further delay, she Disapparated with a loud crack, leaving behind a rather stunned Bella.

*I'm not sure if Elrond's knowledge in healing extends beyond the strictly physical to the mental and emotional, but it seems rather odd to me that it wouldn't.

Well, these last three chapters were certainly a surprise! I'd been stuck at this point in the story for months and months, and suddenly the inspiration hits me in waves!

A Tolkien reference! dances I thought it was time I put one in, seeing as I have Elves actually living in the modern day and everything. Makes everything quite convenient, really, because instead of having to give long, complicated explanations, Celebrian can just say, "Do you recall reading such-and-such?"

About Celebrian being able to Apparate: This was a stretch, I know, especially as in my headcanon every species - Human, Elf, House-Elf, Dwarf, Goblin, Hobbit, etc. - has its own specific kind of magic, inimitable by any other species. (That is, incidentally, why none of the Elves in this story will be performing Summoning Charms, Switching Spells, etc.) But it seems to me that all the sentient beings in Harry Potter can Apparate - that is, travel instantaneously - albeit with different limitations.