Official Description:

1st Place Winner of Public Vote and Judges Choice in Tales From The Void Contest. A chance discovery on an outpost planet shows the woman with a brilliant mind, how to find her long neglected heart. Sci-Fi, Romance.

Word Count: 7,652

This fic is one of the most perfect examples of fan fiction you will ever read. Alby Mangroves takes the people and aspects that we all know and love from Twilight and creates an utterly original piece of fiction with an entirely fresh plot, world, and characters that will blow your mind.

Bella is a paleontologist, heading a team of scientists as they begin to prepare an almost inhospitable planet for colonization. She and her team uncover a series of anomalies on the planet; the first of which is an electrical current that prevents them from conducting their research in a more traditional manner. So they take precautions and extra care and go underground into a cavern to uncover the unknown.

And that’s where Bella discovers something else under the dust and rock.

Suddenly, there is a slight resistance to the blade. Her eyes are drawn to a flash of something other than dirt and glimmering rock. A small shard protrudes, dirty cream and much too smooth among the rough soil.

Suddenly, it’s stiflingly hot in the still, dank cave.

“Oh my God.”

Bella digs delicately around the shard, uncovering more and more surface area and eventually the unmistakable shape of a bone.

The canon elements incorporated into this gorgeous and riveting story are seamlessly woven throughout, coloring it with beauty and light. Each discovery is a fresh and clever parallel of an aspect from the source material. I was thrilled with every last one.

This story is told in the less than popular (in Twificdom) third-person narrative, but Alby Mangroves crafts this tale in such an engaging and relatable way that I really hope that doesn’t discourage readers. Some writers miss the mark on connecting their readers with their characters with this type of narrative, but it works for this writer. If anything, this style gives the reader an intimate peek into the characters’ emotions.

Lines like this:

Bella tends to his bones as though he’s the patient and she’s the nurse.

Give you a glimpse into her feelings for her subject. She isn’t simply intrigued as a scientist would be by the anomalies she’s found, like the skeleton of a beautiful mystery man and the subsequent arrival of a being that shows itself to her out of the blue; she clearly feels for it.

Bella’s eyes are full of its glimmering skin, so like the diamonds that refract from the rough cathedral ceiling above.

The mysteries and magic slowly unfold as we read, and until we know more about the thing that Bella is irrevocably drawn to–the thing that thrills her and attracts her and is equally drawn to her and her the beat of her heart–we are enchanted by its presence and everything we learn about it.

It knows she found Edward’s reconstructed appearance attractive and has made this body to appeal to her, to put her at ease. It did this for her. It feels like a gift.

Bella knows she should find this disturbing; everything she knows as a human being – and as a woman alone in a dark cave with something stronger than herself – tells her so. Her every hair is standing on end, and she should be running, but the sensible thoughts in her head are much quieter than the deafening, hot pounding of her runaway heart.

The fact is, she has spent weeks aware of this presence, talking to it, acknowledging it. His presence. Edward has been here all along, and she knew it even before she knew him. He is already a man to her, not a rock construct.

He’s Edward to her.

He’s made of the stuff she has spent her life exploring, the ultimate example of life preserved in stone, and she’s awestruck to be able to touch something so beautiful and so completely alien.

There are so many more amazing discoveries, and I could quote this fic all day because it’s one of the prettiest things I’ve ever read, but then I’d be afraid to spoil it for you. Please go read this genuinely beautiful SciFi Twific and leave some love for Alby Mangroves. You’ll be more than glad you did!