http://www.fanfiction.net/s/5562128/1/River_Dam
http://adifferentforest.com/Fiction/Default.aspx?Chapter=864
Official Description: Support Stacie Auction Fic to be continued on A Different Forest: Edward bides him time in Forks counting the days til he can leave the sleepy town forever. But fate halts his departure, and he must learn to see Forks as a home instead of a prison. AH E/B
This story’s prompt comes from this song:
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zAUyAogHtYk]
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AccioBourbon says: Like almost everyone in the Twilight fanfic world, I’ve been a fan of jennyflyrock’s and jandco’s writing for a long time. I’ll willing to bet that they have inspired a lot of writers, including me, to try writing fan fiction ourselves. So when Kassiah asked me to write a recommendation for their collaboration, River Dam, I had to think about it for about .005 seconds.
River Dam is based on Bruce Springsteen’s 1980 song, “The River,” which was the prompt Jenny was given by a winner in last summer’s Support Stacie auction. Like the song, the story deals with the struggle to make the best of your life when your dreams have been yanked out from under you. But River Dam goes a step further, asking us to consider whether the life we’ve always wanted is really better than the one we end up actually living. There is a lyric from the song that, for me, is echoed throughout River Dam: “Is a dream a lie if it don’t come true?”
For most of Edward’s young life, his dream has been to see the world that exists outside of Forks. To Edward, Forks represents stagnation, and a job at Newton Construction is what most of the local guys call success. Having decided early on that he will not live his father’s and his brother’s lives, he works and studies hard, and as a result, he will be the first in his blue-collar family to go to college. But also he’s been saving his money since he was young kid, intent on traveling for the summer before he begins college.
When Bella Swan moves to Forks at the beginning of her junior year, Edward is smitten, but his plans for a life outside of Forks don’t change; instead, they just grow to include Bella. On their first real date, she he explains to her:
“…I’ve already told you that I’m gonna shake the dust of this little town and be somebody someplace else.”
Part of that quote should sound very familiar if you’re a fan of a certain Frank Capra movie starring Jimmy Stewart … a movie that is also about deferred dreams.
His college acceptance letter in hand, Edward and Bella spend a blissful spring in love, and it’s all easy, the laughing, and sexual discovery, and all of that possibility. But condoms have been known to break, and right after Edward’s graduation, they learn that Bella is pregnant. We spend the rest of River Dam watching as these two are forced to make grown-up decisions and then live them out.
River Dam’s Edward is one you will easily recognize, the Edward who lives in his head, eloquent in his both his thoughts and his words. And while this Bella shares traits with canon Bella — she is empathetic, especially where Edward is concerned, and philosophical – she’s also a Bella upgrade: feisty and entirely capable of expressing her needs, especially as her pregnancy progresses and she is forced to grow up much faster than a 17 year-old girl should have to.
I won’t bother telling you about the rich characterizations, and the very real, honest emotions, and the strong sense of setting and place — this is jennyfly and jandco, after all. You won’t find trend-setting, edgy prose, melodrama, or eleventh-hour heart-fail in River Dam. What you will find is story-telling at its best.
WindyCityWonder says: Everyone remembers their big city dreams. Edward Cullen had his planned and perfected. Anywhere but Forks. And anything but everything that was in Forks. He scrimped and saved when he could have spent. He knew he was bigger than the Pacific Northwest Podunk and its familiar forests and neighboring towns.
The only good thing he seemed to find in Forks was Bella. She was privy to his plans, and soon included.
“I kissed her eyelids one at a time and then the tip of her nose and then her lips. “Bella, these are all jobs that don’t exist in Forks. All I mean is that whatever you do, I just want you to be free of this place.”
She closed the distance between us in the goosedown and nylon and wool-lined bag just so she could kiss me. “I don’t hate it here as much as you do, Edward,” she whispered at my chin.
“What’s so great about it?”I asked while we wrestled gently. I tried to get my hands under her waistband, but she managed to hinder me– first by putting her hands in my way, and then when I started to break through by placing her tits in my way—to the point where I forgot my original goal.
“This is where I met you.”
But an unexpected twist in fate forces Edward to reevaluate his future. Things never work out the way we plan, do they?
For thirteen of the fourteen chapters of River Dam, I remained in the exact same position. Indian style. One hand on my chest, occasionally reaching down for the sole purpose of scrolling. Other hand somewhere on my face, pulling back hair, hovering over my mouth, biting the rough edges of barely-there fingernails, or fanning my eyes from tears like it would do one damn bit of good. And I’m about 95% sure that during those fourteen chapters, I only took an estimated fourteen breaths. Those necessary inhales were ONLY pulled while hovering over the “Next” link at the bottom of the page.
To put it lightly, River Dam is sublime.
The words. The story. The characters. The growth. The grip. The guts. The… guhhhhhh.
There’s love, but it’s not a love story. It’s bigger than that. There are life changing decisions, but it’s not a coming-of-age story. It’s deeper than that. There’s drama, but only in the way life is authentically dramatic and real.
The writing is quick, beautiful, alluring. Painted pictures that invade all your senses. Beautiful precision that packs a powerful punch.
River Dam offers a bit of just about everything. Not an easy feat, but accomplished with apparent ease in this case. ♥
Kassiah says: I love jandco and jennyfly‘s writing. I usually try to stay away from angst until it’s complete, but I somehow got sucked in to this story. And I have to say, it’s absolutely beautiful. I love how real it is, how perfectly they’ve captured their emotions. I love how we have non-perfect Edward, trying to be more, and non-canon Bella, standing up for herself. I love the different path that Alice takes. I love all of it.
I brushed long strands of chestnut hair away from her face until I could see her glassy brown eyes that stared at the wall.“Bella.”
I touched the edge of her eyebrow. It felt like feathers. The skin of her cheek was soft as silk and whit
e as paper. I could see the fine blue veins running beneath the flesh, and my fingertips traced over them lightly. Over her temple, under her eye. Bella sighed.“I want you to go.”
Her voice took me by surprise.
“You want to be alone right now?” I asked.
“No.” She sat up really fast and wrapped her arms around my waist. “Please don’t leave me.”
I hugged her close to me, and she felt small, and I was confused, but she squeezed me so tight that it just felt right.
I just held her there for a few minutes in the quiet before I spoke again. “What do you mean, Bella?”
“Ithinkyoushouldgotoschoollikeyouplanned.”
And while my brain was sorting the jumble into distinct words, Bella’s body shivered and crumbled and broke apart, and I found myself frantically scrambling to hold together all the big parts while my hand reached to gather the little pieces before they got lost under the bed or something.
She sobbed against my shirt, and I squeezed her tight, as if that would cement the bits – both large and small– together. And I knew I couldn’t go and leave her broken. I couldn’t leave this scared girl to deal with a town full of finger-pointing and and whispers while I followed my dreams. She’d resent me. She’d imagine I was meeting leggy blondes and outgrowing her, and my Bella would let her nightmares and the stress of doing all this on her own turn her into not-my Bella, and then where would we be?
I pulled her wet face up, and for the first time since I hadn’t even actually proposed, I kissed her and thought the word fiancée. But that seemed like a silly word.
AccioBourbon and WindyCityWonder definitely told you amazing things about this amazing story. I just wanted to put my two cents in and say that this story is an absolute must-read, and though I’m worried about the emo getting to me, I can’t wait for more.
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