so sweet and such a relief that B&E managed to keep a conversation going during the bonfire - I was worried they'd have a lot of stilted stop-starts and not actually talk :)

Well out of all of that, I'm truly relieved that Bella isn't trying to push Edward away - they both need the piece of 'heaven' they've been carving out for themselves and each other. It's nice to see them both fighting for it :)

hehe had quite a good laugh at Charlie's "talk" with Bella, especially Sue being in the background just letting it unfold :)

aww I was feeling for James by the end of that too, and I'm just so used to wanting to smack him upside of the head (or more). It sounds like he's really grown up over the time Bella's been away and growing up herself along with Ben.

And as Edward seems to recognise, James had to do a lot of that completely solo, without the support of family and possibly not so many friends either?

It'll be interesting to see how things are in the epilogue assuming we're getting a couple of future glimpses?

It's been a great story, and a much stronger Bella at the end of it all :)

uh oh!! Edward's beaten and bleeding, and Bella's potentially worse... AND they're separated from each other in the middle of that storm? sheesh.. cliffhanger almost literally there since they are at the base of one ;)

Argh! The moment they were heading into that cave I started getting paranoid they'd miss a plane or ship or something... I'm kind of surprised they haven't tried to "build" some kind of signal on the island yet. Something that would be obviously unnatural for search-parties to find. But then again, their access to tools and such has been very limited, and they really haven't done much exploring at this stage.

Looking forward to B&E sorting a few of those things out though!! :)

ahh so close - but then as you've said, most planes wouldn't be able to do much but fly on by.

Edward continues to be such a sweetie... I'd worry he's setting the bar too high for himself, but he'll have access to more tricks, bells and whistles when he & Bella return to civilisation. So he should be ok :)

Well it's a happy family reunion for the Cullens - but oh geez, pick up a phone or something Edward and give Bella a call already!! He's just digging himself an even bigger hole and it's even worse now that we can see he's at least thinking about the mistakes... sigh... hope he doesn't delay so long that he loses Bella all over again :S

I'm very interested to see where this goes next... wondering if Bella will meet the wolves via Jacob, or one of the Cullens first?

hehehe love Alice :)

gee with a Change like that, it's really no wonder Bella's been so nervous about the Cullens, on top of the odds being against her numbers-wise :S

Looking forward to everyone's reactions to the story now - hoping Edward doesn't make any faces that leads Bella to believing he hates/distrusts her!!

I'm happily surprised that Edward confessed to so much of his feelings and curiosities already :)

Hopefully Bella doesn't take too long to accept it... although she has had quite a bit going on in a short space of time... and even if vampire brains can track more than humans, sorting through the emotions is still complex and time-consuming. It must be, since even the canon-vamps take so long to act on those more "human" emotions than their instinctive predatory ones. Part of having to separate the person from the beast, and then make sense of it all on top of that, I guess?

Looking forward to more B&E time :) [although certainly not opposed to the rest of the family hehe]

The wolves are about to be surprised with Bella's presence and control, I think.