I can't thank you all enough for sticking with me. It's only taken four and a half years. Love to all of you and a Happier New Year, we all need it, no?

Epilogue

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Dear Mrs Hale,

May I call you Alice? We have not truly had the pleasure of knowing each other except for some pleasantries here and there about town over the years, so I shall defer to your wishes on the matter. As for me, you should know I feel that if we ever had the opportunity to be properly acquainted with one another, we would have been great friends. Alas it was not to be.

By the time this letter reaches you, you will no doubt have been visited by the honorable Mr Jenks who as I am certain you are aware, is a notary of some renown and now based most conveniently in Forks. I had tasked him with making the visit to you personally, after ensuring of my departure to live with my Grand Aunt in Pennsylvania. I thought that my absence and the lack of obligation on your part would make it easier for you to accept my gift, such as it is.

When my father died, I knew I would not return to live in the house he built, and in truth I thought to simply let the forest reclaim it, but I was reminded that you and your husband had fallen on hard times and it seemed like such an unconscionable waste not to give you something I no longer require myself.

Do as you wish with everything in the house. I have all that I need right here.

The wisest and best man I ever knew left me with one piece of advice which I shall now pass on to you, in the hope that you take it to heart, as I did. Only be happy.

Yours in sisterhood,

Isabella Swan

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The hum of the sea endlessly breaking against rocks. Gulls squawking overhead. Children playing, teasing each other and shouting. Isabella could count on her hand the number of times she had been to the beach, but the sounds were unmistakable. She stretched beneath the bed furs and listened for a while.

Wrapping a thick woven blanket about her shoulders, she crawled out of the makeshift camp Edward had built and out onto the small ledge overlooking the beach. Edward was there, the collar of his coat up around his ears, arms wrapped around his legs.

Isabella sat beside him, curling her legs under her. His eyes were closed, lashes scuffing his cheeks. Wordlessly, he put an arm around her shoulders and gathered her into the warmth of his body, kissing her temple. It had been a few days since they'd left Edward's home and his beard had begun to grow back in, the stubble scratchy on her face. Isabella smiled.

"Good morning," Edward murmured into her hair, voice scratchy and rough with sleep, and a frisson of want sizzled inside her. God, what he did to her, just the sound of his voice, the wide spread of his hands.

"Yes it is," Isabella said, and turned until she could kiss him.

When they came apart, Edward's eyes were dazed. He looked her over, from the flyaway hair escaping from her braid, to the tips of her fingers, red with cold, holding the blanket to her chest. She waited for him to speak, but he was silent, the want on his face raw and desperate and naked. He swallowed roughly and looked away, casting his eyes over the grey, roiling sea.

Isabella rested her head against his shoulder and let him be.

"What is the matter with those trees?" She said, pointing, after a few quiet minutes had passed. Over on a hill beyond, a copse of tall cedars had been partially stripped of their bark, shiny blond wood peeking through in long stripes, from root to canopy.

"Nothing at all. The Quileute harvest the bark that way. They cure it and prepare it, I don't know how, exactly. They weave it into baskets and such."

"Do you think they might teach me?"

"Of course!" Edward said, grinning. "We cannot rely on their generosity to stretch much further, you know. We'll need to pull our own weight if we're going to stay."

"Are we?" Isabella said, quietly. "Going to stay?"

There was that vulnerable look again, etched into the creases between Edward's brows.

"Would you?"

"I would. I am."

Edward huffed a laugh, happy, she thought, and something else too. Relieved, perhaps.

"They won't come here?" She did not have to explain whom she meant.

"No. They've tried to, in the past. They wanted these lands, wanted to pack the Quileute off to a reservation. Soon learned it was too difficult to access this place and gave up. They won't come here, not even if they thought to look for us at all."

A man came walking up from the beach towards them, his long black hair flicking like wings in the breeze. He shouted something, gesticulating, and Edward laughed hard and sudden like the pleasure of it had been surprised out of him, shaking with it.

"What did he say?"

"That's Shĩ-Pa, from House Black," Edward said, once he had calmed enough to speak. "He is the son of the Quileute Chief. He is asking what's wrong with my face. He says he never saw me smile before and I look like an idiot."

Isabella bit down on her own smile as Shĩ-Pa continued speaking.

"Now he is asking me what name he shall call me now that I am no longer the Cold One."

Isabella's brows drew together, perplexed, and he shook his head, grinning. "They know you here," she said, marvelling at it. "They love you."

Edward pulled her tighter into his chest and took the edges of the blanked from her hands, wrapping it around them both, holding her close. "Shĩ-Pa is my oldest friend. He will make sure that we are made welcome here."

Below them on the beach, children waded through the shallows, driftwood husks littering the sands. The horizon was hazy with morning mist and it seemed as though the whole world had been poured into a drop of amber to preserve the most perfect moment time could spin.

Isabella closed her eyes, pressing it forever into her memory, a flower between the pages of a favorite book.

Fin

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A/N: Thank you so very much for reading.