Isabella Marie Swan ⌻ "Eve"

Isabella and James spend the summer reacquainting themselves with Earth and its quaint habits like "television" and "recorded music" and "history involving things like World War II and not things like the White Witch". They had books, in Narnia, but only ones it occurred to them to ask for; they can be found filling in the gaps throughout the remainder of the time they spend in Forks, often with one's head on the other's shoulder or one's feet up on the other's knees.

Telling Renée goes better, sort of, than telling Charlie; she cries, but she's less shellshocked, and takes reasonably well to having her adult daughter who happens to be legally and visibly ten (then eleven) around.

Chris migrates herself and James to Phoenix in Isabella's same school district and both ostensible children manage to skip into the sixth grade. This will provide culture and social opportunities with people slightly less... eleven... and also give Isabella an excuse to be unfamiliar to her classmates; someone who knew her before might notice.

They get nearly matching schedules and wade into middle school. It is nightmarishly educational. Being in their mid-twenties gives them some perspective on the entire thing and having each other is an improvement but Aslan's fangs these children.

However, it is through a school person that Isabella discovers a relatively accessible way for them to not get rusty on all their Narnia skills. She promptly joins the Society for Creative Anachronism.

When the party has died down, Isabella, for one, is well and truly exhausted. She explores the palace until she finds a room with a bed in it, and into this bed she flops, still in her clothes and holding her staff and carrying the cordial in her pocket. She sleeps late, because the party kept her up so late and she hadn't really slept the night before; but around noon, she stirs, and gets up, and goes looking for James and wherever her backpack may have got to. The backpack she finds in the great hall where the principal mass of the party was; some enterprising creature took both bags from the battlefield at Beruna up to the castle for them, and she only wishes she knew who it was. She takes her bag to her room and carries James's with her and continues looking for her friend.

The house just northeast of Forks proper is very big, quite abandoned, and really easy to just walk right in if you're of a mind to. There are signs that people have been camping in it while hiking, but currently it is unoccupied by visitors, squatters, or any animals larger than a squirrel. There's been a fair amount of furniture but fewer small possessions left behind: couch, piano, dining table, wardrobe, armchair, kingsized bed. It's in extremely variable states of repair.

Bella is ten. School has let out; she spends one week at the beach with Renée, celebrating, and then from there Renée drives her up to Forks, and drops her off, with many hugs. Charlie picks her up, with some hugs, although not as many; it's not his way. Bella settles in for the summer. It is, if nothing else, cooler up here.