A/N: So, after that EVENTFUL last chapter, here's a taste of what Diego felt after all that remembering and how the herd felt when they heard what Diego said to Sid *sniff* *sniff*

Lol. Anyway, now that that's out of the way, this is the second-to-last chapter, because everything wraps up pretty well in Chapter 11, which I'm already finished with. (Forgive me - whenever I see a new movie or read a new book I really like, I am prone to long rants about where the author/script writer/characters went wrong, what they did right and often write fanfictions for the book/movie in great bursts of inspiration. The day I saw Ice Age 4, I wrote almost four chapters.)

Family.

I forced myself to wrap my mind around the word.

Could we be? Could I be?

Could I trust that deeply again, could I say the words 'I love you' to them the same way I'd once spoken them to Soto?

Could I tell them I didn't mean it? Could I tell them we really were family?

"Sid!" I called. "Sid, wait!" I turned back, looking for him but he was gone.

For the first time in my life since joining the herd, I was alone.

Totally alone. Cut off from the rest of the world.

Isolated.

I swallowed. Hadn't I asked for this? Hadn't I asked for isolation?

I was just getting what I deserved.

A sudden gust of wind blew through, and several snowflakes fell. There was going to be a blizzard tonight.

(Ellie's POV)

Sid came back to us with his head hung low and his shoulders slumped.

He wiped his nose miserably with one finger and said quietly, "He doesn't want anything to do with us, guys."

Shira was gnawing at her lip and Peaches looked saddened.

I patted my daughter's head with my trunk. "This is Diego. He'll come around. I'm sure he will."

"How can he not want anything to do with us?" Sid demanded partly of Shira, but mostly of thin air. "I mean, we survived taking a baby back to his tribe! We survived the ice melting! We survived dinosaurs and who knows what other things down there in the Jungle of Misery, the Chasm of Death and the Plates of Woe! We survived a breaking-up of the continents! We even survived the birth of little Peaches! And we all did it TOGETHER! How can we not want anything to do with us? At all?"

I came over to him and patted him on the back with my trunk. "There, there, Sid. Didn't you hear what I was just saying to Peaches? This isn't like Diego – he'll come around."

About two hours later, a snowstorm hit.

It came on so suddenly none of us saw it coming.

We stayed huddled up in caves, watching the snowflakes fall.

It made Sid dizzy after awhile and he turned away.

Manny and I curled up to go to sleep in one of the caves and I forced my brothers to, too.

If we tried sleeping in the trees tonight, we'd become possum and mammoth-cicles.

As Manny and I watched the snow fall, I was about to drift off to sleep when suddenly I sat up, opened my eyes and turned to my husband. "You know, I just thought of something," I said uneasily. "What about Diego? What if he's out there in that storm?"

"He'll be okay," Manny assured me, but his tone was black; he clearly didn't believe it, either.

I nodded, not at all comforted.

Yet what could we do? The most we could hope for was that it would blow over soon.

Going out in this would be suicidal, even if we were searching for our lost friend.