onceuponacomm | EPILOGUE

Epilogue

After all is said and done, in the wake of the void and sprinting through one final door.

You come out into light. Sunlight actually, a backyard in what appears to be a typical suburban town, if you're familiar with those. The sun shines cheerfully overheard, blissfully unaware of what everyone has went through. And this is everyone, as faces you haven't seen in weeks tumble out in one pile from a basement door.

Happy Saturday, everyone.

There's plenty of reunions and catching up to do, but you've utterly left Aira Niluc behind you after seven long weeks. And through the window of the house which looks like it has seen a better seen better days is one wall mural that reads "And they all lived Happily Ever After".

[[ Happy Golden End everyone, you've earned it! There's still the matter of sorting out where to next, but everyone is whole and alive and without button eyes. Using the knowledge from the object Phil had and the beldam's magic, they can also now world hop only one side effect...the portal that opens to everyone else's worlds here? Is made entirely of pixie dust. Everyone's powers will also restore fully over the course of the next few hours. ]]

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Not in recent years.

[ He is a very dignified very important man and those don't have time for trees. ]

But I did it a lot when I was younger. They're good places to hide out and read in.

[ As a young teenager McGillis spent a lot of time trying not to be found, though really, more often than not he'd have Carta and Gaelio climb up with him anyway.

So really, now that they're free and absolutely everything has gone to shit for McGillis personally, why not sit in a tree with one of the people he actually wants to be around?

The tree probably doesn't deserve his weight, but at least McGillis hasn't forgotten how to climb. Jack better not fall as the branches sway some while he seeks out a good spot. ]

Ha-ha, there is no expiration date on such things, no matter what others say.

[Why be so dignified and important, when you can be undignified and important and still get the job done? Maybe that's the difference between them! Or maybe it is just that Jack spends entirely too much time in trees and not heeding proper anything.

It's true, though: trees are wonderful places to hide. It's something he's remembered of late, even if he can hang out in trees any old time. Well, it's not as important anymore, because people keep being in trees with him -- it's both nice and kind of alarming when the tree creaks and sways.

He lets out a little shout of laughter and hugs the trunk of it until McGillis is more or less settled; he has fallen out of trees and while it's not far, he kind of wants to stay in this one! For one, seeing McGillis in a tree is--]

I've never seen such a sight! This is almost worth being back for on its own. [just, also patting the tree, there, there] Though I don't think we are very hidden.

[ That laughter is nice, if McGillis is honest with himself - which recently, he's preferred not to be. Being honest with himself was easy when that self wasn't at odds with his core beliefs and now... now it's all a mess and he's going to need a few weeks.

But it is nice, making somebody laugh by being himself without pretense and simply being with Jack again the way they used to in Aira Niluc. He won't ever understand Jack and nobody could threaten to call their relation deep when there is truly nothing he actually knows about Jack, but... this isn't bad, it never was, and maybe it never will be. Huh. ]

Hmh, that seems to be the garden owner's failing. The suburbs are not known for the most majestic - or even stable - greenery. But we'll make do, that seems to be what most of these days are going to be about now.

[It is strange, indeed, to come out the other side of death and destruction and two world bosses(!) and somehow -- not have much change on the surface of it, as though they might have conducted all of their very serious meetings as caporegimes sitting directly in a tree. It's not as comfortable physically as the couch even for extreme napping but--

It really has been only a week, though technically and not-so-technically it has been more action-packed and felt rather longer than any of the other weeks they've spent here. A Week, then.

Jack masters himself a little and brushes a few leaves out of his hair, and contemplates the foliage rather than anything else.]

Is that what this is? A suburb? It is a little bit of a letdown to realize that the Beldam has better decorating choices than most of this world... [whatever world this is!!!] But we'll always make do! She was rather stingy, anyway -- all her workers stopped listening to her, it seems.

[That and she was totally stingy with wishes?? Not that he was there for the majority of that haggling or anything, but y'know.]

I do wonder if she could have fulfilled our requests in the first place. It's been doubtful from the start but not to find out even until the bitter end...

[ It's kind of ironic. None of them will ever know what they've truly been killing each other for. Even the Beldam power that has become innate to them, pulsing inside their cores, won't be able to conclusively answer what the full and whole creature might have been able to do. ]

... It seems as though some of her power has flowed into those here -- quite an interesting property of her defeat, given that I don't believe the one tasked with overseeing the dead had such an effect when we pushed her into the void.

[The real kicker is that even those of the dead, with only a fraction of whatever powers have splashed over, are capable of far more than anyone he's known in his world save -- perhaps -- for the Abyss itself. The full extent of it all remains to be seen... but all the same.

With a small impish flick of his fingers he opens a tiny test portal just above McGillis' head, stealing a few leaves away and raining more than a little pixie dust onto him. Whoops?

It closes in a flash as though running away before McGillis can successfully look up.]

... Truthfully, it never seemed all that likely to me that she could grant a wish like mine; that which every power in my world could not even come close to doing. But it was an interesting experiment, all the same, just being here. [maybe his mischief is a cover for the laughing resignation in his words, the quick flicker of something flatter] Though, we were only able to see the final fight, where she had evidently already given up all pretense.

I imagine she must have tried with trickery first, she who set up all of this elaborate game and crawled into people's dreams. Did she?

[ McGillis startles at the glitter cascade falling all over him and runs a hand through his hair as if he could shake it out that way - the effort is, of course, entirely futile. This is definitely the worst part of all their future ability uses, so maybe it's best to get used to it right now already... Ah... ]

She did. She offered to return some of your number, only the ones who hold the most relevance to some of the living. She'd let us go, fulfill our wishes and give back those loved ones... In turn, she'd eat the rest of you.

[ Very much including Jack, though that probably comes as very little surprise to the man himself. ]

In order to stall, we tried to test her ability to follow through... it didn't go as planned.

[ And if Jack didn't see that part and the reason why it failed... that's all the better! Anyway! ]

... she also said she'd teach people how to make beds and I admit that part was amusing.

EPILOGUE

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