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Myth [Into Dust Epilogue]
#1
Each night, when I go to sleep, I die. And the next morning, when I wake up, I am reborn.
-Mahatma Gandhi

----------

It was only a few minutes later when the others returned to the cabin: Serafine and Pan and Justin rushing together through the front door, and Jim limping out of the forest behind them. The Cultist’s time distortions drained away once the effects were no longer necessary, but his paradox-inflicted wounds would take longer to heal. An irony perhaps, that he’d been the only one among them to return injured, but his sacrifice had been the thing that had turned the battle in their favor.

When Justin pushed through to the living room, he took in the state of those present – that they were each alive and (physically) unharmed. More than likely it was someone else who asked the questions (What happened? Are you alright?) He was too busy staring at Leah. At the tiny seedling in her palm. Gazing uncomprehendingly as he took in the sight and the feel of her.

Because the Leah they’d known was not the girl who sat before them now. Her fractured, uncontrolled destructive energy had transformed itself into something new. What had once been the embodiment of entropy and decay was now a thing of balance. Cyclical. Life, death and rebirth. The end of things, and the beginning.

Before he’d died, John had told them they were too late. That there was nothing they could do to stop what was to come. Had he been wrong? Had they altered the course of fate? Or had the end of this story been written long before it had even begun? Maybe it had never been a question of will versus destiny. Maybe each of them – Shelby, Jai, Brogan, Jim and Serafine, Pan and Annie, Shoshannah and the others – maybe they had each been right and wrong in equal measures, and the vast cycle which they’d all found themselves a part of was greater and more complex than they could imagine. Or maybe it was just a simple matter of a shattered girl who’d found the strength to begin to heal.

None of them would ever know the answer to that question. Perhaps it didn’t matter. Perhaps the question itself was moot. They would each believe what they wanted to believe.

----------

Afterwards – after Annie had finally joined them at the cabin and they’d all had time to process what had happened – she and Justin left to return to the macabre scene at the clearing where they’d confronted the Nephandi. Even in the wake of an event that could only be described as a miracle, there was still grief. Still trauma. Still the bodies of the dead to be cared for. Unknown men and women who’d had names and families and hopes and dreams of their own. Innocent people whose last moments on earth had been the stuff of nightmares. Perhaps it was some small measure of comfort to those yet living that they’d managed to save the lives of many, many more. But probably not - and that was alright. A person could feel grateful and guilty in the same breath. That was often the way of things, with violent conflict. And the lives of those people – the ones they didn’t know, the ones who’d died – they mattered.

Maybe others went with them, or maybe they went alone. Either way, when they got to the clearing, they found that someone else had arrived before them. Three others whose names and faces they didn’t know, but who carried the resonance of patterns and clarity and technological vision. One of them – a tall, dark-skinned woman – pointed her gun at them and said, “Thank you for what you’ve done. Now please… go, before I change my mind.”

Behind the perfectly put-together cool of her demeanor, they could hear the sound of something breaking. A weary, restrained grief. (So they were human after all.)

So the Verbena turned and went back the way they came, leaving the technocrats to do what they did so well. And if any others had joined them and thought to voice an opposition, they would not be given an alternative.

----------

The next day, they left the cabin.

Days passed. And Leah did not return to the person she had been. She was still human – still flawed (still a sixteen year old girl.) She still became angry or sad. And it was clear that in many ways she was still heavily scarred. One could not simply snap their fingers and wash themselves clean of their experiences. But what Brogan had predicted was true (if in a different manner than he’d meant it.) She had become her true self. Not a being of unchecked destruction, but a human girl. A girl with the same potential for great and beautiful (and terrible) things that all of the Awakened possessed.

A funeral was held at the chantry for the mages who had been lost. Jai Khan. Rebecca Howe. William Parker. Lisa Eddison. Apollo Lux (known to his family as Jack Pierce.) Shelby Harrison.

Jake was there. As were other family and friends of the cabal, both Consors and Awakened. Pan, Shoshannah and the others were invited. It was their choice if they wished to attend.

Leah, though, was not there. She watched from a distance and cried for the people whose lives had been ended at her hands. And she did not return until the guests had gone their separate ways.

Not long after the funeral, Pan would find an envelope waiting for him on his desk. Inside it was a key to the chantry house, along with the pass-code for the library and a letter written in Annie’s rough scrawl.

You’ll have to forgive me for not saying goodbye. I’ve never been any good at it. I’m taking Leah back to Texas with me. She said she can’t be here anymore, and I guess I understand that.

Look after the house while I’m gone. I better not find the place trashed when I visit.

You’ve got my number, if you need anything.

-Annie


And whoever visited the chantry would find this: a single folded piece of paper that said only,

Thank you for giving me the chance to live.

----------

Found yourself in a new direction
aeons far from the sun
can you come? would they come to greet you?
let you know you're not the only one

Can't keep hanging on
to all that's dead and gone
if you built yourself a myth
you'd know just what to give
unto your lives
oh, let the ashes fly

help me to name it
help me to name it


-Beach House, "Myth"
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