The Light in His Darkness

Epilogue

He never got over her death. The next few days were painstakingly hard, and I almost couldn't bear to see him go through it. I hadn't known Linh very well, but we'd just started becoming somewhat friends when she passed.

Tam was only able to open up to me once about her death and his feelings over it. Out of our entire lifetime, that's how much it hurt.

Not that I could blame him.

I embraced the change of our new world, happy to be able to build it instead of trying to tear it down for once.

When all was said and done, and the shock had worn off, it was maybe a full two months that had gone by since that fateful night. The night that had changed everything.

Maybe not as much for everyone else, but for Tam and me, things changed tremendously. Bad for him, but good for me.

I didn't have to live in constant fear of my parents tracking me down to hurt me again, although the flashbacks and nightmares of my past plagued me for my entire life.

Tam and I eventually decided to hold off on a relationship. Not for lack of wanting to be in one - we did. But we both recognized that we maybe needed a little time to heal on our own before any relationship happened.

It didn't mean we didn't stay best friends, though.

Tam had been broken by the loss over Linh, but it still warmed my heart to know that he cared about me enough to put the pain aside and try to help me enjoy life.

He would take me on trips all over the elvin world for the first few years. I got so that I knew more about all the places, and each one was a new adventure for me.

At some point down the road, when we got bored of all the places in the Lost Cities, we started going to the Forbidden Cities, where there were many more places to go.

The world between humans and elves was bridged, much to my happiness. I was able to go to college, and later become a gerontologist.

Human music really was something, let me tell you that. But a good something.

Thankfully, I was wrong in that overstraining my eye wouldn't cause it to go blind.

Unfortunately, I was right in that it was quite uncomfortable. I never had them actually take my eye out, but I had headaches in the space between my eyes quite often. I sucked it up enough to take elixirs for those, though, and I managed okay.

As the years passed and I got more freedom, I was able to realize a lot of things about myself - specifically that I was genderfluid. It took me a long time to come to terms with it, which is why I neglected to tell Tam about it at first. Some things, you just have to do on your own. And for me, this was one of them.

It took us a while, but we decided to start dating, and things went pretty fast after that - we already knew each other so well by then, and we'd fallen in love over the years. Dating was almost just a technicality at that point, but we still didn't want to rush into things.

Apparently, though, twins run in his side of the family, because we . . . actually had two sets.

He poured himself into us and our family, but sometimes, he'd look at our twins, and those were the moments when I realized just how intensely Tam could love a person. Those were also the moments that I'd see a special type of resolve in his eyes - resolve to be a better father than his ever was.

It was especially interesting to watch his and Keefe's relationship play out. By that point, they'd both been kidnapped by the Neverseen for an ability, and it surprisingly gave them some good bonding time, which I think they both needed.

Tam and I grew old together. Sometimes, just for fun, we'd play around with our abilities and see if they ever did anything new.

We were happy together. A happy that I'd never known until I met him, no matter how sappy and cliche that phrase actually was.

He continuously managed to surprise me every day. Like, one day, hundreds of years down the road, he said something that symbolizes our whole relationship. I knew he knew it would please me, since I was sometimes a sucker for metaphors, and this one was no different.

"Glimmer . . . you are, and will always be, the light in my darkness."

And the best part? That it was true.