Alone Together

Epilogue

        Life went on peacefully for a long while. There were occasional border spars with the other tribes that surrounded us, but we now had control of what had once been Tesera territory. The elders and children that had survived were permitted to join our tribe. Few had refused. They needed refuge and resources they no longer had. We had considered keeping them separate from us, but I was concerned about the possibility of another uprising. So we let them integrate seamlessly with us. We continued expanding the camp, using materials the Tesera had once had. At their insistence, we let them use their old camp as a sacred ground. I never returned, although we made the appropriate precautions and our border patrols took twice as long. We now had a direct route to the nearest city, the last one I had visited. I took the chance to resume my good terms with the shop owners and we began selling our surplus. We used the money we got from that to purchase supplies we could get nowhere else. For a long while we were a successful and prosperous tribe, perhaps the most successful. 

        Helios and I eventually had a child. A baby girl that we named Kismet. We never had another child, but Kismet was more than enough. She'd been the same as me in all the ways I'd feared, and looking at her sent a wave of nostalgia through me, reminding me of my own childhood, despite the vast differences. Kismet loved stories just as I had, and adventuring. She had all of Helios's best qualities, although he would argue affectionately that there was more of me in her. As she grew older, I would tell her the stories I had so long ago told Helios and the rest of the tribe. I told her of the adventures I'd had in dismal ruins, the nomad life I'd previously lived. She was more fascinated by that than by the stories of the tribe that the elders had told her. When she turned of age, she left in the middle of the night with few supplies. Part of me had known long before that the outcome had been unavoidable. She had my adventurer's blood in her, and I had been calm even when Helios couldn't. Part of me wanted to leave the tribe just as she had, to travel freely from place to place, but that chapter of my life had ended long ago. 

        Later, she came back to us with a child of her own. Both Helios and I were overjoyed. My reign as chief of the Akiire people lasted for a long time. The irony of my death was not lost on me. 

        I had been walking in the forest with one the Tesera children, now no longer a child. I'd forged a dagger for the boy not long after he'd arrived. He had been shell-shocked by the loss of his parents, and I had a soft spot for him. I was completely unprepared for his betrayal. 

        We had been walking peacefully in the forest when he'd used the dagger to stab me. He had ran before I could react, and once again I found myself bleeding out on the forest floor. Helios had found me, then, too. He leaned above me, his dark hair gone gray. His powers had grown weak, and the wound was too severe, but he still took on as much as he could. Lying there next to him, I had known that both of us had died. Long ago, though, I'd promised that I'd never leave him, and so I had clung until he'd let out his last breath. It was only after that I allowed myself to let go, to join him peacefully. 

        I had always been told that my life would flash before my eyes, every moment of it, when I died, but I only got bits and pieces. A mosaic of my best memories, each of them always leading back to the tribe and Helios. Later, Kismet herself would find our bodies. She would crouch down next to us and recite the adventurer's blessing softly, a blessing that I had taught her long ago. Then she'd gently close our eyes, return to camp to get assistance, and she'd plan the best funeral possible for us. She incorporated many outside customs, most of the ones I had taught her. Despite the grief she felt for us, she continued on. She'd always been our little trooper, and though we knew no more, she felt our love for her until the day she'd died.

May your road away lead you to places where adventure abounds. May you find everything you've searched for in your last journey. And may you be waiting on the far side of the horizon when it's my turn to join you once more, so that we might have one last adventure together. 

Author's Note: 

Like I had promised in the previous chapter, I finished this the same day. I had promised a happy ending, and trust me, this is happier than many of the endings my other characters get. Maybe one day I'll come back and dust these characters off. Perhaps I'll write Kismet's story. Or maybe I'll leave them alone. I hope you enjoyed their journey as much as I have. 

~Ariella Myst