Time's Tragedies- The Books Of Beginning [2]

88. Mind Over Magic

Dying was difficult to describe in words. If Lili had to pick out a way to explain it, she would have called it a shift in reality, shifting from one plane of existence to the next. The closest thing the living had to it was an out of body experience, but that didn't fully encompass all that dying entailed.

She had died with Eternity looming over her like her sun and moon and stars, her beloved face the last thing Lili had seen before that tectonic shift of existence occurred. She had died with the only words that had ever mattered on her lips. I love you. 

Then it had been all darkness and dizziness and the sound of rushing water and vague voices until she fell to her knees in an old bell tower that no longer existed in the land of the living, and looked up into a pair of grey eyes. The woman had taken a step back when she saw the bright green of Lili's irises peeking out from behind waves of blonde hair. Lili, though she had never gotten a chance to meet this woman, had known her instantly (love transcended death, after all).

"They named me after you," Lili said, still disoriented but meaning the words, always meaning them. "I'm Lili Henrietta Wibberly. They loved you and remembered you."

Henrietta's hand flew to cover her mouth. Her already wide eyes were starting to water, "My dear child-" she had started to say, and her voice was both exactly like Lili had imagined and nothing like it at all.

"Thank you," Lili had said, "thank you and I love you."

She didn't know what else there was. She had to be dead (she had failed, failed to save her family, failed to kill Robert, failed at being the hero, failed at being the villain) except it was as if just the tiniest thread of her soul was tugging and she wasn't gone entirely, except that was stupid. She was dead and it was her own fault, the product of her own fear, her own anger, her own love. 

The fingers from Henrietta's intact arm, the left one, reached out, thin and spindly, and brushed against Lili's cheek. They felt more like a phantom breeze than a real presence, except for the warmth that went along with them.

"And I love you and your family as well, my dear," Henrietta had said, and she sounded choked up, like she was going to cry. (Rafe had been like a son to her, Kate, in those brief moments she had known her, a daughter. And now their child, their beautiful, vibrant child, who shared her name, was on death's door and she didn't know how to handle it.)

Lili didn't understand that, she didn't understand much of anything, but Henrietta's love was like a reassuring fire on a cold winters' night and it brought a smile to her face, slightly sad, slightly beatific. Lili said, "it's our family, actually. You're part of it. Family doesn't end with blood and it doesn't end with death, after all."

A tear rolled down Henrietta's cheek. She opened her mouth to say something, but Lili never heard what it was, because it felt as if lightning had made its way into her bones, it felt as though there was fire in her blood. Overwhelming warmth like she had never known flooded her body, and it was hot but it wasn't painful, rather, it was comforting, like a trip in the shower. Henrietta faded away as the world turned star-white before Lili's eyes.

The next thing she knew she was gasping for breath (breath! she was, some way, somehow, alive again!) and someone was helping her up and she was deeply confused but then she saw Eternity and it was as if all the meaning came back to the world. Eternity had tears running down her face and unsaid words on her lips and then Lili was lifted onto her feet and she staggered forward and into Eternity's arms, content to spend forever there. The pink haired girl's name slipped from her lips, with all the reverence that accompanied love.

Then they were looking into each other's eyes, and Eternity was holding her steady, ever an anchor in the storm that was this universe. Lili thought that she would explode from the emotion inside of her, from the magic worming its way back into her after being drained out. And then Eternity looked at her with such intensity and it was if the whole world narrowed and brought the sixteen year old into focus.