UNSPOKEN: Undone Realms Book 3

Epilogue

Clara seals the Fold and steps into the golden rays of sunlight. It was raining back in the Vital realm, but here there is an early autumn glow to the day; the breeze carries the sweet scent of pressed apples. She takes a deep breath. It is always the same here, but she never grows tired of it.

Clara comes and goes frequently. She is a natural at realm work, according to Vira. Unlike Nolan, she still has to use formulas to journey. Still, the process has been easy for her to learn. She spies her parents sitting on a crocheted blanket underneath their favorite tree. Its gnarled limbs and fruit-laden branches create a canopy of dappled shade over their picnic spread. She calls out a greeting and they motion for her to join them.

Everyone says her father looks younger now without his beard, and in a way that may be true. But Clara knows that there are lifetimes hidden in the depths of eyes. With all of the time travel and realm hopping he's experienced, he's only about ten years older than her, yet she can't help but think of him as older than the stars.

Her father once described himself as a man out of time-that will do something to a person, something that Vitalist medicine, Marcella's wisdom, and his family's love can never undo.

Oliver will never be able to leave the Dry Dock. Not even the Vital realm can offer him the level of comfort this place does. He assures her and her mother that this is fine with him.

"I ain't felt this at home since I was a child growing up on my parent's farm. I feel like that boy again... sometimes." His eyes dance with years of joy and sorrow when he says this.

Clara takes an apple along with a cheese sandwich and sits beside her father. He leans in towards her and sighs. A few minutes later, Avie gives both of them a kiss and stands to leave. "I've got to get to work." She nods to Clara, who returns the gesture.

Avie doesn't like leaving Oliver alone. She's at the Dry Dock whenever possible, but when she's working, Clara and Marcella take turns staying with him.

"Marcella said she'd join me here soon." Clara brings out a deck of cards from her bag and hands them to her father to shuffle. This has become a habit with them-wiling away an afternoon playing Hearts. Oliver will talk about his childhood, meeting Avie, how he knew Avie was pregnant even though she never mentioned it. Clara will tell him about life at the hotel, of spying on people and stealing keys, of what it was like when she first realized Nolan could see her. "Tell Nolan I'll meet you both back here for dinner when you finish up. Make him invite Vira, too, whether he wants to or not."

Avie smiles. "I will."

Clara has gotten used to the fact that Nolan and her mother work together, which means that on any given day, they may exist in any of the known realms. It made her nervous at first that both her mother and her boyfriend insisted on becoming full-fledged Vitalist agents. After all they'd been through, could they really want a life that might bring them into harm's way at any time? Nolan assures her that what they do is much more mundane than that. Right now they mainly journey to worlds that have a trade agreement with the Vitalists to oversee shipments and regulations.

Clara trusts that he's telling her the truth, but he did use the word "mainly." She knows the Vitalists act as police and she also knows people called authorities used her father in a timeline that no longer exists to try to destroy the Fold. This sort of thing could very well happen again and if it does, no one would want to stop it more than Avie and Nolan.

Nolan and Marcella want her to consider joining the Vitalists. This is something she rejected at first, even though Nolan pointed out that her dual realm parentage would give her a huge advantage. Marcella assured her that they would be happy if she simply assisted them with research-no field work required.

She had vehemently shook her head no.

Close to a year has passed since that headshake. Now that she's been traveling back and forth between the Vitalist realm and the Dry Dock, now that her father is more or less stable and her life is steady, now that she's gotten to know the sound of her own voice and the feel of air being taken into her lungs, she wonders, as she had back at the hotel, if there might not be something more for her.

One thing is certain; if she does want something more, she will never run out of new worlds to explore.

A/N: There you have it, everyone...UNSPOKEN is complete, and with it, the Fold Series.

Or maybe not... I did kind of leave things open, didn't I!

Before I continue, I want to thank you all from the bottom of my heart for sticking with me through UNSEEN, UNHEEDED, and UNSPOKEN.

Writing and posting this series has been a transformative experience for me. These stories, and my interaction with you all, has changed my life for the better. Your words of encouragement have kept me writing. I am incredibly grateful for this experience, so again...THANK YOU!

I've been getting several of the same questions a lot in recent weeks: What am I going to do/write next and will there be more books of the Fold?

Here's the scoop. The first thing I'm going to do is take a day off, something I haven't had since I was sick with pneumonia in December. After a day or two of (hopefully) keeping myself away from the keyboard, I'm going to journey back to the books of the Fold. The plan is to combine them into one novel (most likely called THE FOLD) with three parts. All together, they will create a book of roughly 80,000 words. After reformatting and revising... the querying process will begin. I'll be contacting agents with the hope that one of them will like THE FOLD enough to sign me and then help me find a publisher. This isn't my first rodeo-I know I will most likely be rejected again and again. But I have to try. You all have made me believe in this story. I want to see where the Fold takes me!

Will there be additional Fold books? The more I think about it, the more I want there to be. Like Clara, I am beginning to wonder if there's something more for me out there in one of the known worlds. Whether it will involve our same characters or different people and a new storyline all together remains to be seen. I don't have a timeline for when a new story might emerge right now. Partly it depends on whether I meet with any success in the agent/publishing department. All I can say is... we'll see! Regardless, I will still be hanging out on Wattpad, probably finding things to share here and there. Come by and say hi!

I will have a few more posts to add to this story, including a Q&A, an acknowledgments page, and a page in which I ask for your advice about some specific decisions I'll be making regarding getting THE FOLD ready for the publishing process. I hope you will check back in and give me your opinion. I value it greatly!

Today's chapter is dedicated to @misszlove69 for being an enthusiastic supporter of all my work. Love her comments, and her marathon read of both Every Day in May and the Fold Series. :)

Media is courtesy of Hartwig HKD, Flickr Creative Commons.