Stars Above The Willow Tree

Epilogue

"You excited to meet your hero, Rit?" Boston asked, cuffing Rit on the shoulder as he came up beside him.

"You should never meet your heroes, bro. They always disappoint you," said Riley as she stood with her arms folded, face serious, as usual.

"Yeah, I'm excited. And I won't be disappointed," Rit said with a pointed look at Riley.

"Don't you all know Rit's story?" asked Bills, who sat on top of a nearby crate. "Yeah, Rit claims to have been abducted by aliens as a kid and apparently the Angel of Death saved his life."

"Whatever," Boston said with a snort.

"Yeah, I call bullshit," Riley said.

Rit shrugged. "Believe what you want," he said. He didn't care what they thought. Right now he was just trying to focus on not throwing up. He'd never been so nervous in his life and even the binding drugs from his bio-mech suit weren't enough to curb his anxiety. It has been a couple days since he'd suited up though and the drugs were more than a little faded from his system. That was a good thing though, he wanted to feel this.

The massive hangar was busy with preparations for their guests and though Rit wasn't on shift, he'd volunteered to help get some crates unloaded and out of the way before the alien vessel arrived.

"Connection in three, two, one, mark! Seal is in place," he heard someone say near the airlock.

His heart beat suddenly pounded against the inside of his chest and his mouth was dry. Thirteen years he'd waited and worked and fought for this. His palms were so sweaty he had to keep rubbing them on his pants and his stomach was doing little nervous flips.

The wait felt like forever as he watched the massive airlock door.

Finally, the light blinked green and a loud alarm honked through the hangar and the door hissed open.

The human crew entered first and all of them had an iridescent sheen to their skin. After them, two Uu'k'asht entered, huge and imposing and looking mean as fuck with their tusks and creepy eyes.

Suddenly, there they were.

Silence fell upon the hangar as the Tilith captain and the war hero they all called the Angel of Death entered and stalked along the walkway. She was tall with a braid of long black hair, streaked with white. Her eyes were black except for shimmering rings of silver and deep green.

He remembered when they were just dark green. He remembered when she didn't have a scar across her cheek or look so hardened.

They walked right past him and it took him a moment to find his voice.

"Aunt Will," he called out.

She froze and all his friends stared at him as though he'd lost his mind.

Slowly, she turned around, alien eyes searching until they found his face, and widened.

"Hey," he said lamely.

With a gasp, she stalked straight up to him and wrapped him in a tight embrace.

"Evan! Oh, my god!"

She pulled back and stared up into his face, mouth open in a massive smile as she shook her head. "What... how are you... holy shit you got tall!"

She looked him up and down, taking in his shorts and shirt.

"You're a Bio-Mech pilot!" she exclaimed.

Captain Dethhek came up and hugged them both with all four of his arms. "You grew up!" he laughed.

"Yeah, people do that," Rit wheezed.

When they finally pulled back far enough that he could breathe, Rit felt like his ears were glowing with the heat of everyone's stares.

"Evan... what are you doing here?" Aunt Will asked. She looked like super hero in her armor and with the black designs that kept playing up her throat.

"I joined S.U.N. the second I was old enough. Became a bio-mech pilot." he shrugged. "I told you I'd find you, Aunt Will. And just so you know, I'm assigned to the Farahtuu."

"How did you manage that?" Aunt Will asked, face beaming at the same time Dethrhhek said, "Wow, look at you, you little badass."

"No one knew of my relation to you. What with your last name changing and the records being classified. Also, I started going by my middle name, but everyone just calls me Rit, or Ritter. That is, when the assholes aren't calling me fuckin fritter."

Uncle Dethrhhek laughed and gave his shoulders a hard squeeze "Well, fritter, those Ssketch are screwed now. Come on, boy. We have some catching up to do!"

Aunt Will shook her head. "You shouldn't have told him about the fritter. He'll never stop."

Before he was dragged off under the arm of the huge Tilith captain, Rit turned to his buddies and said, "Told you so."

THE END

Of Stars Above The Willow Tree

Book two of The Twilight Stars

PD: 11/03/2024

Wow! That was quite the adventure! Sometimes when I write, I have a basic idea of what's going to happen but I'm often surprised by what my characters do and where the story goes so there were many times that I laughed out loud or cried while writing Stars Above the Willow Tree. When I realized I was writing the ending, my heart pounded so hard because I didn't feel like I was ready to end it. But it was ready to be ended. This year was not as hard as the last one so I was able to devote a lot more time to writing and just so you know, I'm now sending queries to agents, so I guess we'll see where that goes. 

I want to give a shout out to my dearest Writing group, The Four Seasons of Epic Fantasy, for always being such an amazing support group. I would have kept going without you because I'm determined like that, but my progress would have been a LOT slower.

If any of my readers want to check out our group, here's our site: https://fourseasonsofepicfantasy.com/

On another note, check back next week for a sample of book 3 of the Twilight Stars, Colonies of Uu'k'ata!