After Fate Fell

3 • ELLA

1 year, 3 months and 12 days after it all
•ELLA•

The sun is starting to rise above the trees. I am near the bottom of the mountain, in the dense forest. Everything is silent. Everything is calm.

It's about 10 o'clock when I finally can look back and see the whole mountain in its beauty. It is breathtaking. I turn back around and forge on through the forest.
It takes a couple more hours, but I finally can see the town. I didn't realize that it would take all night to get down here, even though I've done it plenty of times before. But never completely by myself. I've made the climb with John once, but we camped halfway instead of going 6 hours straight. The other few times I've hiked it, it seems like forever ago, I still had Legacy with me. When I could still feel her presence in my mind. I felt safer when she was here. Now, I feel alone, so alone. But it has to be this way. It must.

When I finally reach the town, I find the bus station and grab a map. I find a bus headed in the right direction of the nearest airport and board. I know where I'm going. "I can do this by myself," I think. So I sit back and close my eyes while the final passengers board the bus and the door slides closed and the bus lurches into motion.

I am jolted awake by the sound of a car horn. I hadn't even realized that I'd fallen asleep. I see that we're in a bigger city now and pull out my map. There are just a few people left on the bus. "Excuse me, where exactly are we?" I ask the driver. He points to a sign that says something in another language. I glance down at my map and find what he pointed at. Great. Still on track.
About a half hour later, I get off at a bus stop just outside of a little coffee shop. I'm tempted to go in, but I need to get to the Sanctuary as soon as possible, plus Crayton would be disappointed if he knew I used our precious Loric jewels for something as useless as coffee.

I see a sign that has an airplane on it that points right, so I follow it. I'm guessing that I'm close.

A man in a black trench coat and hat brushes past me, and I stick out my arm because of instinct, but lower it slowly. There are no Mogs here. We defeated them. My heart is pounding. Calm down, Ella. Everything's fine.

But it's not. The war may be over, but the others and I are still on Earth. I don't know what we're doing here, something about training the LANEs, but it's been a year now, and they've received plenty of training, especially considering that we already defeated the Mogadorians.

So it's time to go home, to Lorien, where we came from, where we belong. And Legacy will help me with our return to Lorien. I just hope that she remains in Mexico, at that wretched Sanctuary that used to be a beautiful Loric monument on Earth, built for us. Now it has been reduced to rubble, and too many lives were lost there. I can fix this, but I can't do anything for those who we lost.

An airplane flies very low over my head. I realize that the airport is very close now.
After about 5 more minutes of waking, I can finally see the airport, and also who is exiting from its gates, Agent Karen Walker.