A Picture is Worth a Thousand Words

Epilogue

I stare up at the bright summer sky, thinking. The silver stars blink at me, whispering ideas and jokes and all that they have seen. The photo album sits on my lap, open to the last page, where a photo of Karlee, Trevor, Ally, Alexis, Ava, and I stand in a group, laughing.

    I had gotten the picture from Camera, an Iris who can photograph and print pictures using her eyes, a few years ago. The image of that day comes to my mind, all those years ago. We had just won against Sionic Corporation, and were celebrating our freedom and victory.

    My name reaches my ears, from far away. I sit up and look around, my sharp eyes honed like an eagle’s cutting through the darkness of the compound. From my high perch atop one of the towers of the School of Iridis, I can see for miles in all directions. I peer down into the atrium of the castle-like structure, and see the figure of a woman standing in the middle of the green grass.

    I smile downward, and close the album sitting upon my lap. The words I had been writing for years, the story of my adventure into the Irises’ world and the destruction of Sionic, disappear as the black cover encloses them.

    Shifting into an eagle, I pick up the binder in my large talons and soar down into the courtyard. I shift into human form as I near the grass, and land with a smile on my face, the album in my hands.

    Ally, with her long brown hair and bright green eyes, is still as beautiful as the day I first met her. She smiles at me as well, and grabs my hand. A silver ring, set with three tiny sapphires around a central diamond, rests on her left ring finger, and presses against my right hand. She drags me towards the entrance to the school, to the side of the school where the dormitories are. I glance back at the silver and black sky one last time before the glass doors close behind me.

    I’m dragged into the long hallway lit by soft candlelight. Ignis had bewitched the flames to burn for forever when the school opened and all the Irises were invited to see it. Ally and I walk down the hallway, hand-in-hand, towards the hallway where the Irises’ rooms are kept. We’re all separated from each other, all of us races, since a Lupa had gotten into a fight with her Iris boyfriend one time and almost tore down a wall.

    We find our own door, which is decorated by Ally’s hand-drawn pictures of forests and caves. Even little Alla’s pictures are strewn about the white door, colorful drawings of lycoptrxes and cairs.

    As soon as we open the soundproof door, Autumn’s cries reach my ears. I rush over to his crib, looking down at my son. Asha, my wilane friend from all those years ago, crouches on the edge of the crib, singing one of her birdsong-ike melodies to try to calm Autumn down. She looks up at me when I come to the crib, her fall-leaf eyes staring at me out of a black and amber owl face. I sense her discomfort and sadness at hearing her closest friend crying.

    I pick up my son with one arm, and look into his vivid eyes. I start singing a melody I learned during my years of teaching at this school, a melody Healer taught me a few years back. Autumn instantly quiets, his strange eyes looking up at me in wonder. The honey-and-silver colored irises of my youngest child glimmer up at me, so strange and bright, especially with his alice and mayan blue pupils.

    Alla comes up behind me, reaching for her baby brother, who is closing his eyes as the sleeping melody takes hold. Alla’s bright emerald eyes stare out of her black bangs, which she always keeps over her eyes, as if trying to hide her dark blue pupils. I step back, still singing, as Alla lays Autumn down in his crib again.

    I step into the room Ally and I share, and close the door behind me, my gaze still locked on my children. Ally laughs, making me turn. She sits cross-legged on the bed, staring at me. Her wings are out, cocooned around her. I walk over and sit on the bed beside her, pulling her to my chest.

    “Why are you laughing?” I murmur, laughing as Ally’s infectious humor enters me. Ally smiles up at me, and says quietly,”You always have a way of calming him down. I have no clue how, and for some reason I find that funny.” I roll my eyes, but the smile stays on my lips. “Well, I am the most powerful human being alive,” I say, and Ally laughs. “Yes, a human being who is still human, which means that if I shoot you enough times, you’ll die,” Ally says, and I laugh louder.

We both fall silent, and lay down to sleep. I stay awake, though, and stare out at the stars I can see through our large window while Ally sleeps. She always said the stars were too much like me: spread out, abstract, far away, powerful balls of gas and fire that at any minute can cause so many different things to happen. I watch the stars, thinking about my life from years ago, the life I had before I ever uttered the word Irises.

I know that Austin is alive, with three kids somewhere in California. Vanessa got pregnant as soon as I left for college, and is now a missing-person. Asheley and Kim got married some years ago, and invited me to the wedding. I had politely refused, since I couldn’t bear leaving Ally alone while pregnant; even being the mighty assassin she is, even she has limits.

    I think about all the Irises I have ever met, and feel all their powers flow through me at the same time, causing a blue glow to appear around me. I quickly think about the stars, and the glow fades. The stars and I have become even more connected over my years of teaching at the School, a fact that Karlee seems to find amusing.

    Karlee, of course, is the principal of the school, though she isn’t much of one, considering she teaches about telepathy and we’re off the grid thanks to Globe, an Iris who can hide anything. Almost all the original Irises by now have had children, whether of Iris, human, Legacy, Tilvani, Lupa, or Giratina blood, along with some others that would blow your mind if I told you. Every single child in the School, though, has a power of some sort, whether it be from blue pupils, heterochromatic eyes, being able to turn into a wolf, controlling elements, or being a wolf-tiger-monkey hybrid. Craziness runs in our veins, that’s for sure.

    I sit up, sliding out from under Ally’s head, and grab the photo album that had appeared on my desk years and years ago. Walking over to the large window, I sit on the windowsill and gaze out at the stars. Thinking, I pick up my pencil and turn to the last page of the album, and start to write in the margins, telling my story of my time with the Irises.

    Who knows, maybe I’ll publish this story one day. You may think it’s fiction, untrue, a story made up to entertain. But secrets are best kept in the dark, under layers and layers of hidden meanings. The most extravagant things happen in the simplest of ways.

    Pictures are worth a thousand words, after all.