A Sliver of Stardust (Alternative Ending)

A Sliver of Stardust (Alt Ending)

How did end so fast?
I say with my last breath,
"It's the perfect day to float away"

Darkness had fallen. It had been dark for the past 3 months. The darkness had gotten tiring, and no starlamps could ever work to stop it.

Simon watched the days fly pass after the incident, feeling nothing sorrow and cluelessness. The last he had seen of his friend was when she ran into the tunnel to try and stop Jack. He was left with trying to fend off Jack's blackbirds with Wren's falcon. Within minutes, he watched a platform fly off into space while the blackbirds quickly retreated. On top of the platform, he saw a brown haired girl struggle to stay standing while a black haired boy had his arms positioned into a Fiddler stance. Simon had no idea what was happening, but that was the last he had seen of them. He had tried to follow them with Wren's falcon, but they were far from gone by the time they could recover from the blackbird attack.

Slowly, the day sky turned to grey and soon to black, and the once colourful stardust and turned to a sickly looking colour. Many of the Fiddlers at the Crooked House started to fall ill due to unknown reasons. The members of the Fiddler Council were the first ones to go, and that was in a matter of days. Simon started learning to keep his distance from the other Fiddlers except for Jill, but even she was starting to fall to the hands of the disease that had spread. Every once and a while, she would ask what had happened to Wren and Jack, and everytime she asked, he didn't have an answer. He had deep hope at the beginning that they were okay, but that faded away as time had passed.

Simon wished that he knew what had happened to them, sure Jack was a traitor, but he still felt like they were still somewhat friends. As well as Wren, he wanted kill her when they first met, but now after everything that they had gone through, she had become his closest friend. Sometimes he could've sworn that he heard Wren's silent screams and Jack's traitorous laughter in the distance at night, but no one was ever there.

At some point, he had tried going home, but it didn't feel the same. His parents had seemed to be void of life, in fact, the entire town seemed to be void of life. He had also tried to go see Wren's parents, but when they saw him, they immediately asked where their daughter was. He, of course, had no answer and quickly fled while hot tears built up in his eyes. Simon couldn't believe that he was mourning over someone who's fate he did not know.

As more and more weeks passed, more and more things started to appear lifeless. The trees, the animals, even the mountains seemed lifeless. The only thing that appeared to stay the same was himself, but even then, he didn't feel the same. Nothing felt the same. The stars in the night sky took on a sickly colour and so did the aurora. No Fiddler even dared trying to ride the aurora for the fear that they would die, but what difference would it make? They were all dying anyways. Once they figured out that it was the stardust that was making them fall ill, a dispute broke out. Many Alchemists believed that this was the work of the Magicians and that they should ditch stardust altogether while others believed that there was a cure for the tainted stardust. Simon and Jill didn't care what they did, they both just knew that they were going to eventually die because of the stardust and that there was nothing that they could do about it.

Oh, how they wished that they could go back into the past when they were as carefree as an apprentice could get. But being carefree was no longer an option, for it had been removed the second Wren and Jack went flying into space. He hoped that one day he could see them again, but he knew that hoping for anything at this point would just be in vain. Everything in this dying world no longer had a point to it. They needed to be saved, but there was no one there to ever save them and soon they all faded away into a distant memory.