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Final Cut Scene: The End Of The Way

Aftertime

At the end of time, beyond life, beyond even death on arrival, they find themselves walking across the green places.

The slow stream meanders, as always, just as it should be. Strange and beautiful creatures sing the song of frogs in the rushes. The fish clicks quietly over to the bank, systems not even whirring, leans over and cracks its carapace, to dive with a splash into the waters. A few seconds later, the abandoned shell falls over and quietly dissolves, gone instantly into rust and dissolution, returned to the world of which it was only another part, no longer needed. Here, where fishes can fly in the air should they so desire, the creatures of the riverbank sing on. Sangraal, fish.

Keselt, of course, is waiting for them.

"They all wanted to come," she says huskily, "but I wanted to come see you first."

There is something different about her. It is a second before he sees it, because it seems so natural she should have wings, velvety leathered spans that rest gracefully about her neck.

He almost leaps into her arms, and they spin about one another excitedly, in a defiant embrace. "No more grief," sobs Sethkill incoherently, rubbing the side of his muzzle up against her breasts, almost overcome. "No," agrees Keselt, running smooth palms over his shoulders, where he is not, somehow, surprised to find wings of his own are branching forth, dark and strangely discoloured in the course of many adventures, not unlike himself. "Not any more."

She reaches down and takes his hand and then, grasping the scales of silver and iron, pulls it off like a glove, to reveal his own left hand, whole and unhurt. She throws it onto the grass like a venomous silver snake, where it slithers away and vanishes into nothingness.

"Come on," she urges. "Setris and Arrayel and all the other children are waiting for you."

Hand in hand, as in his dreams, she spins him about and they go swirling around one another up into the air, lost in a frantic beating of wings as he learns the art of flight. Keselt is there to help and, once he realises that there is no need to actually move imaginary wings, they touch palms together in midair, and look into each others eyes, lost in their own world long before they finally fade away and disappear.

"Well, it's just us now," sighs Cleo, contemplating the words thoughtfully, in a drawn out purr. "But what about the living?"

Terrowne takes her by the wrists and looks, himself, into her green and golden eyes. He knows she is thinking of Felice, the strange child they thought they could never have, and only so briefly met. He considers all the things he might say, discards the most of them.

"What about the living? We'll visit them in dreams, and come back when we will, because we've never died. They'll do what children do, and take our places in the world for a while, and sooner or later we'll see them again. Here, I suspect lives need never be parted, and there is always hope."

Cleo remembers Sethkill saying the same last words, and the bruised look in his eyes, and the desperation. Cleo considers this, as she pushes his hand up against her breast, over her twice broken and once mended hearts, just as she did so long ago. She smiles that breathtaking lyoness smile of hers at him once again, and pulls him after her as they start to walk across the plain, still together, never apart.

"Tell me some more sweet lies," she purrs, and raises her voice in song.

~*~

And so as we see Cleo walking onward into the endless land, and Terrowne eventually joining in, and the frogs listening intently to the bizarrely twisted harmony created as a result, our view at last rises up into the darkness of the purely imaginary sky, and through a swirl of stars, and onward into the blackness of the night. And then, when a pair of eyes that are purple to green with a scattering of golden specks open against dark skin, we can be content at last in that the ending is simply a reflection of the beginning.

~*~

Good night, every body!

Thank you!

The Credits: Dawn Is Breaking

AfterTime

"...and that's the end of it," observed the old man. "We got out of life alive, which is quite something, I'm telling you. Hard to top that one, really."

The weird little chalice-glass from which he was drinking the unknown liquor disappeared under the hood, and came out all-empty. The angle from which he was holding it seemed to suggest that he was looking at the fire, glittering, through the empty glass.

Outside, the light of the risen dawn is reflecting off the dream of snow; perfect whiteness to the edge of vision, and the snowflakes swirl like a different state of mind.

~*~

_ _

The student looks around, to see what it is that has awoken him.

Over near the window ledge, on the polished wooden floor which is now reflecting the light of the new day, lie the shattered remains of one of the glass spheres which act as paperweights, a weight to hold down one too many loose leaves of a thesis on the nature of being. This one seems to have been holding down a page on which excesses of theoretical physics have been scrawled as rough diagrams, patterns of interlocking symmetry curves and separated charges.

The broken shards, when he examines them, reveal abruptly edged segments of swirling glass, purple oceans shattered apart from continents of green and crumpled mountains of upthrust red and gold. Swarms of opened inclusions and tiny flecks of metals are revealed at the surfaces. Was one to look at it from the right angle, against the night sky and the stars, it could almost be a world of its own, lit by the dawn.

He imagines that the wind, through the cold and open window, must have caught on the papers and undermined this tiny world. Certainly there is no reason to find it strange that it has fallen, alone of many others, all of which are lighter and support far lesser pieces of paper.

"You had some strange dreams before we met," the memory of a voice troubles him. "It is of no consequence."

He tries to pick up one of the larger pieces by its curved corner, to look at it more closely. His fingers slip, and the edge of the glass cuts him. As he flinches away from the cut, he reflexively flicks a few bright droplets of blood across the physics paper, despite the hurt being nothing serious, fire to the equations.

It doesn't matter. The story is in his head.

There is a blank book in one of the drawers of the box in the corner. Carefully retrieving it with his other hand, he flips it open to the first blank white page, then makes a swift brushstroke with his finger to recreate, in a thin streak of iron red, the defining glyph which evoked his dream. He could never write it all down immediately, but this should be enough to serve as a starting point and a reminder.

Somehow the motion strokes the slash on his fingertip closed, and the sides of the cut adhere to one another, and the bleeding stops, and the pain is soon forgotten.

Later, the fragments of the glass paperweight are tied neatly together with thin copper wire, and placed in a small box lined with crisp white tissue-thin paper.

Later yet, when he has a spare moment, he takes up a pen and begins to write.