After they had eaten and slept and had baths, Daine and Numair found themselves swept up in a weariness that seemed to encircle the whole kingdom. As Jon remarked at a meeting, they should have been ecstatic – they had won, after all – but instead everyone was just exhausted. There was, of course, a clean-up effort and burials to attend to. Daine and Numair, being both naturally and physically exhausted, were excused from any such responsibilities, but the wild mage made sure that the darkings and Rikash were treated as the heroes they were.
Other than that brief exertion, though, Daine found herself very listless. She slept for days, but even when she had regained her physical strength, she found that she didn't want to do much. She asked Numair about it one day.
"Is it always this dull?"
He glanced down at her. They were sitting on the palace wall with books that they weren't paying attention to anyway, and since it didn't seem likely that a guard would wander by anytime soon, he was holding her hand carefully, as if fearful that the privilege would be revoked at any moment.
"I wouldn't know," he said mildly, "I've never witnessed the defeat of Chaos before."
She made a halfhearted effort at a kick to his shin. "You know what I mean. After battles and wars."
As she should have predicted, he became instantly thoughtful. "You've been in all the major battles that I've been in, excluding a few exceptions in Carthak a decade ago, so you've had equal time to observe the results of those battles, but I have read several accounts of famous battles that resulted in generally lower spirits and listlessness. There are some theories that this phenomenon has to do with the incredible amount of magic that has been expended, that it has some sort of draining effect on the surrounding people, especially those with the Gift, but I don't think those theories are based in much fact."
Daine leaned into his shoulder, content to listen to her favorite mage talk. "And what is your theory?"
"It's simple. I think we're all just exhausted. Well, actually, there's a little bit more to it than that. It's like the moment after a performance is over. Even though we know that we have a life to get back to, there's still a moment of emptiness when the curtain goes down. We feel driftless for a bit after the excitement of it all. That's all I think there is to it. Nothing magical."
"Numair," Daine said after a pause to consider his words, "do you think we're purposeless now?"
"My dear Magelet, why would you think that?"
"Well, think about it. We've surely just accomplished the greatest good that we're going to accomplish for Tortall – or for humanity – in our lifetimes. Before Ozorne was dead, we knew what we had to do. Now, we're like what you said before – driftless. The play is finished and the curtain is down, but we're left staring at it wondering why we're still here."
Numair reached an arm around her and pressed a kiss to her temple. "But that's just it, Sweetling. We've been released from the act we had to play. Now that the curtain is down and the show is over, we're free to return to our lives. It's alright that we don't know what that means yet, but the beauty of it is that we don't have to. Now that we've defeated the monster and saved the kingdom, there's no script to follow. We'll just have to write it ourselves."