I couldn't fall asleep until I wrote this. I've been trying to ignore other writing ideas until I post the next chapter of TCtCF but it hasn't been working, sorry!
After Afterwards
Saphira Brightscales, Daughter-of-the-Wind, Star Eater, Queen-of-the-Sea, Dame of Morlin and Srilth and Greyoth, and many titles besides awoke as the same time as her partner-of-her-mind-and-heart. In unison they stretched and rose from the circular bed they shared in Aëratheiral.
Eragon Shadeslayer, Bromsson, The Second First, Lightning Welder, Father of Aeolwin and Faeolwin, and many titles besides washed up in his washing room while she flew down to the river-that-was-once-a-creek to wash her teeth and talons.
Neither of them spoke. They didn't need to.
They continued their day much in that fashion. Their synchronicity was as much natural as it was planned. They attended to their duties until evening came and they could rest together on the limbs of their favorite tree. They had planted it together many millennia ago after a rather strange adventure where they found trees growing below the water off the coast of Surda—but that was beside the point.
They had felt it coming for a long time. At first they didn't know what it was, but dementia and depression were quickly discarded. They had recovered from their deep depression after Arya and Firnen passed. They had spent months drowning in their grief before Glaedr and their children finally got through to them. It shook them to the core, in truth they had forgotten that they could still die. From blades and arrows of course, but maladies of the flesh were easily forgotten when you never aged and could only grow in strength.
But their time had come.
They had set their affairs in order but hadn't warned anyone. With a slight grin Eragon remembered Oromis speaking of feeling his death approaching, at the time his young and clouded mind had been incapable of comprehending such a statement. And now that they were older than Oromis was then the workings of the world were more open to them than almost anyone else still encased in flesh (one curly-haired witch in particular had never ceased surprising and surpassing them). Every shift in the air told their timeworn senses almost all they needed to know. They finally understood the ancient Eldunarí they had met back when they were just children themselves, as the years passed and passed they felt less and less like speaking. Their minds, once seedlings, had developed into a large, rich forest that could rival Ellesméra, and was just as hard to leave.
There was nothing more to say. Between the two of them they had discovered more new words of the ancient language than anyone else, but there wasn't one for this.
Eragon placed a hand on her immense cheek.
"Saphira"
Little One
He lent against her, with her size she could barely feel his weight anymore.
He breathed no more.
She felt herself slipping away with him, it was as if a door in her mind had opened and he was waiting for her to follow. Just before she did, she tried to put how she was feeling into action, her last great work as Saphira Brightscales. As her spirit faded, a great golden light began to suffuse her and Eragon's body, before quickly covering the whole tree. She was gone before it faded, leaving behind a golden tree with a golden dragon and a golden rider sitting in it.
And together, they parted for their next adventure.
I made myself cry writing this but I think it's just because I recently reread the Inheritance Cycle and I have a lot of Emotions about it. I also started a oneshot epilogue to the series that doesn't want to remain an epilogue.
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