Disclaimer: Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett own it all.
Do you want to be a descendant for the rest of your life?
She should have said yes, before she realized how hard it was not being one. But she had slowly shaken her head and unconsciously gnawed on her nails when he fed it into the fireplace. And well, here she was. A free woman. Sort of.
The simple art of day-to-day living. It sounds like a second-rate self-help book, Anathema thinks. Maybe it should be. At this point, she would probably buy it.
Simplicity boggles her. No dissecting or rereading or cross-referencing or poring over pages and pages of newspapers and files. She should be relieved, she knows. They were practically unintelligible prophecies, and there was never any guarantee her interpretations of them were correct anyway. But, a stubborn vestige of thought sullenly insists, at least then there was a chance she would get it right. Now, left plunging into life unarmed, she doesn't even have that option.
How do you do it? She can't go out in public without stifling the urge to ask the question to everyone. But she holds back; the possibilities keep her in check—should she ask, should she be quiet, should she even go out at all, where is she supposed to be, what is she supposed to do? Leaving the house becomes an ordeal, but she manages—maybe she's meant to be out today, she tells herself, setting her jaw and resolutely stepping outside. And still she wants to scream her question to the world until it gives her an answer she can work with. How do you do it? How do you get out of bed in the morning without having any idea of what's going to happen that day?
She tries her best, but living outside of Agnes's shadow isn't easy. She grew up on the prophecies, after all, and it still disconcerts her when she wants to read them and there's nothing left to analyze. She's devoted so much of her life to them it seems almost blasphemous for them to just end. And the free time that gives her…it's enough to drive Anathema mad. There's no need for her newspaper ritual, but she reads them all anyway, for the comfort and familiarity. She wishes sometimes that everything would go back to normal, but being a key player in the almost-Apocalypse isn't something that leaves a person without a scratch.
You see, doctor, I'm a witch, and I had this eccentric ancestor who was burned at the stake and left behind a book of prophecies. But then a demon hit me with his car and an angel got his hands on the book my family has always lived according to and I wound up playing a big part in the end of the world—not that it ever happened, mind you—and now it's over because the local boy who wasn't really the Antichrist stood up to the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse with his friends, but the prophecies are gone and I don't know how to live without them. Is there a pill for this?
It's really more likely to gain her a strange look and a padded cell than anything else.
But then there's Newt. If it had never happened…
He stands strong in the face of life's limitless indecision and it amazes her he can live like that, amazes her more than her choice of words. Strong is probably one of the last words she would ever have used to describe him. Now, though, she has an odd respect for him she knows she probably wouldn't have otherwise acquired.
He's always the one to reach out an awkward hand when he notices the feverish look in her eyes. Ineffable, intuition, live in the moment, trial and error, are some of the things he'll say, smiling crookedly, and she'll always find herself smiling back a bit without thinking, not wondering if she's supposed to love him, hate him, protect him, warn him, kill him, save him, buy him a comb …
She goes crazy one day in the kitchen and he finds her standing in a circle of shattered plates sobbing into a tea cozy. And she realizes then, as he runs over to her without a second thought, that she trusts him, though she has no idea what he will become, what they will become. And she realizes also, when they end up laughing for no apparent reason, with all the niceness and accuracy of who knows what, that maybe she does have some idea of what life will bring. And maybe, as she helps sweep up the plates (without wondering if they were supposed to break, supposed to roll, supposed to be thrown away, supposed to cut the fingertip that received a tentative bump from Newt's lips), she doesn't need a prophecy to confirm or deny the rest of her life. She thinks she can learn to live with that, whether she's meant to or not.