The Pearl Gates
Winnie Foster lay in bed, thinking. It had been eighty years now, but her features weren't altered. Her looks were still those of a seventeen year old girl, frozen in time. She couldn't age.
But, lying on her deathbed, a nest of silky comforters and downy pillows, she knew that she could die. Illness was taking over even now, clouding her mind and jabbing at it with swords, like a determined soldier in war. It was all the Tucks' fault, she thought. They said they couldn't die... and they still didn't come for her now. Where were they? And how could they just abandon her like that, especially when she most needed them?
"Madame? Madame Foster?" a voice called, breaking into her thoughts, as gentle as it was. The physician's face looked down at her, smiling even through the creases of worry that had formed around his eyes. "I'm sorry to say this," he continued, "but, Madame Foster, you are entering your final stage of illness. In a few hours..." he broke off, unsure of what to say.
The pity in his old eyes was unbearable. Wanting it all to end, Winnie finished the sentence for him. "In a few hours, yes, I will die. Is that all I needed to know?"
"N-n-no Madame," the physician stuttered, surprised by the sharpness of her voice. He knew everyone said Madame Foster was cold and uncaring, but... to speak so about her death, without a care was really inhuman. He continued anyways. "I have a medicine... if you want... to... to end it now."
Winnie sighed. Why did it matter? Death was death. "I will take this medicine of yours," she said as primly as possible. I chose this life, now I will end it, she thought to herself.
She took the little bottle with a seemingly steady hand, though her heart started to flutter uncontrollably. It was so similar to the little bottle Jesse had given her so long ago...
As she raised the vial to her lips, memories overtook her. Memories of her days with the Tucks. As the scene on the old rowboat with Tuck filled her mind, she took a sip of the clear liquid. Winnie could hear his gentle voice in her ears, "Do not fear death, Winnie, just be afraid of the life unlived. Life is like a wheel, always turning." And now she knew it was the end of her time on Earth. It was nearing the end of something, and the beginning of something new. The wheel was turning at last.
So Winnie soared upward into the cottony clouds, her could as free as the birds wheeling the clear blue sky, leaving her body behind. And standing behind the golden pearl gates of heaven, waiting and smiling, were the Tucks- her darling Tucks.