There had been an odd tension in our home for days now. Both Belldandy and I are holding secrets from each other: Belldandy knows what the afterlife is like but can't tell me; I know about this journal but won't tell her. Both of us know each other well enough that we know we are holding back something, both of us trust the other, and niether of us is willing to give up our secrets. We both know we are OK, but it really isn't how we thought our last days would go. The scrapbook has been a part of the problem too, because every time we started talking about it we felt that we were saying goodbye. Then our emotional heaviness would cause us to not quite be ourselves.

It was Urd who finally broke the tension. She reminded us that our devotion and love for one another was one of the things people thought of when they thought of us, but the other was our fun and laughter. As she explained "You know you can't change this, so you might as well have fun together while you still can." Then she crossed her arms, blinked, and changed her clothes into Jeannie. Not a genie, Jeannie. She continued her peformance with dancing and the blinking and so on, trying harder for a laugh. Urd would not be denied, and eventually she won us over. Our tensions began to melt in laughter.

Belldandy cut loose with her own performance after a while. Blinking and changing her clothes into the Jeannie outfit, and we laughed more. Soon, it felt like we were laughing at everything. Our whole life together, all of it. From Banpei and Belldandy being drunk on soda on down through all the years. We two were still laughing when Urd left. The smiles we gave each other were the most simple and sincere smiles we had for each other since we realized my time was coming.

"I love you." I said, feeling those words to be the natural response. It was sweet for a second, but then we were cracking up once more as we both remembered me saying "I love you" on the roof of the temple.

That was how Urd set us free to really enjoy our last days together, and I think it will last. It's also the first story I want to share in this journal

–

It was nearing the end of our second year together, just after Celestin. This was a good time for us. Except for the trouble with a monster who wanted to eat angels, it was quiet. We spent time on the beach. We visited an amusement park. I even helped make a wish come true.

Urd liked to watch video tapes. I suppose I better explain that. Video tapes were the first way we recorded programs from the television. Of course, some of you are also too young to know what television was. So let's just say it was the first way of viewing video content and that it was very hard to get video content back in that day.

Anyway, Urd loved watching these things, and one day she brought in a Japanese dub of an American television program called "I Dream of Jeannie." She called us all in to watch the program with her, something she almost never did. So I sat with Belldandy and Urd and Skuld and watched it.

It's a story about an American astronaut who found a genie's bottle and a female genie came out and started to grant him wishes. The genie's name was a pun on the English word for genie "Jeannie". It was a romantic comedy, and she was constantly causing awkward things to happen to the astronaut because of her magic. She was subservient to the astronaut and kept calling him "master". It was making me more than a little uncomfortable, because I didn't know how the three sisters would react to something that almost seemed like it was making fun of them in a very personal way.

At the end of a couple of episodes Urd slowly turned around and looked straight back at me and said "What do you think of that, Keiichi?"

My hand naturally raised to my throat, and I didn't know what to say "Ummm"

"Because I think it's the funniest thing I've ever seen!" she said, laughing hysterically at my reaction to her.

The rest was kind of a blur. While I was just being relieved that I didn't get in major trouble, the sisters were laughing and changing their clothes to look like Jeannie and started calling me "master" and making all kinds of silly things happen all over the temple. They kept trying to do for real the things the program was doing with cheap effects. I remember them trying to turn things upside down a lot. Skuld ended up making her part of the temple into a scale model of the inside of Jeannie's bottle. Urd was guzzling saki and watching the television and trying some of the things she saw them do with cheap effects. Belldandy was cooking up shebabs and lentil soup. I think this was the loudest we ever got at the temple that didn't involve a fight. Everybody was happy.

After dinner, it kind of kept going. Urd and Belldandy started telling Skuld and I stories about different wish-granting goddesses they knew and of Arabic heroes from folklore. Finally, I saw Urd looking at Belldandy and I in a way I hadn't seen for quite a while. Urd got up, added a little satin to her costume, put on some music, and starting doing a slow dance. "Come on Bell!" she added after a while.

When I saw Belldandy dancing that way, it was obvious what Urd was really up to. Watching Belldandy dance that was was so enticing, mysterious, sensual, seductive. The more I noticed, the more Belldandy changed it. Soon Belldandy was clearly performing only for me and I was getting turned on.

Skuld eventually noticed what was happening, and I thought she would make a scene. She looked like she was thinking about it, but she didn't. For the first time, I noticed her hold back. I think after Celestin, Skuld had finally fully made peace with my relatiionship with Belldandy. She clearly wasn't comfortable, but she never even said a word.

Urd said "Come on Skuld, I think it's time I told you something about the magic that really makes wishes come true." and the two left us alone.

Then I was alone with a slow dancing Belldandy in a room lit by candles, smelling of jasmine. We both wanted each other, and we both knew it. We had never been left alone to a more romantic scene that that before. We danced and kissed and held each other close all night.

–

Despite how it sounds, that was not yet our "first time" Urd had been trying to get us to become more physical for almost the full two years, and it was at the point where even we were wondering why it hadn't happened yet.

It turns out that something magical had been blocking me from the very beginning. Fortunately, that block was soon destroyed. Unfortunately, it came at a very high cost.