Fanfiction based on the Stravaganza series by Mary Hoffman.
I don't own anything that belongs to Mary Hoffman.
The New Apprentice
Epilogue
At first the holiday had been strained but when you are climbing Jacob's Ladder of canoeing you need to work as a team. So a few days into the trip the family opened up and started to talk to each other a bit more. Jess was still mourning over Luciano but at one of the hotel dinner parties they had met the associates of her dad's company who happened to have a son around Jess's age. They talked and exchanged numbers but while he was nothing like the Talian boy, he still would stick about in Jess's life. Her sleeping pattern had also returned to normal; the long activity filled days tired her out so she had a deep dreamless sleep.
So instead of going their separate ways, the family reminisced about the holiday and future plans on the plane journey. They had decided to go out together at least once a month and to plan an annual holiday. They had even decided to meet with the other family they had met and Jess was teased for the rest of the flight. The gentle banter was different to the usual hurried conversations they had, the empty "How was your day?" type questions that never really required an answer. Jess had been drawn so far into her self esteem she hadn't realised what she had been missing: a family.
When they got home that night, Jess only stopped for a quick minute to dump her suitcase before running straight back downstairs where a game of scrabble was produced. It was only when she was about to fall asleep that she realised she was missing something in her hand. Over the past two weeks the unfamiliar feeling of the hotel had masked any feelings of oddness, but now in her own bed something didn't feel right. She knew the fairy was probably in her drawer where she usually kept it, but the niggling feeling in the back of her mind mad her get up and check. Her fingers probed the back of the drawer, but it wasn't there. Defeated she sunk back into bed; she knew there was no way it could be anything else. She wondered if Luciano had come to take it back. It hurt to think he would do something like that to her.
It was the first night she dreamt of Talia: of Arianna's cold telescopic eyes watching over her while she snapped the fairy's wings clean off her back. Behind her stood Luciano, the cavalier he was, with nothing to prove he ever lived in this world.
