Second last chapter. It feels strange to finally be finishing.
A couple years of up all night and a few thousand diapers later Smellerbee and Longshot were long gone. They were fully Hachi and Zhuang now, letting the Freedom Fighter side of themselves finally go. They lived in a small, but comfortable house towards the edge of Taku doing what Hachi had grown up learning, keeping bees and selling or trading the honey in the market.
The mistake Hachi had thought they'd made played happily in the yard while she used smoke to make her bees drowzy so that she could collect the honey. She loved that little girl with all of her heart; at first she regretted it and wished that she had never given birth to the baby. But the first time tiny hands wrapped around her finger and sleepily smiled at her she felt her feelings begin to change. When that little girl yawned and opened her eyes for the first time Hachi had felt like her soul had been looked into.
They named the girl Himitsu.
Dinner, a bath and then a story and bed time. The routine came so easily and without a second thought.
Hachi watched her daughter drag a stuffed platypus bear to her bedroom where Zhuang was ready to tuck her in.
"I love you Mommy, g'night," Himitsu called and Hachi smiled, taking in the girl's big brown eyes and silky black hair.
Later, before Hachi was about to go to bed herself she stole into Himitsu's room and sat on the edge of her bed. She softly brushed the hair out of her face and pulled the handmade blanket back around the girl's shoulder. Himitsu's litle hands clutched at her stuffed animal and her eyelids fluttered as she dreamed.
That little girl was her future, her everything. Himitsu was her life and Hachi found that she no longer mourned the life she would have had. She wouldn't give up the happiness they shared for anything in the world.
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