54. EPILOGUE (FLAMMIE)

Carlie placed the flowers on Hawk's grave. His final request was to be buried next to Lise, on the mountaintop facing the desert, with his grave dressed in Navarre flowers and hers in Rolantish.

They had been fortunate, both had reached their ninetieth birthday, even as their friends were gone. All except Carlie. Well, Lise had passed the same year, and it was left to Hawk, the luckiest, to survive them all. Now he, too, had joined the Goddess.

Carlie might have felt lonely, but she had long since accepted her lifespan would be much longer, by virtue of her elven roots. Since Elliott had died, fifteen years earlier, she had been debating finding a third husband. She could even have a couple more children, to name Hawk and Lise. Elliott had been surprise when she had given birth to their fifth child, at age seventy-five. So now she had six: Heath, Leroy, Shayla, Kevin, Angela, and Duran.

Even in her mid-nineties, she still looked like a good-looking woman of barely forty. The Faerie king assured her that, even into account her human heritage, she could have children until a hundred years old, and possibly beyond.

She had finally understood that was why elf and human love was forbidden. In the end, it caused pain, and confusion. But no matter what happened, she had the Goddess now, the new Goddess who had once been the Fairy. Though Angela had carried the Fairy home to the Holyland, it had been Carlie who had been close to her ever since.

Her first son, Heath, climbed the mountain of Rolante to join her. Despite being thirty years younger, he looked within ten years of her visible age. And his children even closer still; all were often mistaken for siblings. She had realized, three or four generations down, there would be no more elf blood in her descendants than in the population at large.

She thought of going north. It had taken many blessings on her part, and many brave soldiers from Navarre and Rolante, to rehabilitate the dark castle, but twenty years later, the new nation of Lumina was alive and growing.

The Glass Desert had become a valuable resource for materials, especially for all the new technology instigated by Altena during Angela and Duran's reign. Pedan had been rebuilt by the Altena-Forcena alliance, and Valda had turned the ancient city into a prestigious academic community, dedicated to preserving knowledge of Mana, for the day it would return to the world. Navarre's cultivation of Pedan plants had worked admirably, and the oases had slowly restored in the new environment. It had become a true nation now, though they still refused to use the titles King and Queen as a memory of the old days.

Kevin had instigated the rebuilding of Astoria, a few years before his death twenty years ago, along with the second Goddess temple there. Although all the beastmen had helped tear down the rotten buildings at night, as the sun came up, Kevin had transformed to human and laid the first temple stones himself, with his crown on his head.

Well, if the Goddess had taught her anything, it was that everything comes again. Hawk and Lise now lay together at the top of Rolante, looking towards Navarre, but their spirits, and that of her other friends, lived on. She only had some more time than most, to keep the faith until Mana came again.

Her white robes rustled as she turned to go, but behind her she heard a whoop-whoop in this distance. She looked back to see a white dragon across the ravine. It looked as sad as she wanted to feel.

It reminded her that one could always be lonelier. Yet at the same time, one could always find friends again. So she knelt on the mountain, between the final resting places of Hawk and Lise, and together she and Flammie watched the sun rise over Rolante, as she let her mind return to forever.