Author's note : This is the last chapter of this story. Thank you for reading it and maybe enjoying it. And thank you for your patience : the first chapter had been published six years ago ! I didn't think I would ever finish it, but finally here it is. I could end it as I wanted to.

This story has been about the life of two ordinary citizens of the Imperium, two nobodies among billions of others, and how I thought the lives of ordinary people in the Imperium would be. I hope you liked it anyway.

Four whole years. During four whole years, nothing had changed. Getting out of the spaceship proved to be rather difficult… Not that nobody did it. Apart from the soldiers going to war and the Munitorum ships delivering food and ammunition, plenty of merchants could come and go. They had fleets, even in the most remote parts of the galaxy. It took Magda and Bailik four years, four whole years made of privation, work to the point of exhaustion, sparing and counting every credit, to gather enough money to be able to embark on a merchant ship.

They never gave up, filled with the determination to do what was best for their children. Magda wanted more than anything to go back home and raise her children among her family. For Bailik, it gave him a purpose, something to focus on instead of the past he had lost. He made an oath, swore on everything that is sacred, that none of his kids would ever know the horror of war.

By the time they finally could leave the spaceship, Pierre was ten and Angèle was seven. They had to say goodbye to their life here, the only thing these kids had ever known. Bailik had a lot of friends among the Guard and he bid his farewell, but he didn't regret to leave. His time in the Guard was behind him. With Mihail dead, there was no one to hold him back. It was harder for Magda though. She had lost her family once, and she had to leave everyone behind again. She had to say goodbye to Agnes, who had been like a mother to her, and Sister Clarice, whose presence had been such a blessing from the beginning, and to her pupils and Goulvena, the other teacher at the schola. It was a whole life they had built here, and leaving wasn't easy.

They finally embarked on the merchant ship that got them away from their former life. They watched as the huge spaceship appeared to shrink the further away they got, until it disappeared entirely. It felt like an end, though it was only the beginning of their travel.

For years, they passed from one ship to another, from one world to another, never for long. They had a series of odd jobs wherever they passed. Tiresome, hard labour, barely allowing them to survive. Pierre had to start working too, when his fragile health allowed it. They did what they had to to be able to eat everyday. It was a hard time. All their savings were spent in this once-in-a-lifetime, all-or-nothing trip.

Until one day, after six years of relentless travel, they set foot on the small agri-world where it all began. It was night. They looked at the stars one last time, forever drawing a line on this part of their lives.

"Finally…" Magda said, unable to hide her emotion."It's finally over…"

"It's not over, girlie. It's a new start." Bailik took his wife in his arms, smiling in her hair. "Now, let's go see your family."

The shuttle had landed in a city, far from Magda's little town, so they had to take a train. It was still a long journey, but it already felt like home. The pattern of the fields going as far as the eye could see, without any wall or boundary, the smell of the crops always present in the air, the very colour of the sky, so different from one world to the other. There was everything Magda had longed for, for so many years.

Pierre was sixteen and Angèle thirteen. They were teens now. They were born as spacefarers and, though the spaceship had been their home in their childhood, a great part of their lives had been lived as nomads during this journey, never staying long in one place, never making friends, never feeling at home. They were excited, but also scared. What would their life be like, here ? Would their new family like them ? Would they make friends among these people ? All of it was so foreign to them. They asked a lot of questions and Magda told her everything from her childhood with teary eyes.

In her small town, nothing seemed to have changed. It was like she had left the day before. They went to the little house she used to share with her father and sister. With a hand trembling from fear and excitement, Magda knocked on the door. An unknown woman, blond-haired and about the same age as her, opened the door and looked at them with wariness. Magda thought they must indeed look strange, a whole family with luggages, knocking at the door. She was a stranger here now.

"Is… Is someone named Emilie still living here ?" she asked. The woman looked at her with something new in her eyes and scrutinized Magda's face.

"Emilie," she called, "It's for you !"

It had been years since Magda heard the woman's accent, the accent from home. On the spaceship, nobody talked like her. Bailik shared a strong accent with the people of his regiment. Most of the workers on the spaceship who weren't navy or guard, such as Agnes and her family, spoke in heavily accentuated low gothic mixed with a dialect of their own, words that Magda had to become familiar with over the years. Even Sister Clarice had again another accent and used on a regular basis high gothic words that Magda couldn't understand. It was good to hear once more the accent from home. She finally felt that she had returned to her roots.

Emilie arrived and Magda recognized her immediately. Though Emilie was eighteen when she last saw her, and though she was now thirty-six, there was no mistaking those green eyes and those freckles, so similar to her own. Even after all those years, it was like seeing her own reflection ! When Emilie realized it too, she couldn't hold her tears.

"Magda… Magda, it's really you…!"

"Yes… It's me..." She couldn't say anything else, the knot in her throat preventing her form talking. She threw herself in the arms of her sister. For half of her life, she had lost her sister ! Now they were united again, after all these years ! They sobbed in each other's arms for a moment, before Emilie was able to look at the other three.

She recognized Bailik. A dark-haired man so imposibly tall, accompagnying her sister, it could only be Bailik.

"You have brought her back… Thank you, thank you so much !"

"We did it together," he said, then smiled and accepted Emilie's hug. "Glad to see you again, Emilie. You haven't changed."

She then turned to the two teenagers.

"Let me guess, I'm an aunt now ?"

"Pierre-Aleksandar and Angèle, our kids," Magda clarified, with a hint of pride in her voice.

"He… Hello," Pierre said, blushing timidly.

"Auntie !" cried Angèle. "Mama told us everything about you."

"She said Angèle looks like you," Pierre added. "I can see it now."

Emilie smiled.

"I'm really happy to meet you. Magda, wow, you're a mom now… And you were such a little girl when you went away…"

"I was already pregnant, remember ?"

"You were my baby anyway ! But look at you now, all grown up. Emperor, I feel old ! Ohh, Magda… To see you after such long years ! I didn't think you'd come back one day..." She proceeded to burst into tears again, hugging her sister, then her nephew and niece.

After much cries, she invited them to enter. The interior looked bigger than Magda remembered. The decoration had changed, making it cosier, with furniture that looked more expansive and of better quality than before. The main room used to have been also used as a bedroom by Magda's father, back in the days, while Emily and Magda shared the other room. There was no bed anymore in the main room, making it look larger. The woman who had opened the door was still there, giving them space for their reunion.

"Meet my wife, Solène," Emilie said, gesturing her to come closer. Solène joined her wife, looking happy now that she knew who these strangers were.

"You're married !" Magda cried. "Ohh, I wish I was here ! Wait… Solène, like Solène Meunier from the schola ? I remember you !"

"Yes, we were in the same class. I remember too." she said with a smile.

"Well, it's a small town," Emilie shrugged. "We became close only after you were gone, though."

"So you don't have kids, auntie ?" Angèle asked, a little bit disappointed. She wanted to make friends and meet all sort of laughed.

"Oh, no ! But Annelise has. You'll meet them soon. I mean…" She turned to Magda, anxious. "You're here to stay, right ?"

Magda smiled. She took her sister's hands.

"We'll never leave again, I promise."

"Oh, thank the Emperor...! I wouldn't bear to lose you again…" She had an air of sadness and reproach. "Speaking of promise, didn't you promise to write to me ? Magda, I didn't even know if you were alive or not…"

"I'm so sorry, Emilie… I wrote to you, but I had no way of sending the letters. We were halfway across the galaxy, you know…" She sighed. "But I've kept every letter and brought them here with me ! Now I can finally give them to you."

She opened her luggage and retrieved the box full of letters. It was heavy in her hands. This box had followed her everywhere since the last ten years, untouched but giving her confidence. To finally being able to deliver all the letters she had wrote, she thought this day would never happen... All her life was written in these thousands of small lines. All the excitement of the discovery, the everyday life aboard the ship filled with joy, fear, doubt and friendship and love, and the way she missed home. All she has ever wished to tell her sister, now she could finally tell her.

As it turned out, Magda and Emilie's father was no longer there. This news filled Magda with sadness and regret. She wished she had not left her father in such bad terms. She wished she had said goodbye… Now it was too late…

Emilie and Solène had lived in the house ever since. Annelise was in the neighborhood, living with her husband, who was scribe, and their four children, the oldest only a year younger than Pierre. Magda was elated to see her. Annelise had been like a sister to her and Emilie, the three girls were nearly inseparable when young. Angèle and Pierre were glad to meet their cousins and to make friends with them. While Annelise's kids taught them everything they had to now about this planet and its ways, Pierre and Angèle told them about life among the stars. Everything was a great curiosity for the others.

After her father's passing, Emilie had inherited the tavern. She quitted her job at the farm and worked full time at the tavern, turning it into an inn. She had realized her father's dream of living off the tavern. Solène joined her as cook. She said she had some work for Bailik if he was interested. Since he couldn't work in the farms because of his legs, he gladly accepted.

Magda didn't have any intention to go back to her former job of taking care of the cattle. With her experience as instructor in the Schola Misericors of our Most Noble and Saint Lady Mira of the Order of the Faithful Respite for the poor, Sister Clarice's schola, she had no difficulty becoming a teacher in the little school where she had gone as a child. While Angèle joined school as a pupil, Pierre decided to discover the city life and was sent in a schola which trained veterinary surgeons, a vital resource on an agri-world such as this planet.

Sometimes in the grim future, not everything is dark. There is light as long as people love each other. And for Magda and her family, all's well that ends well.

At least let's hope so, for we know war is everywhere and the Imperium shall know no peace.