Hexagon

Chapter 88: Epilogue

Holy shit.

That's the last time I'm going to be writing the name "Hexagon" on something. That is SCARY.

To all of the people who reviewed:

-5witchBlade

-Mintycloud

-Mintflight0245

-strike class

-Tigercry

-markusbirkholz

-HollyleafML (x2)

-Guest

-Bluestream

-Guest

-Guest

-DarkCrystal666 (x12)

I just want to let all of you know that I LITERALLY LOVE YOU GUYS SO MUCH.

I love all of you. I'm serious. Whether you've been a lurker or whether you reviewed every single chapter, just the fact that you've been here, reading and supporting me, makes me happier than I can possibly put into words. You made writing this story such a pleasure for me, and I will never be able to express my gratitude enough.

::composing self::

Ahem.

On with the fic!

Briarlight's POV:

12:25 PM, May 16th, 2065

I could barely sit still. The car was creeping slowly up a very steep hill, the wheels leaving little clouds of dust behind us. I leaned forward excitedly and stared out the window, peering down into the valley. We were in the mountains in Orange County, California, where the sun shone like a bright white coin in a perfect blue sky.

The surrounding hills were dotted with trees and colorful desert flowers, going all the way down into the valley below. Between the peaks of two large hills, I could see the glittering expanse of the Pacific sparkling in the mid-May sun.

A woman I didn't know sat the wheel, dressed in a neat white blazer not unlike those worn at Hexagon. Her golden blond hair was pulled into a severe bun at the back of her head, the hair stretched so smooth that the sun gleamed off of it with almost no effort at all. I caught a glimpse of the steel-colored eyes in the rearview mirror and quickly looked away.

Servant or not, the woman was intimidating, with her eyes like steel and a face so sharp that it looked like it had been cut out of stone.

"There's no need to look so frightened", she said, sounding amused. There was a distinct accent to her voice, something that made the "r"s roll in the back of her throat and left her with difficulty pronouncing the "th" sound. It sounded central European. Dutch, maybe German or Danish?

"My name is Rain, I look after the three siblings. I like to consider myself their valet."

I opened my mouth, about to ask where she was from when she interrupted, smiling. "Yes, I am aware that a valet is traditionally a job for a man. But lady's maid sounds much less impressive, don't you think?"

Deciding not to correct Rain, I just smiled and nodded, then posed my question. "Where are you from?"

Rain carefully maneuvered the car onto a well-paved side road, passing two impressive fountains on either side. "Oh!", she said, clearly not expecting the question. "I'm Hessian. Born and raised in the state of Hesse, in Germany."

The car made an even loop along a curved driveway, then came to a stop in front of a massive, cream colored house. The home had clearly taken a lot of Hispanic and Latin-American influences, with its red terracotta-tiled roof, elegant arches and grand, sweeping verandas. The house was surrounded by a legion of towering palm trees, their floppy green fronds shining waxy in the sun.

"Holy shit…." I had barely stepped out of the car with my prosthetic, intending to admire the beautiful brickwork on the walls, when a shriek sounded from the courtyard.

"Briarlight!", came Hollyleaf's excitable voice, and I turned to see her dashing through a series of arches, closely followed my other friends. But before she could so much as set foot on the street, Jayfeather tore past her at full speed. He seemed to remember my artificial limb just in time and slowed down, then carefully hugging me, minding my clunky leg.

I appreciated it. In the six weeks it had taken for my body to recover, it had adapted to the loss of my leg. Now, the heavy prosthetic felt awkward and unnatural, and despite what the doctors kept saying, I wasn't sure that I'd ever grow accustomed to the heaviness on my side.

Jayfeather, Lionblaze, and Breezpelt had just been about to open the trunk when Rain interrupted. She had just gotten out of the car herself and nonchalantly shooed them away. "No need to worry, gentlemen. I'll take the luggage, feel free to go back to the courtyard."

And to my surprise, the three of them obliged. Jayfeather dropped back to walk with me, and I held onto his arm as I balanced precariously along on my prosthetic leg.

I was about to tell him off for leaving a single woman alone to carry all of my luggage, when I looked back. My jaw nearly dropped to the floor. Rain, without so much as breaking a sweat, had lifted every single one of the heavy suitcases at once. Now that I looked closer, I could see the telltale bulge of biceps underneath the white blazer sleeves.

Correctly interpreting my silence, Jayfeather started to laugh. "You're far from the first to underestimate Rain", he informed me. "Berrynose tried to flirt with her, then argued for a full fifteen minutes about his luggage until she got tired of him and just grabbed all of it."

"I'll bet that was embarrassing", I snorted.

Jayfeather grinned. "You have no idea. He gets flustered every time Rain so much as breaths in his immediate vicinity. Foxleap hasn't stopped teasing him about it since they got here."

"That sounds like Foxleap, alright", I laughed, imagining the usually confident and self-assured Berrynose floundering. "Who else is here?"

Jayfeather looked thoughtful for a second, then started listing people off on his fingers. "Well, everyone who went to the warehouse. Then, Berrynose, Foxleap, Hazeltail, and Icecloud." He counted again. "That's everyone, I think. Honeyfern might be coming over the summer, but we don't know yet."

He led me into the courtyard. It was a massive open area with a large pool in the middle. Little waterfalls flowed into the pool water, the currents driving a set of floaty toys across the sapphire-esque surface.

I collapsed gratefully into one of the recliners with Jayfeather next to me, watching in amusement as Cinderheart cannonballed off of a diving board. The silverette's head bobbed in the water as she resurfaced and paddled back to the pool's edge, clambering over the pool lip back onto the tile. Then, she broke into a sprint, chasing Ivypool and Hollyleaf up the diving board ladder.

There was another colossal splash, spray rising from the center of the pool and lapping all the way to the edges. The three of them had jumped in all at once. Next to me, Jayfeather sat primly crosslegged, reading his Braille book as he listened to the shenanigans happening in the pool.

Suddenly, I could understand him better than ever.

"Is this what you always feel like?", I asked him quietly, making sure that the others couldn't hear.

He looked up, his scarred over blue eyes locking on me.

"What do you mean?"

"Like a cripple. Like only half a person."

Jayfeather sighed. "All the time. It sucks, you know? Knowing that there are so many things that I'll never be able to do or experience." And for the first time, I understood him perfectly.

"I'd say you have it worse, though", he said thoughtfully. "I lost my sight so long ago, I barely remember having it. I've been blind my whole life, I don't even know what I'm missing. But you...you know what it's like to be normal, what it's like to live your life without having to worry about your disability."

"And now...I have to live with the fact that I'll never be normal again", I said quietly.

He nodded. "It's not the end of the world, though. You get used to it, I promise. There'll be a time in the future where it'll stop bothering you." He leaned back, crossing his arms behind his head, letting the warm sunlight cast over his face. "At least, that's how it was for me."

I leaned forward in interest, watching his face carefully. "Jayfeather", I said cautiously, not sure if it was a touchy topic or not. "How did you lose your sight?"

Jayfeather's eyes reopened, and I could see his eyes clearer than ever before. The bright blue irises, woven through with foggy gray scars.

"When I was barely a year old, I contracted an upper respiratory infection", he started. "My father was taking care of me at the time, and he didn't think anything of it. While he sat by and did nothing, the disease got worse. And worse."

It was becoming blindingly obvious now. The way Jayfeather despised his father.

"My dad couldn't be bothered to take me to a doctor until the disease had reached critical severity. I'm lucky I survived, but the disease ruined my eyes. I've been blind since then."

He pointed up to his jay-blue irises, right at the grayish scarring in his eyes. "That's what those scars are from. The disease left them behind."

"Damn", I muttered. "No wonder you hate your dad."

Jayfeather snorted in amusement, then pulled me down onto the recliner with him, where we lay tangled together in a sweaty hug.

In that moment, my ruined leg and the heavy prosthetic were forgotten. Half Moon's absence and the gaping hole she had left in my heart seemed to temporarily be filled with the smell of chlorine, and palm trees, and Jayfeather's deodorant, and the sun baking down on the terracotta tiles. Just being here, battered but alive, listening to the sound of the others gleefully flipping off a diving board, was the single most beautiful thing in the world.

~fin~

::sobbing in the distance::

The first chapter of Enneagon comes out exactly 2 weeks from now, on October 11th.

If you don't feel like waiting until then, I wrote a little Hexagon bonus oneshot, which is now up on my page.

See you guys in 2 weeks!

Azra out!