Relume: to rekindle a flame, to relight

Listen here, listen now.

This is the story of an ending, of lives that have been lost. Not the many that have already been lost to death, that will still be lost to death even as the outside world swoops in to offer assistance and treatments. Some injuries just cannot be healed, after all, and there are deaths that occurred long before this final collapse. It is an inevitability that there will still be more lives lost to death. But that story has already been told, it is not those lost lives that we speak of.

No, it is not those lives that this story speaks of.

This is the story of a boy with a spark within him, who awakens to discover that he is between the layers of the world, though he will not realise this yet. Instead, as he sits up and blinks, every inch of him hurting and every inch around him a blank brilliant whiteness, he will assume that this is the Other Side. That his life has indeed been lost to death. But then he will become aware of figures further ahead and as he pulls himself into a sitting position he will see. The other three lives who have always been so very intertwined with his, lives who have also been lost-he will see them.

He will see the warm one, hair longer and curled, clothes as flamboyant as his very spirit. He will see the soft one, their heart, resplendent in a crown of golden flowers. He will see the sweet one, their only girl, thoughtful-eyed and beautiful. He will see that they have been waiting for him and when he lets his body go slack with relief and the tears stream from his eyes they will turn fully and rush to him. They will gather around him and the warm one will laugh and wipe the dirt from his face while the sweet one kisses away the wounds and their heart rests their hands on his shoulders. The last traces of his old life will fade away and he will become magnificent as they are.

To arrive here, they have all had to embrace their darkness, give into it. Yet, despite this, these four lives are not of the dark. But they are not of the light either. They are for themselves, together. They have only ever been for themselves. And perhaps in an ordinary life this too would have resulted in an ordinary kind of love, if one that was extraordinary in strength. But the tapestry has demanded different things and they will never be ordinary, and while perhaps for a moment they will mourn this loss the sadness will soon drift away.

After all, nothing else matters as long as they are together.

Whether ordinary or extraordinary, that has always been true. Nothing else matters, nothing, as long as they are together as the warmth, the spark, the sweetness and the heart. So when their tears stop they will stand straight and they will go forth into their future, between the layers of the world. And just like that, the life they once had will end, their story will end.

But this story is not just of them and their lost lives. There is one other life that is also lost but not to death, a small brave girl who defied her own lack of power to do extraordinary things. The mountain that the trickster-like Overseer has bound her to did not truly crumble when the dragon rose from it, and now that the dragon has returned to sleep there are few who would notice the difference if they did not know beforehand. High up in the tree threaded through with mists, though she saw the crumbling she did not feel it. Neither she nor the Overseer with her, that trickster creature who lives for amusement, noticed. Not while they were busy guiding the threads of the people they had once been tangled with, navigating the other influences of fate to try and give them hope against all odds. They have not been able to avoid all tragedy, and even as they move onto weave other lives and other fates they will not be able to avoid further tragedy. But nonetheless they have finished the final stitches, tied them off. Together the small brave girl and the trickster have completed the tapestry and ended an era, so now they will move on and that will be that.

And so softly, softly, the story finally ends.

Or does it?

Because listen here, listen now.

The thing about endings is that they pave the way to new beginnings. This tapestry is woven, but now those lives will go on to become parts of another tapestry. An era has ended, but a new one will be ushered in. The trees will bloom, the sun will rise, spring will arrive once again.

The warmth, the spark, the sweetness and the heart, those four lives who will spend eternity together wandering the layers between the worlds-they will shake off their humanity in their wanderings and become something else. A presence that will be sensed by those still living in the world, though the names they once had will not always attach themselves to these feelings. A presence that radiates the very same love that has kept these four all this time and will keep them together until the end of time itself. A presence that the people of the world will come to deify, give names of their own making and pray that someday they might find something like that. That pure, boundless love that can take so many forms on the outside but is still the same love right at the core.

People will pray for this type of love, as people always have, and the strength of their desire will reach these four as such desire is wont to do. And with the power that they have, the four will grant it as they wander. Of course they will grant it, because who are they to not wish for others what they have managed to find for themselves? Perhaps some may suspect that it is them that they have been praying to, but nobody will ever know for sure. Of course, this will not matter. The only thing that matters and will ever matter is that they are together, forever until the end of time itself. With such assurances, the rest is only details.

So from now until forever, these four children will be deities of love, both their own and everyone else's.

As for the other two deities, the small brave girl and the trickster, these overseers of fate-why, they will continue to watch over the ones whose lives were once so tightly tangled with theirs. Dividing their time between an old temple and the tree of mists, they will leave the continued weaving of those lives to other forces but for as long as they are weaving the many other lives they preside over, they will both lightly trace their fingers over the paths those stitches take, treasuring every moment. They will see every new triumph and setback, the new tears and laughter. They will follow the children their beloved ones will go onto have, and their children's children, and so on and so forth, until the end of time itself.

But that is a long time away, so if you follow the threads, you too shall see how these lives go on.

And so softly, softly, the story will continue.

Well, we won't be going quite as far as children's children but in the epilogues some of the children that characters go on to have will be featured (though not all, and most will probably be mentions and/or descriptions). There'll be four epilogue chapters in total and I'm going to aim to get them out two at a time and hopefully not take too long in the process. Each individual chapter will be fairly short, though longer than the interludes have been. I think I may have mentioned that already but sometimes I have the memory of a goldfish and this is one of those times.

Anyway, though this does mark the end of the main story I hope you'll stick around for those epilogues!