Epilogue: 2018
Years passed by, and by the time I knew it, I was teaching elementary school, and our once infant daughter had grown to the tender age of seven, safe and well-protected, although she knew who she was, and that she had a great place in the world. Every now and then-- during summer, when school was out of course, we made the short journey back to The Land of the Faerie, and stayed there for the duration of our summer holidays.
And so, for the most part, my journey was over-- or at least just put on hold for now. Any way you looked at it, one thing was definitely certain; I no longer had a significant role to play in the battle between the shaska and the faerie…
I was twenty-nine now; only a couple months away from my thirtieth birthday-- the same age that my mother had been at the time of her young and untimely death. Twenty-nine years old. Twenty-nine, and I should have been dead on countless occasions before-- but I had survived each encounter with the darker forces that had been working to destroy me.
I had survived, as would my daughter. My mother had died young, but I had not-- and neither would my daughter-- our daughter; Matthew's and mine, I mean, for we were stronger together than apart.
Jacqueline was now gone forever. REHtoMna had promised me this; at least my daughter would be safe from her-- but not her memory-- nor her followers-- I was not safe either, but then again, nobody was. That was the way of the worlds.
The second half of the prophecy had named her as the final hope; she would be able to do what neither Matthew nor I could ever have done in our lifetimes; she would be able to rid the universe once and for all of the deadly shaska.
If the prophecy had indeed been correct, then the future generations of the world would be safe forever, and if not--
My mother had shielded me from the truth, but I would not do the same to my daughter. She was frightened, yes-- in her own way, but she still knew that she would be able to rid the many peoples of the world from the shaska.
From the moment she had been born, our daughter had known what she was; the final tie between the faerie people and the mortals on earth. I was not the strongest person in the world, nor the smartest, nor the bravest…
But I would teach her everything I knew…
And her name is Dianne.