The Grey Witch
AvalonReeseFanFics
A/N: This is it my wonderful readers! It's the official end of this story. Thank you to all the people that stuck through the long hiatuses to get to this point. I appreciate each every person who read this story, who liked, followed and review. Thank you so much for going on this adventure with me, I hope you enjoyed this story as much as I enjoyed writing it and I hope you guys check out some of my other stories!
Chapter 12 – AKA The epilogue
Years had gone by. The name siblings had created for themselves followed Gretel from town to town. Ben was often mistaken for Hansel, and very soon he stopped correcting people, save for when they called him her brother. Then he would tell them that actually, he was her husband. Or well, he did when he finally got her to agree to marry him. Which was quite easy to do after their trip to the Apple Isle.
People respected him more when he was Hansel, he'd say, but she always called him Ben no matter who was with them.
Three years after leaving the Apple Islands, they had their first child. A little girl with Ben's eyes and Gretel's hair. And two years after that they had their second, a boy who looked more like Hansel every day, if Hansel were to ever have hair like Ben's.
When the children came they stopped travelling to fight witches. The constant moving was because witches always seemed to find them, and the villagers were never appropriately thankful for their help in dispelling witches. But it didn't matter to which town they moved, any house they moved into, bushes of vibrant sweet-smelling lavender would sprout almost as if over night.
When the children were older, 6 and 4 respectively, they moved to a house on the coast. A single standing structure with its own farm land that sat on the edge of a cliff with a little pathway that took them down to a little cove all for them. They had only been in that house for a year when Gretel started thinking about heading back to the Apple Isle to see her brother.
She thought about it for a few days and then out of nowhere a little grey boat made of ash wood and held together with green sprigs of lavender appeared on their shore. Flying under a grey banner with a single golden apple.
Ben didn't even ask her about it. He simple asked when she wanted to leave.
They were packed and ready by the end of the night.
The boat was larger than their first one, to accommodate them and the weather and Edward who, despite not liking water, was coming with them.
They sailed for three days and three nights before they arrived at the island where her brother resided. And he and his Lorne were waiting for them.
The passage of time had not touched her brother the way it has touched her. While she had grown wrinkles and sprouted grey hairs to weave within her dark brown, Hansel looked the exact same as that day they poured that elixir into his mouth.
There was more than enough, Hansel liked to remind her in the letters he'd send with Lorne's ravens, of that elixir that Lorne had saved for Ben and her. And one day, when their children were grown and they had lived the kind of life that they have always dreamed of, maybe they'd take them up with that offer.
But for right now, as their children ran across the sand to their aunt and uncle, Gretel was happy with her mortal life, as Hansel and Lorne are happy with their immortal ones.
She was surprised to find a child in Lorne's arms. A little babe that had Hansel's blonde hair and Lorne's purple eyes. That had not been mentioned in any of their letters.
But she did know that he and Lorne had gotten married in the custom of her family. She did know that the powers that grew in were wind based like Lorne's. She knew that her brother was happy.
In turn Hansel knew that Gretel and Ben had married. He knew about his niece and nephew. He knew about the moving, and though they moved a lot, he always knew where to send his letters, or maybe the ravens knew. And though she hadn't written him back yet, they clearly knew where the new house was.
There was still much to talk about, since it had been years since they had last seen one another. But that didn't matter. What mattered was on that grey mist shrouded island their family was reuniting and that in their own ways, despite their beginnings and the middle parts where they were certain nothing would ever be settled, they had all found their happily ever afters.
xx The End