The italics are memories that Dawn dreams about in her coma. This epilogue switches between Dawn's dreams and Callia being furious. The reason Ken's in pain is because he's the Light, so he feels it when another Light is nearby. Light and Wind are not the same elements, and therefore repel each other. Usually, the feeling of magicks battling each other is very painful, but Dawn, if you read the first diary entry, is impervious to pain. Unfortunately, Ken's not. "Don't Let Me Get Me" is by Pink.

Epilogue: Don't Let Me Get Me

Varda took a stick off the ground and handed it to Dawn. "The left end is unhappy, the right end is happy. Make us not see the unhappy left end."

Dawn took it and managed to break off part of it.

"I told you to break off the left end. Why is it still there?" Varda asked.

Dawn looked at the stick and flung it to the ground as tears filled her eyes. "The left end's always gonna be there!" she whined.

"No, it won't," Varda picked the stick up and held it vertically so that the right end faced her. "I don't see a left end, even though you do. The second I told you to stop being unhappy, you stared at the left end like there was no tomorrow. It's such a habit, isn't it, to look at the dark side? If you make optimism a habit, you will be an optimist and much happier." Silence followed.

"What you just said makes more sense that I've heard from anyone, even the psychologist the court assigned me," Dawn squeaked. Her eyes were bloodshot.

"That's because I find odd and surprising bits of beauty in ugliness," Varda said smugly, reminding Dawn that she was but a teenage human, after all. ****

"Go outside," Varda said. "Go on the beach, outside of the car."

"That's stupid!" Dawn said belligerently. "There's all this bird crud and rotting seaweed and moss."

"And cedar and salt," Varda said. "Those are fresh."

"Yeah," Dawn looked up a bit. Vivid colors glistened in bright sunlight. "It's beautiful," she said before she could help it. She wanted to take that back, not giving any ground as to her pride. But the world was beautiful, and taking back what she said would require missing the beauty.

How much beauty had she missed in her life? Was Varda seeing this? Why have beauty like this if you couldn't share it so people could help preserve it? No, the beauty lay in the fact that it was natural. Dawn's life was processed so that she wouldn't know seaweed smelled in the sun after it died. But if nothing died, nothing could live. She wondered if she deserved to die. Then again, had she any right to live? Did her well-publicized life have meaning? She knew her body would one day become something ants made homes out of. That was okay, because it was natural. But would the world benefit? Was she more useful than a tree or a weed? Was she alive just so her body could be fertilizer for a tree or a weed? Yes, someday she'd die and lie there and be eaten by maggots, but today she would help someone and make the world better.

"Idiot expelled so much energy that she's in a coma," Callia gritted her teeth. "Where's Sam?"

"On the phone," Varda said, trying to be helpful.

"Sam, I need you to come to Sacred Mary's Hospital and kill Ken Tully. Yes, with magick!" Callia took the phone with no small amount of frustration. An hour later, Sam was still stuck in traffic. Although something must be said for our oceans if you can have congested boat traffic.

Jaunie ran up to them and waved maniacally. "She's awake!" she yelled.

Dawn was taking out the trash like she did every Saturday, but this wasn't every Saturday, clearly, because she heard moans coming from the dumpster. Had a person more clumsy than her fallen down while unloading a particularly heavy bag of garbage? She found a cardboard box, like the kind that used to hold her refrigerator, moving like there was someone in there. Without thought, she jumped in and kicked a hole in the cardboard before literally ripping it to shreds with her hands until a boy rolled out. "What happened?" Dawn was freaked out.

"My dad beat the holy snot out of me, took the belt to me, and put my ear too close to the stove," Ken said without emotion, mostly because he was too busy gritting his teeth in what must have been agony. "I didn't think he would lock me in here, though."

Dawn looked at Ken with motherly tenderness. He had bruises from his scalp to his neck, a split lip, a rib fractured so badly that it had burst through the skin, and bruises on his bibs and stomach area. Not until she had gotten him to the hospital did she found out he also had 30 broken bones and a liver ulcer.

After making sure he would be alright, she went back to look around in the box filled with rat droppings. There was a bag of rotten spaghetti and a bag of flour crawling with bugs. It was enough to make her puke.

Dear Magenta,

Since I started off the year with a diary entry before I met Callie (I shall always call her that in my heart) I figured it's only fitting to end the year with another one.

I was once raised by a mother who indulged my every wish. All my goals fulfilled instantly, I had only one thing in mind, and that was to have fun. I had fun by looking for pretty things. I developed a good eye for breathtaking vistas. But even 360-dgree views don't stay breathtaking forever. The first high, as druggies say, is always the best. So I shared my views. But even then it felt limited. Must I go to Mt. Everest after my balcony is no longer enough? That was when friend showed me the beauty in clumps of grass. I could no longer ignore that beauty was all around me. At first, I thought all the world was beauty. Then I met Ken Tully.

He was constantly abused by his family and I was the one who found him after they decided to throw him away to die. I remember how he looked in that box they stuffed him in. He was emaciated, his skin was chafed, and he was so pitifully ill. When I found him, he was only a little bit older than me now. All of a sudden, I saw despicable grossness in the world. I couldn't see the beauty anymore. But Ken could.

Ken, who had seen his younger sister brained by his mom, suffers to this day from being whipped and beaten and even burned daily by his father. Yet he saw beauty in the world. I saw, at most, redemption. And then I saw beauty in the face that Ken overcame his ugliness. That's when I knew why people suffered so much—to see beauty in their overcoming of it.

I chose to write about beauty because, although we have people talk about it all the time, no one claims to understand it while everyone pretends to. So I talk about it as a girl who doesn't completely get it, but is trying to get there. I would never have guessed I could start understanding something by accepting that I can't understand it, but it's true. To quote a different Dawn, "The hardest thing to do in this world is to live in it."

Callia was berating Dawn after she awoke when the whole world went to hell.

That's all, folks! I hope you enjoyed it. I dedicate this to my best friend Cwen (Mara) for just being the most beautiful person on Earth, inside and out!