Star Proper Ending
Star rubbed the goop out of her face. This was only her second time entering Glossaryck's eye, but she already hated it.
It might also be her last time. She . . . wasn't sure how to feel about it. She didn't think she felt anything yet. It was all too sudden.
When she looked up, everyone was already looking at her. Or at least her mom, Eclipsa, and Marco were looking at her. Baby Meteora was too busy playing with her tail, andveryone else in the tavern had ignored her sudden disappearance and reappearance. Even Hekapoo didn't look up from her drink.
Star looked at her friend and family. She didn't look back at Glossaryck. "I'm going to destroy the magic."
There were three gasps and one baby babble.
"Star, what are you saying?" Moon asked. "You can't destroy the magic!"
"Why not? It's destroyed everything else!"
"I don't know if that's even possible, dear," Eclipsa said. "Besides, your mother and I were already considering our options. I'm going back to fight, and if we all join together then I may not even need to use the spell with no name again." Like most things she said, it was with a nearly convincing but still false confidence. Star had once admired that, but now she preferred the underlying truth, the fact that Eclipsa still was aware of the reality of these situations.
"We barely beat one of those knights! The only thing that worked was that spell! And you saw what that did! It destroyed everything, even—even—" Star frowned. "Mom, who was in that armor?"
"I—I don't know," Moon admitted, looking away. "No one was supposed to attack yet. It truly was only going to be a show of power to force a peaceful surrender."
Star gaped at her. "Do you even listen to yourself?!"
"Sometimes peace requires enforcing," Moon said stiffly.
Star wanted to scream, and it must have been obvious on her face because Marco rushed over and put a comforting hand on her shoulder. "Hey hey, it's—um—nothing is okay right now, and that's not okay. But now you have a plan, right? Do you really think it'll work?"
She leaned into his touch, trying to memorize it as well as the smell of his sweater. "I'll go into the Magic Dimension and say the Whispering Spell. I've done it twice before already with the wands. I know it'll work."
Marco nodded. "Then I'll go with you."
"You don't have to."
"Aw come on, let's have one more magic adventure before they all turn non-magic."
Star managed a small smile. "Yeah, one more magic adventure." She transformed into her butterfly form.
"Wait, Star!" Moon called out. "Please consider what you're doing! Magic has been an integral part of Mewni for ages! It's done so much good for us!"
"Good?! GOOD?!" Star took a calming breath when Marco softly squeezed her shoulder. "Don't you see? Magic hasn't helped us. It's only ruined everything. It let Mewmans drive the monsters out of their homeland, and for what? So we can grow corn and live it up while pretending that they're evil? Monsters aren't evil, Mom. If you had spent a single second outside in reality instead of listening to your parents, you would have known that!"
Eclipsa smiled at that, but Moon frowned. "Maybe we were a bit harsh in the past, but what about Ludo then? And Toffee? We need to be able to defend ourselves!"
"Ludo wanted magic, and Toffee wanted to destroy magic. Take magic out of the equation and they wouldn't have even bothered us!"
"How do you know that? How do you know that they wouldn't have tried to take our kingdom regardless?"
"Why do you always assume the worst?!"
"Yeah, that's just what humans do," Marco muttered in agreement.
"We're Mewmans, Marco," Moon corrected. "And we need to think about our people."
"I'm pretty sure you're humans, actually," Marco said. "It was easy enough to wander through the Magic Dimension to get over here. I mean, how else did people like you end up in monster central?"
Star blinked. "Wait, is that what you were trying to tell me when we found the well?"
"Yeah, but I think we have more important things to worry about than possible historical conspiracies."
"You're right." Star bolstered her courage, fluttering her wings. "Let's go."
"Wait!" This time it was Eclipsa. "I know firsthand how magic can be used to harm others, but can't we also use it to protect them? Maybe if I can study the Spell Book better, and with Glossaryck's guidance, we can find some other spell to stop Mina's army."
Star shook her head. "Like what? Making your own army? So long as there's magic, someone will always use it to make things go their way, and I haven't met a single magic user I could trust with that sort of power. Not even myself."
"Star, darling, you restored magic when Toffee was trying to destroy it," Moon pointed out. "You saved Mewni!"
"And I gave Marco a creepy tentacle arm and turned a Queen Moon impersonator into a squirrel frog! I've done terrible magic things!"
"Wait, what was that second thing?" Moon questioned.
Star didn't answer. She twirled three of her hands, generating the golden portal. "If there's one good thing I can ever do with magic, it's destroying it."
Marco grinned at her reassuringly before rushing at Moon and snatching the wand. It changed form immediately at his touch. "Alright! Let's use this baby again before we say bye-bye to magic!" He grabbed Star's hand.
"You've used it before?!" Moon asked.
"Are they—? Aw!" Eclipsa said adoringly.
But Star and Marco had already jumped through the portal.
If it weren't for the other patrons of the tavern, the room would have been silent.
"Good kids," Hekapoo noted, raising her glass in a toast. "I guess bad parents don't always lead to bad kids." She glanced pointedly at Glossaryck.
"Eh, Ludo is still my favorite," Glossaryck replied.
"Ludo isn't even yours."
"At least he listened to me."
0o0
Star looked down at the unicorn skeleton.
Like every other good thing she tried to do with magic, even her weird unicorn daughter hadn't lasted long.
The purple liquid was visible in the near distance, a reminder of how her mother soured this place after all the hard work Star had put into fixing it.
On the bright side, the dimension was still so pRetTy . . .
Suddenly some strange but cute boy was shoving pudding into her mouth and she—she remembered.
"Whoa, wait, how'd you do that?" she asked as she regained her lucidity.
Marco shrugged. "Glossaryck handed me a bunch of pudding when we got to the tavern, so I started eating it and . . . ohhhh, do you think this is why he always asked for pudding?"
Star facepalmed. "Why can't he ever just tell us these things?!"
Marco shrugged again.
Star begrudgingly slurped up more pudding, and for a moment it almost felt like a surreal picnic, just the two of them in one of the most beautiful places in the multiverse.
Then a shout rang out and Tom came charging down a hill on the dark unicorn.
Wow, maybe Tom had been right to break up with her. She hadn't even noticed that he'd been left behind.
Marco gripped the wand. "I'll hold him off. You do your thing."
Star looked at him, debated on lunging in for a final kiss, but decided that would ruin her concentration. "Go kick some unicorn butt."
0o0
Marco stumbled back to where the Butterflies were, feet sloshing through the purple gunk that was now everywhere.
The waterfalls were trickling away. Disappearing. The gateways were closing.
He should have realized sooner.
"Marco!" Star ran over and hugged him tight. It was a good thing he was already soaked with the magic liquid, or she might have noticed his bleeding. "You need to get to the Earth portal before it's gone!"
He winced and hugged her back regardless. "Star, the dimensional scissors won't work after this, will they? How are we going to see each other again?"
Star pulled away to look him in the eye, and he knew. "I'll find a way," she lied. "But you have your sister to get back to. I'll find a way."
Marco nodded resignedly. "You did good. I'm so proud to have been your karate sidekick."
She kissed him. It was a bit of a surprise and absolutely wonderful. But all too soon she was pushing him towards the waterfall to Earth.
They stared at each other for a moment.
"Come on, Star!" Moon called. "The Mewni portal is closing! Same for you, Marco!"
Marco forced himself to turn away first, running as best as he could. When he heard her splashing footsteps becoming more distant, he allowed himself to slow to a pained limp.
He'd . . . he'd never been hurt this bad before. Not even in the Neverzone. Didn't people die from stomach wounds like this in movies? Could it be healed? Magic would have done it in a jiffy, but that wasn't an option anymore.
He jumped into the waterfall. He thought of his parents, of Mariposa. He thought of the long recovery time this wound would need. If recovery was possible.
If it weren't for his family, dying actually didn't sound too bad. It would let him avoid the years of living in heartbreak and trying to get back to a normal life.
Normal. He had left normal so far behind him. He once thought he had left normal permanently behind.
Now normal was back. And ironically enough, it came with a greater chance of death than half of his weird adventures.
Not to mention that it meant no Star.
He surfaced in the well, gasping for breath. The tunnel was so dark. He curled in on himself. The pain was pretty bad. His idea was also bad. He had a sister, after all. But he also had more than thirty years of experience in missing everyone he ever loved while he was I the Neverzone.
And technically, the option to run away from the Neverzone had always been an option. Hekapoo had told him to go home. He had stayed for the scissors, for the ability to travel dimensions, for Star's favorite thing in the universe. He'd done it all for her.
Marco ducked back into the waterfall.
0o0
Star had made many rash decisions before, and it appeared she just couldn't stop making them today.
But finally this was one she really wanted to do.
She couldn't leave Marco forever. She'd spent most of her life with her family and their flaws, and now she had a real reason to hate her mother. Star had done more than any other queen to ensure that both the Mewmans and monsters of Mewni could live safe and happy lives. She'd done all her adventuring.
Now all she wanted was to be with Marco, the one person she could always count on.
Was it selfish? Would he be angry that she was invading his life yet again?
Never mind. It was too late. The waterfall to Earth was gone. And so was the one back to Mewnie . . .
Oh Stump! This was what she got for following her heart! She could change the world, end the injustice that was magic, but she couldn't do anything to help herself be happy! Unless they were Beach Day mind games, but even that had only been temporary.
"Looking for someone?" Glossaryck asked from where he floated nearby.
"I came back to be with him." Tears pricked at her eyes.
"Funny. He said the same thing about you." Glossaryck pointed.
Star looked, and there was Marco curled up by a rock. She ran to him.
If this was the end of her life, then it would end like her ballad: showing her love for her best friend.
0o0
A few months later:
"I don't get it," Star said as she lay in the hammock.
"Don't get what?" Marco asked from his spot squashed next to her. "How most of the different dimensions got along after abruptly becoming next door neighbors? I think people had been accidentally travelling through the Magic Dimension for thousands of years. That's why we have legends of magic and monsters. That's also why nobody freaked out when you started using magic here. Humans might not have known about the other dimensions, but we did know about a lot of the creatures in them. And it's a lot easier to deal with things you understand. If it weren't for Mina, I'd even say we would have achieved universal peace by now."
"That's cool and all, but I was thinking more about my tapestry."
"Your what?"
"There was a room in the old castle that I called the Grandma Room because it had all the tapestries depicting the greatest feats of all the queens of Mewni. Glossaryck showed me mine as proof that I would be able to destroy the magic, but . . . it didn't look like this. It only showed Mewni and everyone in Mewni. You weren't in it. I almost decided not to destroy the magic because I thought we would never see each other again."
Marco's brow furrowed. "Huh, well, Glossaryck said he didn't know what would happen after the magic was destroyed. Maybe he didn't think this could happen."
"But he doesn't make the tapestries. The magic makes the tapestries. And it knows. Or something. Magic was weeeird."
"Then I have no idea. Magic never did make sense to me."
"Yeah, me neither."
There was silence except for the twittering of birds and the roars of dragon cycles for a few minutes.
"You don't think it means we'll break up, do you?" Star asked.
"If we didn't let a little thing like probable death get in our way, then I think we're pretty solid."
"Great! Because Ponyhead already started planning the wedding."
Marco nearly choked on his own spit. "What?!"
0o0
Years later:
"So you think I should tell them?" Meteora asked Mariposa as they climbed up the jungle gym far higher and faster than the other children.
"I mean, it seems pretty important." Mariposa flipped to crouch on the very top of the playground. "I know we haven't really started history, but Marco told me a lot in bedtime stories. You witnessed one of the biggest things in Mewni history!"
"I guess so. I hope the memory is real. There's a lot of other things in my head that I'm not even sure about."
"But Glossaryck was there, so it's probably real. Come on, let's go while my dad is still busy showing off my baby pictures."
They dropped to the ground with twin rolls and sprinted off towards the field where Star and Marco were watching a little league Cornball game. Katrina waved at them as they passed. They waved back. Within a few years she could become an assistant coach, and Meteora and Mariposa would finally be able to join a team.
For now, being five years old meant that only a handful of people really paid attention to them.
"Ah, mi hermana!" Marco gave Mariposa a quick hug. "Meteora." He nodded his head respectfully at the other girl.
Meteora glared back in return, tail twitching.
"Hey girls!" Star greeted brightly. "What's up?"
"Meteora remembered something that might be interesting."
Marco suddenly looked guilty. "Not another obviously false memory about living on a mountain with witches, is it?"
Mariposa rolled her eyes. It was sweet that he tried to avoid their worse memories, but she personally looked back on their Neverzone experience fondly.
"It's about Glossaryck," Meteora said. She explained their trip down the river of time all the way back to the first settlers of Mewni, and then their visit to a young Toffee.
Star was flabbergasted. "You're telling me that Glossaryck gave the first Mewmans the wand? And he made Toffee afraid of magic? This—it doesn't make sense! Why would he do that?!"
Marco blinked in shock. "Let's be honest, nothing Glossaryck did made sense."
"Yeah, but this isn't just him making some offhand cryptic remark! This is him changing history!"
Mariposa frowned thoughtfully. "And didn't Toffee want to end magic?"
"Yes."
"Then Glossaryck gave Mewmans magic, and then he made Toffee want to take the magic away . . ." She turned around to watch the game. "It's like he set up one giant game of Cornball, Mewmans vs monsters, and then waited to see who won."
"Huh, yeah . . ." Star's eyes narrowed. "So . . . did I win his twisted game?"
Marco shrugged. "At least you ended it."
Meteora nodded, which made Mariposa gasp softly; she never agreed with Marco. "Magic was just making everyone go crazy," Meteora said. "I mean, it's kind of ridiculous to look back and think that there used to be a stick that would grant whoever held it nearly limitless power. It just made some people think they were better than others."
Star hugged Meteora. "You're right. I'm glad the magic is gone. It only ever led to—what's that word you taught me, Marco?"
"Bias? Injustice? Discrimination?"
"One of those. The Earth dictionaries have way more words than the Mewni ones."
"Whatever it did, thanks for stopping it, Aunt Star." Meteora smiled at her with full fangs. Then her ears perked up towards the street. "Goblin Dogs!"
"Goblin Dogs?!" Mariposa echoed.
"Goblin Dogs!" they screamed together.
Marco grinned, pulling $650 out of his pocket. "How many do you want?"