Epilogue
The girl did not know time as she floated between a realm of reality and insanity. All there was, was pain and maybe voices she thought she might once have known, echoing through the fog that addled her brain. Snippets of conversation came to her in the darkness, things half spoken.
“—it’s too much, she needs to stop—”
“—the magic has been contained within for too long—”
“—it will kill her, do something—”
She thought that perhaps death would be a mercy, a dark abyss to fall within and never return. The night had always been her reprieve and the dark wasn’t so very different.
But there was something she needed to do. Wasn’t there?
Caramel eyes.
A smile bright and wide. A hand outstretched, pulling her gently into the creek as they ran and splashed. A laugh, warm as a hot summer day, that pulled her once from the darkness that loomed.
Recoiling, she felt her grief vast and endless. An ocean of pain and suffering she could not face. Could not bear to feel.
Why must it hurt so terribly? She wanted to ask, but her body was not her own. Her lips unmoving. She was nothing and nowhere. A soul floating and lost with no way back home.
Did she have a home? A place to return? She did not know.
Perhaps death would truly be a mercy, easier than whatever this was. For she knew something waited, something that sent fear sparking through her mind.
“It is not your time, child.” They hissed, echoing all around. They had always been there, that she knew. For even if she forgot everything, she could never truly forget them.
For they were her and she was them.
“Shadow-blessed. Shadow-cursed.” They crooned. “Now is the time to decide which it really is, little shadow.”