86. Epilogue—Maybe in a YearTwo
Epilogue—Maybe in a Year or Two
FOCAL ANIMAL: INTERPERSONAL RELATIONSHIP B/W BERTRAM, COUNT OF ROUSILLON AND HELENA DE NARBON, PhD NICKNAME: FIANCé(E)S
WEIGHT: as heavy as my heart is full LENGTH: from here to eternity HEIGHT: as deep as the sea
NOTES: ***ATTN: H: I wish I could say that from the first time I saw Scientist A, I knew she would be the love of my life.
But the truth is, the first time I saw her—and the second, and the tenth—she annoyed the hells out of me.
The fact that she was able to burrow her way into my heart is an eternal testament to her wit, kindness, intellect, humor, brilliance, and boundless compassion.
Her love for otherfolk and mundane animals is unmatched, as is Scientist B’s love for her.
It is his greatest honor and privilege that she has previously alluded to spending her life with him, and he would be more than delighted if they were to make that more official vis a vis paperwork. -B***
Helena looked up from the computer and smiled.
“Bertram, your note is very sweet, and you know how much I love paperwork so if you want me to write a note about how much I love you, I will absolutely do it, but please let me know if you’re putting non-study related things into MagiTracks just so I don’t accidentally submit our love letters to Otherfolk Neonate Care or something like that. ”
“Duly noted,” Bertram said.
“But, as I said, it’s incredibly lovely,” Helena assured him. “And, of course I feel the same way about you and—wait, nickname ‘fiancés?!’ ” Helena’s voice jumped about two octaves higher.
Bertram smiled. “If you like.”
“Wait. So, when you said paperwork, you meant, like, official . . . you meant marriage paperwork? Is this:—is this your idea of a proposal?” Helena gasped.
“Giving you a ring would be unlucky,” Bertram said.
Helena’s lips drew into a tight line and her eyes filled with tears. For a moment, Bertram worried that he had botched the proposal, that he had underestimated her desire for traditional romantic gestures or else overestimated her love for academia.
He was reminded there was no such thing as overestimating Helena’s love for academia as she threw herself at him full force and kissed him madly.
“Yes.” Helena smiled as she pulled back, holding Bertram’s face in both her hands. “Yes, of course, yes.”
Bertram kissed her again, running his fingers through her hair. He could never get enough of touching her, unable to believe his good fortune that he had found her, lost her, found her again, and now got to keep her.
“Wait.” Helena sprung off his lap. “You may not have a ring for me . . . but I still have one for you!”
She bounded into the living room.
Lovey had just come in from the snow and was curled up in a makeshift nest. It took up more than half the room, which was unsurprising for a creature that was now the size of a zebra and still growing.
The now juvenile owl-bear spent increasing time outside unsupervised but always returned to nest for the night with her People in their home.
She had a nest outside as well, but she had yet to use it.
Bertram was rooting for her to have the best life she could, no matter where that ended up being, but he knew it would be painful if he and Helena one day found Lovey’s nest empty and the owl-bear completely gone.
For now, that did not seem likely to happen anytime soon.
When Lovey did wander outside, it was to a much safer Folio Mountains. The now-finished Boite-MacBridah Otherfolk-Wildlife Crossing showed similar efficacy to wildlife crossings in the human world, taking the amount of roadkill on the 394 down from tens of thousands of bodies a year to almost zero.
Leroix was very appreciative of this and generously allowed Bertram and Helena to construct a permanent home in the mountains without burning them both as punishment.
They had consulted Leroix at every step, showing him plans that would guarantee minimum disruption to any foliage, the eco-friendly measures that would be used to keep the house running, and warning him exactly how many “humans” (although many were People of other species) would be entering his mountain range at any given time.
Leroix acted like he was doing them all a huge favor by permitting them to stay in his domain, but Bertram had a feeling he would have allowed anything to keep Lovey around.
He had become a great mentor for his Little Beastie, and the two would often spend their days flying longer and longer distances.
Leaving Lovey with Leroix also granted Bertram and Helena more freedom in their lives.
They could visit friends and have date nights now—at A Wild Thyme with Diana, or even by themselves sometimes, in real restaurants existing in actual time and space.
Jennie visited between projects and was thrilled to meet her owl-bear grandbaby in Person. Lovey seemed to appreciate that Jennie smelled like Bertram, because she was instantly prone to follow Jennie from room to room right at her heels.
Bertram and Jennie talked regularly, just as often as Helena and Jennie did, if not more.
Although now that Bertram and Helena were living together, their video calls often involved all three of them.
Any competitiveness Bertram felt toward Helena for his mother’s love had been well and truly expunged.
Part of it had been work on the part of both Bertram and his mother, but he could not deny that it was Helena who had gotten the ball rolling.
So many wonderful things in his life all came down to Helena.
And Helena was the most wonderful thing in his life, out of all of it.
It was a quiet life, and a somewhat isolated one, but a fulfilling and joyous one in spite of that (or perhaps because of those things—neither Helena nor Bertram had ever been a huge fan of crowds).
It was a joyous enough life that Bertram wanted to live it forever and sign the paperwork to prove it.
Helena bounded back in with a wooden box, which Bertram immediately recognized as coming from his father’s forge.
“You kept it?” Bertram breathed. “It’s been here the entire time?”
“I wanted to save it for . . . well, for this.” Helena blushed and handed him the box, almost shyly.
With slightly trembling hands, Bertram opened the box, containing a new memory of his father, perhaps one of the last new memories he would ever get.
Inside the box sat a heavy ring forged of dark onyx—slightly misshapen, far from flawless, but all the more perfect because of it.
Bertram took it and held it up to the light. On the inside of the band, he could see a single word inscribed in old orcish.
“Urghk wanted the ring to be personal to you and me, Bertram. So, it wouldn’t represent just a love story, it was our love story.
Yours and mine. So, he inscribed it with ‘for the love of science, and the science of love.’” Helena gazed at the ring.
“Orcish is an impressive language—I can’t imagine being able to say so much with what looks like barely enough for a word. ”
“It is one word,” Bertram said.
“What word?” Helena asked, her voice filled with dread.
Bertram smiled. “‘Gullible.’”
“No!” Helena blushed. “Oh, Urghk, no! He didn’t know it was going to be your actual wedding ring.”
“It’s perfect.” Bertram kissed Helena on the head. “You’re perfect. There’s not a thing I would change about this moment.”
“I don’t know,” Helena admitted. “It seems silly for me to give you the ring that says ‘gullible,’ when Urghk thought that I was the gullible one.”
Helena plucked the ring out of Bertram’s hand and slipped it onto her thumb. “How does it look?”
A sudden chill ran over Bertram.
“What is it?” Helena asked, concerned.
“Someone once told me that I would only find true love with someone who wore my ring without stealing it or being given it by me and bring my child into this world without giving birth. You’re wearing the ring you made for me, which makes it my ring, and I neither gave it to you nor did you steal it.
Lovey is basically my child at this point—and you brought her into this world without getting pregnant.
At the time I thought I was being cursed to never find true love since all those things seemed impossible contradictions.
But then I realized that it was just silly nonsense and mostly forgot about it. But now . . .”
“It’s still silly nonsense.” Helena kissed Bertram on the cheek. “We made our own fate. I chose you. I will always choose you. In a thousand different lifetimes, I would choose you.”
Bertram smiled broadly and brought Helena in for a deeper kiss.
From behind Helena, Lovey chirped happily. She jumped onto the couch between them and nuzzled both of them with her beak. She probably didn’t understand the concept of marriage, but she could tell when her parents were happy, and in this moment they were overjoyed.
The owl-bear—and her People—were more than well.