“It’s Kaos.  I know it is. She said that he lied.  But that’s not surprising, he lied to all of them,” I murmured, in response to the voice.  The familiarity of the sound hadn’t even registered in my mind. I was still so overwhelmed by it all.  By the fact that everything I knew seemed to be falling apart.  By the all consuming sense of desperation, anger, and fear that churned in my belly like an angry sea.  It left me paralyzed and kept my gaze fixed on the heavens, my chest pressed against the cool stone of the shrine.  


A ragged sigh tore free from my lips as I pulled my gaze away from the stars, letting my eyes slide shut and my thick forelock to slide over my face. I wasn’t ready to face reality yet...I couldn’t.  “She left the Edge. I was hoping she’d be here. But they really are gone.”  I paused for a moment, remembering my last conversation with the Goddess.  We’d been worried about Kaos then - Papa and I.  But Grandmama said that it was all well in hand.  But something had happened.  Something had changed.  And now...now I wasn’t sure what to do. 

“She told me once she was always listening.” The sound of her voice still echoed in my ears.  With that I finally allowed my eyes to slide open once more.  Everly, from above, had grown strangely quiet.  This piqued my curiosity for she had said nothing of the stranger who I foolishly still had my back to. 

Finally, I turned. 

And I froze. 

I didn’t move (I couldn’t). I didn’t breathe.  Everything was still for longer than I could imagine because there stood mother looking just as she had the last time that I’d seen her. 

“I was afraid you weren’t coming back,” I managed, in little more than a whisper, my voice threatening to crack. 

“Or that you were…” I couldn’t say it, command my lips to say dead but that is what I’d been so afraid of.  Afraid that her bones had been those among which Kaos had built his obelisk.  I blinked furiously to chase away the images that danced behind my eyelids because my nightmares were not truth.  She was here - living and breathing just as I’d hoped. 

I forced my feet to move. A single step.  Then another.  Slowly, I reached out my dark nose to hers, and whispered in the quietest of breaths, “Are you real?”  Because I was afraid, so desperately afraid, to lose her a second time even if this was just a dream.