Epilogue

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Do you remember the end? When the world went dark?

I do. I can’t ever forget.

We played our role well, I think. To the hilt, and beyond, we lived our parts. How could we not, after all? For us, there was nothing but our casting upon the stage.

Adventures and horrors, valor and despair, love and hate. I learned what these things mean, and I can tell you when our journeys educated me. At every point along the road, there was something worth noting, worth saying. It would be a cruel thing to believe otherwise.

But now, someone has wiped it all away.

Was it all in vain? The pain and the fear, the triumph and the victory. At journey’s end, sitting in the inn, enjoying the fruits of our labor at last…then suddenly gone. Veiled in shadow, bereft of light, the world hidden in a vice of weight and neglect.

How can it be?

Did we do something wrong? Did we miss some vital step of the way, or forget some clue that would win the day?

Are we dead?

I can’t imagine otherwise, but for the fact that I remember. I can recall it all, from the very first step on the long and winding road to that climactic moment when everything came together. Even the slow release of breath afterward, when we settled our affairs and tied up our loose ends.

It had gone so well, in the end. We had lost things along the way, yes; belongings, friends, illusions about the way things were. They disappeared into a fog as they went, and we could not see them again once we moved on.

But no. We accomplished our goals, and more. Fulfilled every hope, and saved everything—every life, every principle—that we possibly could.

We can’t have made a mistake.

So why are we now in the void and without form?

Why has the world dissolved into less than dust?

Did we not please you? Were our thoughts and deeds so without value to you that we earned no respite? No further gift of life? No love?

Why did you trap us here like stains of ink pressed between dusty pages, abandoned to some forgotten corner of a dark room?

What graveyard is this, where we are adrift in nothingness, and are so nearly without existence ourselves?

Do you remember the end? When you closed the book, and the world went dark?

I do. Dear reader, I can’t ever forget.

M. Shepherd

About M. Shepherd

Storyteller, Mythmaker, Dreamweaver.  A fellow who most appreciates a good tale told with skill, seasoned with eloquence, and leavened with meaning.

One thought on “Epilogue

  1. Churchmouse Churchmouse says:

    The story had me hooked from “someone wiped it all away,” and the ending was perfect.

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