Wheeling Gull Isle [BOO!] stage 5: acceptance

The moon was full as it carried stolen light down across the waves. The sea was quiet; barely a breeze stirred at the grasses growing patchwork along the edge of the island. The trees stood imperious as always. Those that lived upon the island were most likely asleep at this late hour - the witching hour - and as the night flowed ever onward, a curious luminous gleaming came to possess the waves.

As they swept in, curling, reaching, they shimmered and glowed. By the fourth or fifth wave, they touched upon the sand and sped towards a silvered man upon the shore; he stood there looking out at the endless ocean, and turned to look bright-eyed and whole upon a pale, spectral woman beside him.

No pain, no confusion. Only love.

With a smile, Titmouse rests his head upon her shoulder, murmuring, @Maegi.

I'm totally not bawling rn

Time was irrelevant when you were dead. She didn't know how long it had taken between this moment and the last she remembered of Mou's earthly being.

It didn't matter.

Look at you, she murmured, burrowing into his embrace. She'd never known him like this. He positively glowed.

They were on the island, and things were right. More right than they had ever been.

Right enough that she knew they both had slipped the mortal coil.

Where once a pit of black was set in his face, now two golden eyes glowed. The white of fear and the graying of age had left his body; he had no body anymore, and his spirit retained the look of Titmouse in his prime: clad in gray, with a dark mask unmarred by time or wound, black ears, and those brilliant orange stains along his ribs. It was as if nothing had ever happened — no maiming, no attempted fratricide, no fishing net to scar his haunches.

Beyond that, a clearheadedness. The years of poppy abuse no longer addled his mind. He remembered all of it; every bad trip, the ravens of the blackwood slaughtered around him, every flashback - but none of it mattered. The gods he feared so greatly were not here. The mortals - his family, the Cerberus, the Bear - gone.

It was just Maegi now. As it always should have been.

I feel better. That much was obvious. Smiling, he pulled away from her in a reluctant manner and breathed deeply of the seaside air, knowing he wasn't really breathing, but finding comfort all the same. They had eternity together, now.

The waves continued to crash, and to glow.

Some ways up the beach lay the remains of Titmouse Redhawk, pulverized by the stones at the base of Ravenshook Cliffs, battered by the sea, and left behind here upon the beach - his throat gaping wide after having landed wrong upon a jutting rock; his skull cracked and spidering from that empty socket; seaweed netting him in place.

Titmouse, the ghost, walked up the beach now with Maegi at his side.

Let's go find the kids.

He was perfect. As was she.

Not that perfection was bound upon rules of symmetry or attraction—biologically, sure, but Mou had always been beautiful to Maegi, and vice versa.

But they were their ideal selves, now, and they grinned upon each other's visages like souls reborn.

And, well. . .weren't they?

Blueberry hates us, Maegi remarked, shrugging. No luck there. But Peregrine is near the mountains and he'd be happy to see you—and maybe we can find Miseria and Hypnos. . .

Not to mention the children dead and gone. Oh! He had so much to see; so much to look forward to.

Before they set foot on their grand adventure, Maegi stopped, turning upon the sand to look at her mate. Taking in the face that should have been so alien to her—restored as it was to something she'd never known—but utterly familiar all the same.

I'm just so glad to be with you again, she said, and whatever remaining weight upon her soul eased in these very moments.

No drugs. No trouble. No bodies. No pain.

Just Mou and Maegi and the road ahead—and with her soulmate at her side, the Melonii, thus satisfied, cast aside the mortal world for good.