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I miss the rest as Mom, who’s standing next to me, begins crying—only to be embraced by Dad. She’s been crying a lot since she woke up, tears both of pain and joy. Pain for all the years our family’s been torn apart, for all the guilt and shame she’d carried in her subconscious for so long… for the desperation that drove her to throw herself under that car, and for everything that followed. Today, though, her tears are for her mother, and all the other people she’s just recently remembered, only to discover they’d died during The Attack.
My own throat feels thick and swollen, my face wet. But underneath the pain of loss is hope. Hope that the future will be brighter than the past, that everything my family has been through has only made us stronger. And sure enough, as Bebe’s eulogy proceeds, Mom lifts her face from Dad’s shoulder and gives me a smile so full of tenderness and joy that I can’t help but smile back and reach for her.
My twin, her thoughts mirroring mine, as they often do, steps up at the same time, and we all hug—Mom, Dad, and the two of us—treasuring this moment.
When I finally draw back, it’s into the supportive arms of Valerian, who lends me his strength as the eulogy concludes.
I look up at him, and as our eyes meet, I know that with him and my family by my side, I can get through anything… even defeat another god.
As the Mind ceremony comes to an end, the fireworks begin—pyrotechnics that involve big bangs that birth baby universes like colorful bubbles in the sky above us.
It’s the most majestic display the dreamwalkers of Soma could conjure up to honor the ones we lost—and a fitting farewell.
THE END
