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"It has been so long," Kassam whispers, his voice raw. "I thought I'd never be able to return."
I step out of his arms, and when he extends his hand, I immediately take it. We move forward a few steps, and there's a rocky path covered in mossy stones, and in the distance I can see a lovely waterfall with a rainbow over it. The sky is an endless, clear blue peeking through the leaves, and up ahead, I see a berry bush so laden with fruit that the branches droop. As we move forward, a rocky outcropping shifts, and a sinewy neck raises a triangular, reptilian head to gaze at us.
A dragon.
Welp. I guess I should have expected that. "This is amazing, Kassam."
"This is your home now, too," he tells me, his eyes bright with excitement. "Anything you want, anything you need, I will provide it for you. Simply speak it, and it shall be yours."
"The conmac?" I ask, because I feel we have to think of them.
He nods. "They will arrive shortly, and I will remove the rings that bind them."
I squeeze his hand. I imagine he's going to have a lot to answer to the moment they get their voices back, but something tells me it'll be fine. "I have you," I say. "I'm good for now."
"Are you tired? Hungry?" His gaze searches mine.
I'm probably all of those things, but it doesn't seem important right now. I don't want it to be about me. I want him to revel in the fact that he's home again after so long. "Let's just explore for now? I want to see everything. Does your whole realm look like this?"
Delight curves his mouth. He likes that I'm asking about his home. "Not at all. This is one small corner, but I thought you might like it."
Oh, I do. I squeeze his hand again, smiling as another shy dryad peeks out from behind a bush to gaze at us. Kassam grins down at me, too, as if he's got some sort of secret he's dying to share.
"Carly?"
I gasp, my eyes going wide. That voice—I know that voice. I drop Kassam's hand, surging in the direction of it. "Ma?"
"Carly!" Up ahead, there's a thrashing of bushes and then my mother—my beautiful, silly, wonderful mother—steps out of the forest thicket in her favorite pink pajamas. She looks just as I remembered, healthy and strong.
The moment I see her, I burst into tears and run toward her. "Mama. You're here."
"Oh, my baby," my mother cries, and then we're hugging and she strokes my hair, and I sob and snot all over her pajamas, and it's wonderful.
We're home. All of us.
Epilogue
"Today is an adventurous day for you, Carly!" my mother sings out as I approach her favorite lily-pad-strewn pool. "I saw it in the scrying waters." She beams at me. "Got anything planned?"
Sharing eternity with my mother as well as my lover is awesome, but it also makes for awkward moments…kinda like right now. At least the whole hedonism thing was broken and my mom no longer feels attracted to Kassam, or things would be incredibly weird. I debate how much to say to her about my naughty plans for the day and decide to fudge it. Trying not to look too guilty, I sit down by the pool with her and put on a chipper smile. "Oh, Kassam and I are going to have a date. Nothing much. How's the scrying thing going?"
My mother lights up, her eyes full of excitement. It's the right thing to say to distract her. For the next half-hour, my mother tells me all about the water-scrying network she's been working with Kassam to set up, as if it wasn't my idea in the first place. The Great Endless Forest is a paradise, and all of our needs are met by either the plants or by the magical dryads that dwell in the forest. We have food, water, and shelter, all by simply asking the forest to provide. Kassam keeps me busy—I help him with his duties and offer advice, and we spend a lot of time thinking up ways to spread the word that he's returned and is answering prayers.
We also spend a lot of time in bed. Which is awesome, but I quickly became worried that my mother would feel like a third wheel. She ran a shop back home, after all. She's a businesswoman and is used to staying busy, even if that business was fortune-telling and tarot cards. Kassam and I brainstormed a way for her to apply her abilities, and thus water-scrying was born. Through any of the pools here in Kassam's plane, my mother can view people, and places. I thought she'd use the scrying windows to chat with Yulenna or Max or Faith—the other anchors—but my mom is clever. She decided she was going to pass hints to Kassam's priestesses (of whom there are few but are growing in number). It's started a bit of a frenzy, with new supplicants sending up prayers and requesting water-scrying constantly, but my mom loves it.
