Chapter 68 - Epilogue

Iris

--Epilogue--

Gray.
It wasn’t Iris. It was everything. It was what Valkyre had wanted. The room, faded in shades of gray and dark whites and pale blacks, the curtains pulled over the windows, the door shut. Silence, and the sound of breathing.
Iris stirred, briefly opening up his eyes. The boy smiled, faintly, half-asleep. Valkyre ran a bare hand through the boy’s soft hair, grayed by the dim light, dust motes dancing in the sliver slipping in between the two curtains. Iris hunched up slightly, coughing in small exhalations, small curled hand against his mouth. Valkyre bit at his bottom lip, eyes trailing away, staring over the top of the boy’s head. Impulsively, he drew Iris close against his body, pressing them together, feeling the warmth, the soft pliable skin, the weak hardness of the fingernails.
The narrow film of sunlight shifted with the curtains, then suddenly vanished, a dark gray shadow taking its place. Valkyre saw Iris’s eyes watching it as it traveled over his shoulder and neck, then vanish.
The angels were rising.
Valkyre touched the back of the boy’s head, pushing it down, pressing it to his chest. He felt Iris’s breaths, quick little puffs against his bare skin.
“Val”-
“Shh.”
Valkyre shook his head, though he knew Iris couldn’t see the gesture.
The angels were rising, drifting upward into the sky, like birds circling on thermals, higher and higher, until they vanished from sight. No one knew where they were going. But they weren’t alone.
Centaurs and weres had vanished into the highlands, seeking the mountains, the coasts, dodging away from human habitation. Merfolk dipped their tails as they slipped under the seas, harpies flying down to unknown islands and cliffsides unmapped, uncharted.
They were all leaving.
And in their wake, the humans seemed to be awakening. They stepped from doorways, alleyways, peeked out through windowsills. They looked down at the ground, stared up into the sky, glanced sideways, behind.
“…Valkyre.”
He felt the tug. He saw the sky above him, felt it even with a roof above his head, the vast emptiness of space, of what humans called the ‘heavens’. He felt his body, his heart, his wings, all urging him to go, all pulling at him, telling him to cast away this heavy and clumsy body, to soar for that blinding spot of sun so far above, beyond.
Valkyre chuckled, low under his breath. He clutched the boy to him even more tightly, almost enough to hurt.
“I’m not going anywhere,” he breathed, speaking into the boy’s hair, breathing up the light smell of Iris. Iris… smelled of rain.
“I… can’t.” He laughed, weakly, the sound loud in the silence.
All the others were leaving. It didn’t matter. He’d remain here, with those… left behind. Not to fly in the sky, or run over the land, or swim through the seas. Humans, those… caught. In between worlds, belonging nowhere.
“I’m… two things. Light and day. I’m staying… in the dusk. In between.”
…No, they were not the ones that did not belong. It had been the angels and the weres and the vampires in the first place that had never belonged, that had forced their way into this world of the humans’.
This world belonged to them. To humans, with their simplicity and their disbelief, their stubborn religions and… their perseverance, which overcame all else.
To a world that was dying, and that was being reborn. Reborn to wind and rain and snow and ice and floods, of sadness and loss and yet, in the end, to a world in which those who survived… would live. And live on.
Perhaps Raguel had been right in the end. Perhaps Iris really had revived the world, though in a way, it seemed more like… the world had chosen to right itself. Each and every being was what made up this world in the end, each sentient soul realizing the truth, and each being doing what was right. For the humans, this was to fight on, to continue living. For the angels, it was… …to rise.
Valkyre wasn’t going.
After all, he had nowhere to go.
And he still had Iris to protect. …He was waiting for the rain to fall again.
“Valkyre.”
Iris spoke with his eyes closed, head tilted back, small mouth curling up in a soft smile.
Valkyre pressed a finger to the boy’s lips, memorizing each feature, focusing on the sensation of the boy’s soft, warm mouth against the flesh of his fingertip.
“Shh. Sleep.”
Iris let out a small sigh. Still the same then, in some sense. Still a quiet boy with gentle eyes, with small hands and thin limbs, with light hair that fell over his eyes and framed his face gently, delicately.
They both… belonged. Here.
After all, Iris was human.

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