Abbernathy and Magick's End |Trilogy Now Complete!

(11) - Browntail -

☆

MARGO HAD REQUESTED a return to Aelurus, to help facilitate territory discussions between the Cloudians and the evacuating Shadlings. Her request was granted, though she was to return to the Evernight within a moon, to enshrine the Hollows in magick, keeping it intact while the Dusk Stag was freed.  

She'd worked herself tirelessly from moon up to moon down, busying herself with delegation between the two races, and her ambassador duties with the Aelurians. During all that time, Lucy was like a second shadow, sitting in on her meetings, visiting the various settlements across the sands. He ate with her, breakfast, lunch, and dinner, and requested she join him on his balcony three nights a week. And every moment they were together, he repeatedly begged her not to go through with the plan. To preserve her magick and save herself - the Eridan, and all magick be damned. 

Every time he asked, she replied the same, her mind was made up.

The night before she was to return to the Evernight, she sat beneath Aelurus's waning stars, their light diminished as the sky lightened and dawn loomed on the horizon. Her breaths frosted before her and her skin prickled with cold, but she remained unwilling to move from her balcony, refusing to give in to her body's exhaust and rest. 

This would be the last time she ever glimpsed the sun rise, and though the sight caused the Shadlings to panic, and the Aelurians slept away the time when their sun showed itself, the sight brought Margo peace. Aelurus's darkness, its sharpness, and coldness was still foreign -- as were its cities tucked away in the branches of great trees, and its poisonous ocean, and callous distinction between Moonborns and empty bloods -- but a sunrise, no matter where it was, always reminded her of home. 

Back on the Cloudian home realm, she had watched the twin suns rise from behind the mountains and mount the sky. The Elders said the suns were sisters, and great Cloudian warriors, who brandished arms against the looming dark. They alone had protected the Cloudian homeworld, and for their bravery, they were turned into suns, to burn forever bright. 

When their realm had been destroyed, and the Cloudians created a new home beneath the Aelurian desert, the elders had created machines to recreate the suns. The Sisters took their place amongst a rock sky, their light catching in craters and cracks. It was a new sunrise, for those who had survived the cataclysm, but it soon became a marker of home. 

The Sisters were always protecting the Cloudians, ensuring they bore witness to a new day. One where they could be better, do better, than the day before. 

Once Margo saw the sun rise, she would get up, she would head to the Hollows, and she would be better than she was the day before, she would do better than she had the day before. 

The Dusk Stag returned. The realms given more time to save all magick. No more death. 

Without thinking, she reached a hand up to her throat, her fingers groping for the necklace, and the stone that kept track of her lifeforce. But she had taken it off and left it on her bed. It could be thrown away when she was gone, or Lucy could keep it - should he desire something to remember her by. It was a worthless stone, one that Hestor had given her the day her whiskers had finally grown in. While wearing it, she'd pledged to do great things with magick, and restore the Cloudian's faith in the good it could do. 

The stone was just a stone, but in a way, it represented who Margo was better than anything else. All her stubbornness, her determination, her desire to be a third sun for her people and mount the sky, burning brightly. All of it stuffed inside a stone no bigger than a fig, no different than any ordinary river rock. But it was her, in a nutshell, because Margo was just Margo.