Chapter 29 The Reunion

Chapter 29 The Reunion
Luna POV

"This is beautiful," Sera said. She was peering over my eyes at the world. Sharing my perspective. Feeling what I felt.

"It is," I agreed. "It's not the life I imagined. But it's the life I chose. And I'm not sorry."

Years passed. Decades. The world healed. Pine Ridge was reconstructed and was precisely what Kieran had imagined. A sanctuary. The barrier held strong. The Void pressed, although never overcome.

And then, when the hundredth year of the time being taken on making the barrier was passed, something ran amok, and it was not foreseen.

The barrier started to sing.

It was an omen as all the delight and love and sacrifice and all the beautiful things united in one sweet melody. And when the barrier sang, pushing ceased in the Void. It just listened. The Void was listening, as it had never heard itself discussed in the past ten thousand years, since the period of its imprisonment.

"What's happening?" Sera asked.

"I don't know," I said. "But I think... I believe that perhaps the Void is not evil. I think it's just lonely. I believe that it has been knocking at the wall not because it is willing to eliminate us, but because it desires to belong to something.

I reached out toward the Void. Not to fight it. Not to contain it. Just to touch it. To acknowledge it. To let it know that it existed. That it mattered.

The Void touched back.

And at that point of communication, all the things shifted once more.
The barrier opened.

Not all the way. Not that The Void can fill it up quite so. But enough. Enough for something to pass. Someone to pass.

Sera gasped. "People," she said. "They're coming through."

Across the barrier humans and werewolves had experienced the transformation. They had found the barrier to have lessened. And they were running towards it. Running toward me.

Ethan came first. He broke through the barrier and he was there suddenly. He was holding me. He was real and warm and alive. I could feel his heartbeat. I would feel his tears on my shoulder.

"I found you," he said. "I told you I would find you."

"I know," I said. "I've been waiting."

Elena came through. Thomas came through. My mother came through. Kieran came through. David came through. All the people I loved. Everything I had struggled on behalf of. They could see me now. They could touch me. We were together again.

I was, nevertheless, among the obstructions. I continued to act as a guardian. The distinction lay in the fact that now they could be with me. I did not have to view their world with my eyes. Now I would be able to live in the two places. At the barrier and in the world. Coexisting in the two spaces.

"How?" my mother asked. "How is this possible?"

The Void told me it had changed its mind, I said. Or perhaps it made me realize something that I used to be unaware of. The barrier does not necessarily need to be absolute. It simply must be powerful enough. It only needs to be made out of choice rather than fear.

We were in between non-existence and being. Men and werewolves and immortals and guards. We were all in one place where we had before considered it a separate and isolated place.

"What happens now?" Kieran asked.

Now we can calculate what follows, I said. Now we have to find out how to live in this new reality. Live to respect the barrier and not fear it. What to make of the future that can pay tribute to the sacrifice without making sacrifice the key to it all.

Hope was pure and simple, and, I felt, I had not experienced it in a hundred years. Hope it was not tainted with fear or doubt. Hope was as easy and plain and as true.

But then Elena flushed pale. Something was beyond us that she was looking at. Beyond the barrier. Beyond The Void.

"What?" I asked.

Elena said, there is someone here. Some one who has long since been in the space between, longer than you have. You know, somebody who has been waiting for this moment.

One of these comes out of the Void. It was closer to humans than not. It was lovely and horrible and old in untold degrees. It was dressed in starlight clothes, and had in its eyes all the moments that ever had been.

"Hello," the figure said. I am the creature that made the first fence. I have become what you would have made it be, hadst thou found a superior way. And I have been waiting to have the responsibility exonerated for ten thousand years.

Elena stepped forward. "Mother?" she whispered.

The figure smiled. "Hello, daughter," she said. "I've missed you."