Page 162 of Rot In Knotty Pieces

She is the coldness, the cruelty, the savageness to protect those we love, to protect ourselves. But she’s the protectiveness, the absolute love and all of our caring rolling into one flaming person.

Flames flicker along her throne, but the glowing red form of the woman encased in feathered flames has her eyes closed and her chin on her chest. For all intents and purposes, she appears to have gone back to sleep. Like she was just here to save us when we would have broken, and now she’s gone back into her eternal slumber.

When we might have faltered, when the cracks became too big, she was there. But then, she has always been there; we were just not aware of her. Haven’t we always had a fire in us? Haven’t we always fought when we should have given up? We loved so deeply and cared so much that a burning desire for justice, freedom, love, and hope burned at our heart.

Yeah, she’s always been here.

I turn and find Dove sitting on Jay’s lap, her head pressed against his chest. She’s smiling. I don’t know that I’ve ever seen her smile before. Not with true happiness and peace. Something about it makes me feel scared.

Merle stares at me when I turn to her, and her eyes soften. I don’t think she will ever speak, she is too enmeshed with the trauma that happened to Callea, but she looks at peace.

When I turn again, it’s Kestrel who is hollowed out. Tears track slowly down her cheeks, and her grief is a living, breathing agony in the air around us.

She will carry our pain.

As she always does.

But maybe now we can share it with her. She won’t have to suffer alone.

She lifts her head and meets my gaze. “We will be okay.”

“I know we will,” I say back. I hesitate. The chamber seems warmer than usual. “I don’t want to disappear, not yet, maybe not ever.”

“Then, we won’t. Until we need to,” Raven says and stands up, walking towards me. “We will stay.”

Kestrel comes to meet us in the middle of the chamber, then Merle joins us.

“We might sleep,” Jay says quietly, surprising us. “We will be here, but maybe less. You don’t need us anymore.”

I look at Dove and realise she has fallen asleep in his arms. Panic hits me hard.

“Jay?” I say through a throat thick with emotion.

“We’re free…it’s time to explore all the possibilities of who we can be. You have so much to look forward to.”

“But…”

“We will visit,” Jay says. “Until you don’t need us. And one day, you won’t, and you won’t remember the last time you saw us, but we are here, in this chamber, in the darkness of ourselves. You might not see us, but you will know we are part of Merle Kestrel. We’ve gone home; we are safe. So, don’t you cry when that day comes. You just remember how hard we fought and that each step towards that happiness isn’t less of us but more.”

He reaches up to his chest and then carefully removes that gold key that’s sitting around his neck. “I have a present for us. It’s time.”

He holds out the key until I slip over to him and take it.

“What is it?”

“It’s healing. And a reward.”

Jay closes his eyes, sits back, going still and heavy.

I look back at Merle, Kestrel, and Raven.

“We still have tasks. We’re not going anywhere,” Kestrel says to my rising panic.

I see a door right beside Jay and Dove. A beautiful blue door with gold painting in elegant swirls. It calls to me so intensely that I can’t ignore it.

It doesn’t feel bad, it feels exciting and happy.

We walk towards it. I reach out, my hand holding the cold metal of the knob before I turn it sharply.