Redana, simply Redana, holds the God of the Underworld in her arms. Here, she feels the echo of old wounds, impossible blows, feats of strength - she feels all the things that could have kept her there forever, in the house of her mother, in the dominion of Hades. But she holds her uncle still.

Is it any surprise that she weeps with him?

There's not even anything she can really pin it on. Yue would tell her that sometimes you've just got to cry to get all the tears out, and that's as solid a theory as anything she could construct with her old library at her beck and call, with tutors to explain the mysteries of the world - the underworld - to her, and with Bella there to ask for explanations.

Not that the explanations were ever for Bella's sake.

She had been so young when she began this voyage. So foolish. And only a fool would ever have agreed to cross the Rift, to dare the unknown, to find their way here to where everything is so different, so vibrant, so...

So [i]hopeful.[/i]

That maybe here, at last, is an answer to her yearning heart.

[hr]

The prayers die on her lips. It seems useless to continue to offer them here, where there are goodbyes.

What she will offer, however, are hugs.

Let no relative think that they can escape! Not even Poseidon, who makes her teeth itch and throbs strange colors into the back of her eyes - she has been through the mirror-madness of Dionysus, she has been in the labyrinth of Aphrodite, and her wild uncle thinks that he can get away? After so many years of being observed by humanity? On a world like this, they look up at the sky's myriad of colors and see wonder, beauty, and an unknown that should be experienced on its own terms.

Everyone gets a thank you. [i]Everyone.[/i] Even Dionysus, who was there for her at her worst, who refused to give up on her when her world broke and ran like quicksilver. Thank fortune that Aphrodite isn't here, because then there would have been a [i]scene...[/i] but they all would have stood behind her then, wouldn't they?

She thanks Artemis with a hug that threatens to lift the huntress off her toes, and says thank you: not just for Bella, but for her sisters. After all, she never would have made it here if not for the huntresses. [i]All[/i] of them. And she stands up on her very tippiest of toes to whisper into her father's ear. What they say... well, only they know, and neither will be telling anytime soon.

But there's someone else missing. An empty space where there [i]should[/i] be someone, with wand and sheepskin and winged sandals.

On the hillsides, sheep bask in the sunlight. Far beyond, there are towering columns leading up to the wild void, and the prisons of unmaking, and the universe made orderly, and an underworld beyond, and there are no paths that lead to this place yet, no road that can follow in the wake of the [i]Plousios[/i].

She is not here, because this is one end of the skein, and because there is so much left to do.

But one day she will have been here, in the shadow of her father, golden hair lit by her torch, orange wrap marking her as someone who has walked the path of the Hermetic. A captain, a void-rider, a messenger and a message. Someone who walks back along her own path to ensure that everyone's heart meets its desire.

She is not here yet. So there is something that still remains to be done.

On the hillsides, sheep bask in the sunlight, and a shepherdess walks among them checking her harvest.