Chapter 37:

Epilogue

Maizy's Tails: Mass, Memory, Disorder

Mom, Dad, and Maizy were curled up together—tangled in the warmth of the Proscribrary’s cuddlepipe—when a loud, "DING!" rang through the air.

Both parents jerked awake. Mom blinked and whispered first. "Did someone just get a title?"

"Not unless it was a farting title," Patch said with a grin.

Mom snorted. "Hah!" She hadn’t realized until this very moment just how much she had missed him.

"I didn’t hear you... do that." She broke into laughter, then clapped a hand over her mouth.

"I was talking about you!" Patch laughed—he thought he was hilarious.

Mom cackled, then clapped a hand over her mouth to keep from waking Maizy. The sound leaked out anyway, in a series of helpless little giggles.

Maizy, naturally, was oblivious. She slept soundly—even after sliding off Mom’s belly with a gentle plop onto the cork floor.

"There was a lot of death today," Patch considered. "Maybe the gods had a backlog to work through?"

Bloom just shrugged. "Well, we'd better check."

They both hopped down from the corkrest, and Bloom pulled a sheet of magic tree paper from her desk. She wrote the title spell on it with a pencil—then paused, remembering something.

"Oh! Check out this trick Maizy figured out!"

She altered the spell to Maizy’s version—the one that made the title fill the entire page—then walked to the door and pushed magic into the paper.

"The titles are huge!" Patch leaned closer, impressed. "How does Maizy come up with this stuff?"

Bloom shrugged. "She says she remembers things from before she was born." She studied the glowing letters. "These are the same titles I had earlier when we checked the courtyard board." She pointed. "'Second Life' is pretty unique. I can’t decide if I should be proud that Maizy did that for me—or horrified that she’s some kind of necromancer." Her smile wavered into mild worry.

"Oh, don’t be silly." Patch waved it off. "You’re not undead." His eyebrows rose. "Undead can’t make children."

He rubbed her belly, and Bloom’s smile returned.

"Your turn." Bloom motioned for Patch to display his titles.

He pushed magic into the paper, and Bloom's titles were replaced with his own.

"Same ones I’ve had for wobbles. Nothing new." Patch muttered, sounding disappointed.

"I still can’t believe you have nine titles." Bloom’s eyes shone—she’d been impressed with Patch since the day she first laid eyes on him at the university. "One more and you’ll get invited to the gods’ party."

Patch waved it off. "That’s just a myth."

Bloom’s eyes widened. "Oh no, it isn’t. My mom said she got an invite but turned it down. She was pregnant with one of my much, much older siblings at the time—and said it was way too dangerous."

Patch tilted his head, curious. "How many siblings do you have?" He’d always wondered.

Bloom looked down, slightly embarrassed. "Thirty-one."

"Wow! That’s a lot." Patch blinked, genuinely impressed by Bloom’s mother—the oldest kad he’d ever heard of.

"Not really—if you consider how old she is." Bloom looked back up at him as cutely as she could.

"I suppose that’s true." Patch thought for a moment. "Well, you know what this means, right?"

Bloom had no idea what he was talking about. "What?"

"That ding meant Maizy got the title."

"Oh! Right!" Bloom hopped up into the corkrest to wake her. "Sweetgum, you need to wake up for just a moment." She kissed Maizy’s face and began grooming her.

"Blwaaat! Wha?" Maizy rubbed her eyes, then promptly fell back asleep with her hands on her face.

"Haha, this isn't going to work. Come help me get her down—I can't put her in my pouch anymore."

Patch came over, and Bloom carefully passed Maizy down. He carried her to the door, pressed her hand against the paper, and channeled magic through her small fingers into the sheet. Patch’s titles faded away, replaced by Maizy’s:

"GODS! SHE OPENED THE GATE!" Bloom cried.

Patch asked the only question that mattered: "IN HER SLEEP!?"