Epilogue

Luc returned with the Tarbarin to the Mountains and began to immerse himself in the study of their practices. He learned quickly and soon became as powerful as his father, Iidari. His father died several years after making him the new King of the Tarbarin. He ruled for a time and did much to change their ways. He did not continue the tradition of producing new Tarbarin by impregnating women and so had no heirs at all.

He escaped, after a time, from the mountains and returned to Aladir. The school had been shut down, not long after he had left twenty years ago, and the buildings were drooping pathetically from the wear and tear of the weather. He found Annik, as he always had, in the stables caring for the horses. She looked much older and much wearied by her years of separation and anxiety. Her father had died sometime before and she had spent those last years in solitude save for the horses and Malecai.

Luc was very thin when he came back from the mountain and they spent long hours together as she nourished him back to health.

They decided to reopen the school. It became a school for everyone, not just those who had arching ability but anyone at all. Luc taught them all he had learned as a Tarbarin, or as much as they were capable of. Annik taught them to be gentle and to be firm. They taught them about the fate of the world and about tolerance and cruelty.

Annik and Luc were never married or formally joined in any way, but they did live in her father's house together for the rest of their lives. They grew very happy together and with all of the school children. They had no children of their own, but with all the young elves in the world at their school there was no need.

The weather had begun to get colder and Annik, shivering in bed one night and snuggling closer to Luc, knew the end was near. The elves and the Nemaram, working collaboratively to save themselves, had been constructing for nearly twenty years a great tunneling system underground, similar to rabbits. They had delved so deep that the heat from the centre of the Earth could be felt through the floor. They had gone so far in hopes that the death of the world would bypass them.

Indeed, it was not the death of the world but the death of all things which make the Earth so warm and welcoming. The elves, including many of the school children, and Nemaram took what they could and hid so far below when the air grew cold. Annik and Luc and those that would stayed above ground, adopting more clothing and fires to keep themselves warm.

After a time, the rivers froze and the vegetation frosted and died. Something had begun to fall periodically from the sky, something white and fluffy, and now it continued without pause.

Annik and Luc, the last of the surface elves, ravaged by starvation and the deaths of their students around them, wandered deep into the remains of the forest and lay down. This was their death sleep. They lay beside each other, as they had done for years, and slowly, Annik first and then Luc, drifted into that final sleep we call death.

It was then that the miracle of this Mother Earth took place, once more as it had done many times past and will do many times more. As Luc's bow, hewn from the centre of the August Tree, decomposed beside them, it dropped the shiny white seed embedded in the curl at one end. It did not take long for it to sprout but it took several millions of years for it to have the strength to revive the world.

It did, though, and it stands now, nearly as big as its parent, the August Tree. The people of the caves took in a bad way. When their ancestors emerged eons later, they were terribly mutated. Some died in the first few minutes of natural light, others stalked each other for food, but some would become the unrecognizable ancestors of many modern day creatures.

The world is not quite as it used to be, it is still recovering from its life in the cold. We still have snow, as a reminder of what will come to us; the trees are not as large as they used to be; but the people have not changed, they remain as greedy and ill thought as the Nemaram used to be and we, now, must watch carefully to see that we do not scar the Earth anymore.