-Epilogue-

"Well, at least now I know why all those guys were staring at me before." Harmony admitted to me two weeks later as we boarded the shuttle for her home.

I laughed. "I didn't realize that me casually mentioning your name to them would produce such an effect."

Her dad walked up to us then. "Well, thanks to you two, the talks were a great success." He shook his head. "Your display of affection sure was an effective icebreaker, even if you two will probably be remembered for it for years to come." He chuckled.

I laughed. "Yeah, but that's okay."

She nodded and smiled. "If I really cared, I would have cared sooner."

Her dad shrugged with a smile. "Try telling yourself that in a decade or two when people still won't let up about it."

She shrugged, all three of us still standing as the shuttleplane took off smoothly. "Well, we can't do anything about it now, now can we?"

He laughed. "Point taken, but I wonder what your mother is going to say about all this."

She laughed. "She'll never let me go anywhere again!"

"But if she does that," I pointed out. "Then you won't be able to accept the internship here with the proteans."

"True." She agreed. "We'll just have to convince her."

I shrugged. "Well, we do have two weeks to do it."

She laughed. "You don't know my mom. If you think getting the humans and proteans to agree was a feat, then you've never tried to convince my mom of anything."

Her dad laughed. "I'd much rather face a room full of proteans then my wife when she's like that."

I smiled. "Looks like we have our work cut out for us, then."

Her dad laughed again. "For the next several decades, most likely, with everything that will be needed from you two to help stop miscommunications and to synch things up. I'd say that the time that you two spent together when you first met will help a lot."

"You told him?" I asked Harmony, surprised.

She nodded. "He asked, and I was afraid he was going to cut my head off if I didn't tell him why I was acting so strange."

Her father pretended not to be listening and chose a seat a row away from us. "I can see that." I told her with a smile. She smiled back.

"You know." Her father put in after a moment of silence. "This is the happiest and most relaxed I've seen Harmony since she woke up. You have a profound effect on her." And with that he turned his attention back to the window.

"I tend to agree with him on that statement." She smiled at me. "This is going to be interesting."

"Why?" I asked.

"Because I'm going to be coming home with all kinds of rumors preceding me about the meeting. Not to mention I'll be coming home for two weeks with what most females in my class would consider a very handsome foreigner, and they love foreigners." She laughed. "They'll be positively jealous. Before I left everyone was pretty much watching me, hoping I'd make a mistake and drop my cool demeanor. Only now when I come home they'll be doing the opposite. They'll be trying to impress me." She made a face. "Good thing we're leaving again in two weeks."

I nodded. "Good thing indeed. Those kind of people really annoy me. Old habits die hard. Oh, I suppose I never did explain the whole thing about me being adopted as the heir to…"

"You didn't." She agreed.

I nodded. "Well, when I got back it was only a few days later. The army had found out that I was protean, so my parents had to flee, and, well, they came here, to this city. There were rumors abounding that it was a big protean city, and they got access to it fairly quickly.

To put a long story short, there was an incident some time back where I saved the leader's life by doing what I do best; using my powers. I was able to warn him, somehow, and, well, he's still here to talk to us." I smiled. "He named me heir upon his death. We've got a really good relationship."

"I can tell, he didn't ban us from the meeting room after…"

I smiled. "I had to tell him the story of before, naturally. Luckily for me he believed me, or believed me as much as anyone can who wasn't there."

She nodded. "I've had that problem too."

"Anyway," I said, not wanting to keep on that topic. "We fit like two peas in a pod. It's quite interesting, and I give him good advice once in a while on ways not to offend the humans."

"In other words, the name plates were your idea."

I nodded. "Among other things."

She nodded. "I did think it was quite interesting that they incorporated human aspects in their ceremonies."

He nodded. "I figured it'd make them feel a little better, and I knew there'd be major misunderstandings about place settings if we didn't have name plates."

"Big disaster avoided there." She agreed as we let the relative silence take over for a while. Just being together was enough.

"Did I ever thank you for the advice on the dress?" The woman who was in charge of the peace mission asked Harmony, standing a few feet away from her.

She chuckled. "Several times, I believe."

The woman blushed. "Well, thank you again. We might not have reached peace, and we might have been at war again, if you hadn't given me, and several of my staff-members, tips on colors."

She nodded. "It's like your ties were all conspiring against you."

She laughed. "And one dress." She then moved down the isle to a seat near the man who needed fashion sense (after wearing an orange tie to the meeting the first day) and a clue. She was probably warning him off about not doing that again, I suspected.

"This sure is a change." Harmony muttered watching her scold her employee.

I nodded somberly. "From scorned to loved."

She nodded back and chuckled. "The irony of it."

I nodded again and took a quick peek out the window. "Looks like we're almost there, from what you've told me."

She reached her hand in front of me to pull back the shade so she could look out the window herself.

She nodded and sighed. "Yeah, we are. I wonder what my mom's going to say about all this."

I shrugged. "Good job?"

She shook her head, smiling. "I doubt it." And at that we both started laughing hysterically until a majority of the plane was staring at us. That just made us laugh even harder until many just shook their heads at us, muttering something under their breath that probably wasn't very nice.

Some people just shook their heads and laughed back at us, seeing as they had seen us together these past two weeks acting the same way. Even the leader of the mission laughed at us.

But we didn't care, and we kept on laughing until the stewardess told us to quiet down.

She might as well have told the rooster to stop crowing, for all the good it did, and she soon got flustered (even if we weren't trying to be rude or obnoxious or uncaring or anything).

The leader of the mission, who was still laughing at us, called over the stewardess and said something to her. The stewardess then nodded and seemed to become soberer and more respectful with every word the leader said until she turned pink and left our section very quickly.

As a matter of fact, the only people who weren't laughing at us hadn't been at the meetings, and hadn't known how stressful those two weeks had been on us and everyone else. It was good to laugh without being interrupted by meetings and people who were more stressed out than we were.

We had most of the plane laughing by the time we landed, and those who weren't looked ready to get out and hit something. Probably us, if they could have gotten the chance.

Luckily we were one of the first ones out of the plane and we made it over to Harmony's mother without incident, although I knew Harmony would have rather tackled the load of them instead of facing her mother.

"You're going to what-?!" Her mother asked in anger after Harmony told her our plans, and I knew then why her father had said earlier that he'd rather tackle a room full of proteans than his wife.

Harmony was right. This was going to be interesting.

--

Well, this is the end! Thanks to everyone who's reviewed and said how much they like it and everything. Tell me what you think of the ending!

I'd say more, but it's currently 9 am, and I can't think. Thanks for reading/reviewing and all that! (shameless plug; if you liked this one and you haven't read any of my other stuff, try reading The Years of Chaos book 3: Endgame, it's probably the thing I concider to be my best work up to date. Okay, that's it for the shameless plug.)

Right, thanks again for the reviewing and all that! Sorry this isn't more cohesive.

Mya