Chapter 66: THE END
Zara looked out over New Haven – Tabitha bellowing at Gorn, Nishanth emerging from his clinic wiping his hands, Lilith walking with the harpies towards the gardens, the sprites buzzing around the dental sign. The scar in the sky was just a line of silver. The void within her was a contained song.
"Yeah," Zara whispered, resting her cheek lightly on Lyra’s hair, the static-arm humming its steady, grounding note. "Like us."
The last embers of sunset bled into twilight, dyeing New Haven’s jagged silhouette deep purple and gold. The silver scar in the sky faded to a faint, luminous thread, almost beautiful against the darkening expanse.
Below, the sounds of the settlement rose in the cool evening air – not the clangor of battle, but the rhythm of life stubbornly taking root:
The resonant CLANG! CLANG! of Gorn’s hammer on a stubborn piece of salvage, punctuated by Tabitha’s distant roar: "Less gruntin’, more hittin’, horn-head!"
The faint, melodic HUMMING of sprites testing their newly fixed wings near the light-basin.
The warm CRACKLE of forge-fires reflecting in the luminous harbor.
Lilith’s clear LAUGHTER, sudden and bright, echoing from the garden terraces as one of her young harpy students sent a paper crane – this one folded by Lyra, glowing with soft indigo light – fluttering down into her open palm.
Zara sat on the highest ledge, Lyra asleep against her side, the child’s fingers loosely curled around the stem of the long-faded, lightless dandelion. Her static-arm hummed, a low, constant thrum beneath Lyra’s cheek, weaving tendrils of cool, contained light into the twilight air.