Total pages in book: 60
Estimated words: 57184 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 286(@200wpm)___ 229(@250wpm)___ 191(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 57184 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 286(@200wpm)___ 229(@250wpm)___ 191(@300wpm)
As my dad put it, “We can only survive if we accept that our actions do matter, and there can either be life after death. Or just a lot of death.”
I think what he meant was that our legacy isn’t one straight line on an infinite continuum. Eventually, everything circles back. Honestly, it sounds like an argument for karma, but on a much grander scale.
I don’t know what I believe, but I’m at a point where it just doesn’t matter. I know I’m grateful—lucky as hell—to be right where I am. I know I’ll always fight for what I love even if there aren’t any guarantees at the end of the road. I know that if there’s a chance at hell in succeeding, it doesn’t begin with feelings—fear, hope, wishing, sadness. It’s about ignoring all that. It’s about action.
And if anyone doubts me, I’m about to sit down with monsters for a feast.
We eat outside, under an enormous white canopy. There’s turkey, stuffing, and mashed potatoes for us and a huge roasted Flier with a side of very large tubers for the Wall Men. I try not to gag from the smell because this moment is too good to ruin.
Alwar is alive. Gabrio and Tiago, too. And they are Wall Men. Only, they’re not exactly warriors anymore.
From what I gather during dinner, they’re more like gods, who came from a “hole in the sky” and convinced humans they needed to face what was coming rather than fight it. Alwar’s actions changed everything.
Now the Wall Men guard the wall in each direction, carefully balancing the changes we make in my world for the betterment of their future.
When you think about it, it’s the ultimate scientific dream. You get to see the outcome of your work, thousands of years later.
But if everything’s constantly changing, even in small increments, how do you document it? The Scholar People.
They have Masters on both sides of the doorways who constantly travel back and forth, to update records. Change one thing here, they record it. When it changes something in Monsterland, the scholars here know why. Then they update the records. We may not remember every event, but the scholars know and help us figure it out.
There’s so much more for me to learn, but I spend dinner holding back sobs, enjoying every single word of conversation with my parents and grandma and kissing Bard. I tell them I’m just hormonal, but I keep getting looks from Alwar, who’s seated on the ground at the end of the table—War People style.
I’m absolutely overwhelmed by what’s in front of me. It’s not the life I dreamed of, but that’s only because I could never be this creative. A world where the monsters help us, not eat us. And we in turn help them. It’s weirder than anything I’ve ever come across, which says a lot.
Bard and I supposedly fell in love about ten years ago, while working together on this massive endeavor to prepare humans for a solar apocalypse. He decided to take the plunge and negotiated with the Dust People to help him out since I can’t exactly get bigger. Gabrio actually makes fun of Bard for it to this day. Lots of tiny human cock jokes. From what I can tell, Bard is not lacking in that department.
After dinner, the human-sized family is in the kitchen, washing dishes. Except me. I’m too fat, apparently, so I take a walk to the other barn to look at the zoo inside. There are so many creatures. Scaled things, furry things, and scary-as-hell things. Is that a peacock with roach legs? Ew…
I decide I’ve had enough monsters for one day and head outside.
“You did this, by the way, wife.”
Alwar is waiting just outside for me.
“Wife?” I ask. “So you did get my stories.”
“Our families don’t know. Nor should they ever, Lake.”
I don’t disagree, but… “It feels kind of dishonest, hiding all that from Bard.”
Alwar shakes his head. “Why? None of it happened. Not even for me. It’s all just a story passed down by the Scholar People. By the way, you can give a little too much detail. The amount of ejaculatory efforts?”
I hang my head and blush. “They wanted to know all that stuff.”
“Oh, I’m certain they did.”
“But what made you take action? What made you trust a story from a woman you’ve never met?”
“The devil is in the details, as you humans like to say. You knew things about me no one else did—my feelings about my father, my kingdom, and, most of all, Mahra. Because of this, I could not deny the message from thousands of years in the past was real. So I spent time with the Scholar People, and we decided that the only solution was to take the road never traveled.”
“Which was?”
“Do not protect the wall. Use it as a tool. If the gods opened the doorways, who was I to shut them?”