15 MONTHS LATER

I dream of Bradley.

It is late afternoon on a crisp fall day in Brooklyn. I walk under bright golden maples down the sloping streets toward the bookstore where I used to work. As I round the corner, I see the familiar chalkboard sign sitting on the sidewalk, announcing the latest book signing event and the specials for the week.

There he is, leaning against a lamppost.

He is as handsome as ever, his dark hair and eyes a sharp contrast to the bright hues of autumn all around him. He smiles when he sees me, his thumb poised over his iPhone screen.

I've missed him.

I've missed him so much that my heart seizes in my chest.

When I reach his side, he takes my hand and weaves his fingers between mine. He doesn't speak as we walk toward our favorite park and find a bench near a small playground. Toddlers in puffy jackets dart up and down the jungle gym while their parents stand nearby, watching them and sipping coffee cups.

For a while, we sit in silence, his arm around me. I bury my face in his corduroy coat and breathe him in.

I smell nothing.

I remember he isn't real.

I remember why I'm here.

"Brad," I say.

He turns to me. "Hmm?"

I squeeze my eyes shut and see, like a slideshow meandering seamlessly through my mind, our life together. With each memory, my heart tightens and my throat sears.

I can't make the words come out. I've thought about how to explain to him if we ever met again - that I'd loved him but I wasn't in love with him - but it was such an inessential distinction after the months we'd spent building us. It was beyond analysis; pointless to qualify, as if explaining it would justify the undeservedness of its existence.

"I can't move in with you," I whisper at last. "I've chosen someone else."

He nods. "I know." He doesn't sound surprised.

"I'm sorry." I'm crying now.

He nods again.

"I love you," I say, my throat so painful that my words are ragged.

"Me, too."

"Oh, Brad," I breathe out.

He holds me against him, kissing the top of my head. "Sabrina."

I cry harder.

"Sabrina. I'm not real. Let me go."

I cling to him, the fabric of his coat in my fists, and scream into his body that I can no longer smell. I scream and scream and hear the imaginary words of Marian-who-never-was spouting her mantra, "Anger sits on hurt."

I'm hurting because I've loved a phantom.

And he'd loved me back.

It's surprising how much pain there is even in madness.

Eventually, the knot in my chest loosens. I pull away and look at him.

"Will I see you again?" I ask.

"Probably not."

"Because you'll be busy haunting some other girl's dreams?"

He smiles. "Now there's an idea."

I take his hand in mine. "Is any part of you real?"

He considers. "You need someone who's all real, love. Not just parts. Is your someone like that?"

Oh, the irony. I remember years ago when I'd first laid unbelieving eyes on post-bath Puck without his usual layer of dirt and thought, while careening headlong into my first crush, "He isn't even a real boy!"

And then I realize what I've just heard: You need someone who's all real, love.

Love.

It's what Puck sighs against my ear, when we are alone, when he sheds the teasing and insults and chooses another kind of name-calling altogether.

My mind spins.

I let it go.

It is not important. Not anymore.

"He's. . . kinda. . . real, yeah," I answer him instead.

"Did you find him while you were out seeing the world?"

"No. Sort of. Actually, he found me, but I'd forgotten."

"So it's a happily ever after, then."

Except that I'm saying goodbye to you.

I close my eyes, collecting myself.

"Are we going to say goodbye now?" I speak my mind.

"When you're ready," he says. "I can wait."

"Thank you, Brad. For being there for me when I needed you. You never left. You -"

Neither did Puck. The thought comes, sharp and lucid.

I sit up and take a deep breath. And then another.

"Okay," I say. "I'm ready now."

He turns to me and I hold his face in my mind, framing every piece of us against a backdrop of thankfulness for a life filled with more love than I could ever deserve. I hold it all before me, storing it up for a day when I can no longer bring him back from memory, only what it felt like to have had him for this season.

I lean in to kiss him, fearing for a moment that he might turn his face and offer only his cheek.

But he doesn't. His lips are familiar and gentle. And he does not kiss me - as I am now realizing it - like I'm his.

He kisses me as if I'm not.

He always has.

The thought makes me feel acutely sad - and strangely relieved.

"Goodbye, Bradley."

"Goodbye, Sabrina."

He does not move. I think that maybe I must.

So I stand and walk away, even though they are the hardest and heaviest steps to take, and keep my eyes on his as I leave. He still sits, with his arm on the back of the seat, over the space that was mine. When I can no longer safely walk backward, I turn and set distance between us, looking up at the luminous yellow of the leaves overhead as I blink away scalding tears.

Then I look back at the park bench, but it is empty.

I wake.

My eyes are dry but I'm breathing heavily, my heart thudding as I take in the room around me.

I'm in bed - my bed. I turn and see a head half-buried under white sheets, the pointed tip of an ear just visible among golden curls. I reach out under the covers and pull myself against a warm back.

Puck lifts his arm in his sleep and wraps mine around his waist, the rings on our fingers winking in the early morning sunlight. I lean my cheek against the velvet skin of his shoulder and listen to his breaths hum through his body. I tuck my leg between his calves and hold him.

He is real, as he has always been.

From the next room, I hear a cry.

I lie still, listening - perhaps her waking is only temporary and she'll fall back to sweet unconsciousness so I can, too. But I hear her again, and I sigh, slipping out from the warm cocoon of sheets and padding to her bedroom.

There she is - wriggling and mouthing her fists as she kicks her blankets away from her tiny body, all golden and green-eyed like her father, and just as around-the-clock ravenous.

"Hey, Allie. Let me guess - you're hungry again. It's always about food with you, isn't it?"

A noise from the door makes me look up.

Puck stands there in his boxers, hair sticking out every which way, hunched and hugging himself in the cool morning air.

"Oh, you're here," he mumbles in a voice thick with sleep. "She kept crying so I got up to check. I thought no one heard."

"I've got her," I tell him, my words collapsing into a huge yawn.

He yawns back, not moving from the doorway.

"Babies need snooze buttons," he comments when he once more has control over his mouth. "If we were in Faerie, there'd be scores of servants to tend to her every need, you know. We'd never lose a minute of sleep."

"You can catch up on all the sleep you want over the weekends when we are there, wimp."

"Whatever. What time is it, anyway?" He squints at the nursery clock. "Ungh. It's still yesterday."

"No, it's not. Go back to bed, Stinker. See you when I'm done."

He leaves, muttering about royalty and servants and entitlements.

He's right, though.

We could have been living like kings - literally - instead of wading neck-deep in diapers and suburbia. It isn't as if the thought had never crossed my mind. But when we'd known we were having a baby - over which news all of Faerie did, indeed, rejoice - we'd decided right away that we needed to raise her with one foot in Puck's world, and the other in mine.

Alison had arrived one spring evening - landing safely in the arms of a very emotional Gossamer - and, amidst much pomp and celebration, we'd spent the next few weeks in a flurry of meet-and-greets and photoshoots and parties. Dignitaries I recognized only from the pictures in our wedding album descended in droves to the visiting halls of Faerie, bearing gifts and well-wishes. I'd had my suspicions, though, that some of them, particularly the uppity Fae from the wintry northern kingdom, having been aware of Puck's staunch refusal to grow up, had only come to gawk at his first attempts at fatherhood.

Rhogin had turned up at the end of the first week, causing quite a stir among the dryads who'd been sitting in the gardens. Several of them had promptly fainted at the sight of him, much to his amusement and Puck's disgust (he'd spat at Rhogin under his breath, "Turn it off, you ass; those are my guests!") and had to be taken to the healing rooms and revived with Gossamer's strongest smelling salts. Rhogin had brought with him a hamper of goodies for the new mother (but which Puck had immediately confiscated for himself) and several vials of sleeping draught, to be used "in emergencies when the baby is inconveniently awake and the parents desire not to be".

I'd thrown myself at him and planted a great big kiss on his cheek, not only to pay Puck back for stealing my treats, but also because I'd been so glad to finally see someone I actually remembered from my hijacked past. Rhogin, seemingly immune to the death glares thrown his way - and mine - by the remaining dryads who'd not succumbed to a rapturous coma, had hugged me back, smirking at a seething Puck. For once, I hadn't cared if he were exercising his magnetic influence on me or anyone else - my friend was here and I didn't have to make small talk with him like with all the other people who'd come to see our baby. I'd been beyond ecstatic.

Once we'd found our feet as new parents and Gossamer had declared Allison safe in our care, we'd moved to our new apartment in the city. The first few nights had been a nightmare of crying and diapers and nursing and I'd been tempted to pack up and move right back to Faerie and the veritable army of helpers and nursemaids.

Puck, surprisingly, had been somewhat amazing with Alison, plucking her out of my arms when I'd been at my wits' end, and miraculously lulling her back to sleep. I remember the first time he'd done it - after screaming in my arms for most of the night, she'd instantly dropped off into deep sonorous slumber, cradled against his chest. Worn stupid-tired by sleep deprivation, I'd hissed at him, "Did you just cheat and use magic on our baby?" only to have him easily reply, " She is magic, duh."

I'd burst into tears then, completely wiped out and utterly miserable. Puck had sighed in exasperation and said, "Just this once, let me save you, okay?" Then he'd put Alison back in her crib, scooped me up and carted me off to bed, still bawling my eyes out.

I'd blamed the postpartum hormones from hell.

Unbelievably, the nights did eventually turn into days, and now we're slowly settling into our new normal. Over time, I'm finding myself - as I'd hoped - making new memories.

Puck continues to commute to and from Faerie during the week, working alongside a now fully-recovered Mustardseed, to run their kingdom the way their father had planned, but had never had the chance, to. We spend the weekends, and other random stretches of time there, so the Fae can enjoy their new princess, and we can take a break from the all-consuming occupation of caring for an infant. It is, as Puck likes to say, a total win-win.

At the back of our minds, we know the day will come when she - and any other siblings who might follow - would have to reckon with her dual heritage, and that she might choose one over the other just to make sense of an identity that is at once real, and not. Still, we hope that like Puck and me, she might embrace both, and be all the stronger for it.

But that would be many years - and choices - away yet.

This morning, however, Faerie's crown princess is just a baby with one thing on her mind.

She cries again, begging for attention, so I pick her up and settle into the rocker to feed her. I yawn, and flip open my laptop on the side table, to read the news as she nurses, feeling deep in my bones just how much my body yearns to go back to bed.

Still, I don't roll my eyes and begrudge her the shuteye she's costing me on yet another woozy morning like so many in the past weeks. Perhaps when she's done this without respite for another half a year, or after I've had even more babies and my patience - along with any kindly maternal instinct - has worn dangerously thin, I possibly might find a colorful phrase or two to express my feelings. For now, this little miracle is a precious gift, and a reminder of everything I have lost even as I hold what I have gained.

So I let her jolt me out of sleep over and over again, disoriented and exhausted, but thankful, so thankful - that she's ours, that she's alive, that she's here.

And when she cries, urgent as a clarion call, I savor the sound of her voice.

Because while it is means I must drag myself away from all that is warm and comfortable and wonderful, it is also victory, and hope, and promise - as sweet and glorious as the breaking of the new day.

_ Finis _

A/N: What a ride.

It was with both joy and sadness that I updated the status of this story to "complete".

I have had so much fun writing this for you guys. Way back when it was just a bunch of random plotlines in my head, I decided I'd write a story that I myself would like to read someday. It would have to have dragons - because they are my weakness - and snarky banter, and people forgetting who they were, and losing their way, and finding home on many different levels.

I debated for the longest time on whether to label this an AU or not - and you guys can weigh in on this, too - but in the end I decided that just introducing a goblin setting wasn't enough to make it so. I like to think of it as what I wish had happened in place of the First Epilogue in the books. Because, you know, one cannot just introduce a random love interest and then ditch him at the altar, with no explanation of the five missing years in which all this took root.

Speaking of which, this last encounter with Bradley makes me cry every time I re-read it. Which is lame, considering that I wrote it myself, but I am not good with goodbyes, and I always felt that we owed it to Bradley (at least in this story) to let him go with dignity. It's the least we could do for him. Therefore this is, literally, the saddest scene in my whole story. For me, anyway.

So much more we could deconstruct. But that would be taking away from the story itself, and what it could mean to you, if anything at all. I hope you enjoyed it! And we actually did it - yay -updating with a chapter almost every day so you could read the whole adventure from start to finish in a little over a month!

If you'd moseyed over to my profile at some point, you might have read that this story was actually a writing exercise, and my focus was character development over, say, an intricate plot or elaborate world building. I mean, the plot was literally just a "Gosh! I woke up and lost my memory. Who are you again?" which has been done ad nauseam. But in order to get the full impact of the disorientation that brings, we had to write it entirely from S's point of view, and in the present tense, for maximum immediacy and disconnect. And then I had to build a backstory to justify her bizarre behavior, and a context for all the unresolved tension between S+P. Took longer than I'd planned, but was more fun than I'd thought.

So here's where I need your help and feedback: the pacing. Tell me what you thought of that (and anything else you liked or hated about this story, really). The pacing is one of the first things that strikes me about any novel I read. Some novels start off amazing, and build to a stunning climax, and then rush to a really weak ending in the last 3 pages, and leave me like, "What? Where's the rest of the story? There has to be another page, or another 5 chapters, or something! Did the author suddenly lose interest or get slapped with an editorial deadline or need to cook dinner or something? Continue!"

Thanks, guys. It will all help with my future writing, whenever that may be.

And here we must bid adieu. I don't have any stories in my head at the moment, so I don't know if I'll be back anytime soon to write again. It's been so exciting for me to write for you - I'd have done it even without your reviews and enthusiasm, but those have been a gift to me, and I appreciate you all.

~QaS