(This is it. The final installment. Seriously. Hand to God. Happy Holidays, y'all. It's a Christmas miracle.)

Epilogue

I open my eyes and shut them again, the sun shining in from the windows next to me, right onto my bed. I smile anyway; someone must have opened the curtains. I stretch my toes and yawn, smelling breakfast downstairs. I throw back the blankets and lower myself from my big bed until my feet touch the floor, running out of my room, but before I can reach the stairs, four scaly hands grab me and drag me backward, tickling me until I can't breathe.

"Sto—haha! Stop! S-stop! By order, of…me-hehe!"

A pair of turtles back off from my flailing and grin at me sheepishly. My friends!

"We had to! It's your birthday!"

"Yeah, by tonight you'll be too told for that!"

"I'll never grow up! Incoming!" I cry out as I make for the stairs, climbing up on the smooth wooden bannister, and sliding down backwards, clinging on for dear life. I don't stop until my backside hits the newel post, and I wince. I slide off onto the stairs, watching Mel and Korah smack into the post with their shells, flying almost entirely across the shiny, slippery floor of the entrance hall. Tripping over my nightgown, I giggle breathlessly and run to them. Korah pops out of her shell and holds her head dizzily.

"I never get used to that."

"At least you have a shell to protect you!" I muse with envy, rubbing my backside. A much larger arm grabs me around my middle, hoisting me into the air, and I squeal with delight and embarrassment.

"S-stop! Daddy, put me down!"

"Oh, so you're not too old to crash down the stairs, but you can't let your old man swing you around like a wrench? Huh?" He slings me over his shoulder and I giggle, letting my long dark hair cascade upside down and shaking my head to wiggle it around.

Today is November seventeenth, and now I am ten years old, or I will be, tonight. Last year my father said my birthday was the sixteenth, but I don't mind because he forgets dates a lot, except for one. And I love him anyway.

"Breakfast is ready, girls."

"Okay!"

He finally sets me down and I hug him tight around his middle (he whispers, "happy birthday"), then I dash to the kitchen, waving to Mel and Korah who giggle and run back up the stairs. I fling myself to the table. My mom's retainer Adeline is there, making sure breakfast is on my plate. She smiles and curtsies a little. I hate it when she does that, when she treats me like a Princess. She tells me, "But that's what you are, Celeste," and I say, "But you're my friend, friends don't bow to each other!"

She likes to hear me say that she's my friend. She's been a nurse, or a nanny, or something like that, since the day I was born, and took care of me when my parents needed help.

I eat my breakfast really fast, because Adeline tells me my mother has something really special for me, and I couldn't have it until I eat and get dressed. I finish licking my plate clean, putting it on the kitchen table with an earthy clunk, and belching my thanks loudly. Adeline won't let me leave until she brushes off the egg from the tip of my nose, then I hurry back up the stairs, taking them two at a time.

I pass the co-captain of the guard, Kaden, and he halts formally, bowing a little.

"Happy birthday, Princess."

I wink at him. "You too…sugar buns!"

I keep running past him, giggling, and he blushes hard, frowning after me.

"I-it's not my birthday!"

Tori always calls him "sugar buns." He hates it.

I don't let Mel and Korah help me into my blue sundress; I'm old enough now and I insist they're my friends, not my ladies in waiting. They help me with that funny clasp in the back though, and I hurry back downstairs to meet my parents in the great room.

My mother smiles from her chair, my father standing behind her with his hand on her shoulder. She holds out a tiny wooden box with her hands. "For you, darling." I open it, and inside is a a silver ring, on a gold chain, with swirly things etched into it. It's very pretty, and I try it on before I can say thank you, pulling the chain over my hair and looking at it.

"Do you like it?"

I still have this shocked look on my face because it's such a pretty ring and I don't know where they got it. I nod and answer, "Yes. It's so beautiful. But it's…too big." I try to slide it onto my own fingers, they're all too small, even my thumb.

"You will grow into it." My mother smiles, crinkling the scars around her eyes. "Did you look at it closely?"

I squint my eyes, pulling it off my thumb, and spinning it slowly.

"It has words inside! '…faithless to none, yet faithful to one.' What's that mean?"

She puts on this smile that makes me want to crawl into her lap. I know I'm ten now, or I will be tonight, so I'm too old for it, but I crawl onto her lap anyway. She takes me in with her arms. They look frail, but she's actually really strong. You have to be, if you're queen around here.

She says it means that I must always be kind and good, strong and hopeful for everyone and for myself, and faithful to one means that when I find the certain someone to love, I must love them with all my heart.

I giggle and whisper in her ear. "I can't love anyone here. They're all mushrooms and turtles and stuff! I can't marry mushrooms!"

"When you love someone, it doesn't matter how different you are." She puts on this other smile and I know she's remembering something. My dad, too. He squeezes mom's shoulder, and leans in to kiss the top of my hair. But his eyes look real sad. I already know what he's thinking about. I sigh and shift a bit in my mom's lap, closing my eyes and just letting her hold me. After all, I won't be ten til tonight, I'm still nine…

My uncle died a month before I was born, the day before Unity Day. Or that's what we call it, anyway. Mushrooms and turtles didn't really like each other back then. Well, some of them did, maybe. All I know is, Unity Day is when the mushroom-turtle fighting stopped, and my uncle Luigi died being really brave. A real hero, they say. We have a big party for Unity Day, and a moment of silence at the headstones (that feels more like an hour), and we eat a lot of food, and everyone's mostly just really happy.

I don't really miss my uncle because I didn't know him, and it's hard to miss people you never knew. I would miss my father a lot if he died. I like it when he has staring contests with me, or hugs me really tight with his big arms, or calls me "Celery" when he's feeling silly. I would miss all that a lot, but I try not to think about it too much. He used to get really sad when he thought about his brother, and sometimes he'd even get mean, but now he doesn't as much, because he says Luigi is in a better place.

Sometimes when I look at the blue sky, and the bright stars at night, and the grassy lawn and vivid flowers and big trees and cool streams, I can't think of any place better than here. But it must have been pretty bad, for him to say that. Sometimes he still has nightmares that make him cry (my father, cry), so I take his word for it, that things are better this way.

I heard stories from Adeline and her brother Oliver, that the world before I was born was a terrible, terrible place. The palace where we live was an awful wreck, everything everywhere was dry and dead, and so were the people, the turtles used to hurt the mushrooms, and there was no rain or sunshine ever. It's how my uncle's love died. It's how my dad lost his hand, and how my mom got the scars around her eyes, and went blind. That's the only way I've ever known them, so I don't think it's too strange.

If my father finds out Adeline told me, I know he'll be pretty mad. He just wants to protect me. But I'm glad things are better now.

One time, I heard him crying at night, saying, "Come back," over and over. It scared me, and I already couldn't sleep, so Jack kept me company. He helps Oliver harvest the other worlds for medicine. He's funny. He stutters a lot, but I'm not supposed to tease him about it.

I have scary dreams, too. The worst was the one with a huge black blob that ate the sun, and it was so dark I couldn't see my hand in front of my face. The blob said that he had taken my mom and dad, and he wanted to get me too, and it felt real, because I couldn't breathe when I tried to scream, and I couldn't run when I tried to leave. I felt like I was drowning. When I woke up, my father was there, and I was so scared I wouldn't stop crying.

He held me in his lap and had to put his hand on my tummy, telling me to breathe real deep, and I heard him breathe in and out, and listened to his heart beat as he held me. It finally worked, but I wouldn't go to sleep. He held me in his arms and ran his hand over my hair, saying, "You're okay, you're safe." I told him I was scared of the dark and I would never sleep with the lights off again, or hide in the closet, or go outside at night. He said I shouldn't worry about the dark.

I said, "What if the sun doesn't come up tomorrow, what if he really ate it?"

He said, "No one is big enough to eat the sun. It'll come up tomorrow, you'll see. It always does, and it scares off all the bad things that come at night. Even when the sun goes down, it's never gone. It'll just come right back up the next day."

So that makes me feel good whenever I go to sleep at night. I'm not scared anymore, I know that the sun is always there; even when it's hiding from me, maybe it's helping other kids somewhere, too. And when there are clouds covering it, it's still not gone. It's always back there, waiting to come out and make me happy.

And for my father, I think it's so much more than that. He told me once the sun made my uncle brave, so it makes my dad brave, too. Even though he doesn't have to do battles anymore, it gives him hope to go on sleeping and waking, to go on with the next day, and the next day, and the next day…to just go on. Him and my mom. I think that's pretty brave. Because there's always something better waiting, even if it's really far away.

I think one day, I'll find a way to tell everyone everywhere that the sun will always rise. That way no one will ever have to be afraid again.

The End.

Previously dedicated to my friend Kati, who wouldn't have given two sh*ts about being honored in a fanfiction, but was an absolute sunbeam to everyone around her. Clouds gathered at her passing. I'll see you again in the sunshine, friend.

Dedicated currently to the ultra mega hardcore super-fans that have managed to follow this for several years of tumbleweeds, if not for the full sixteen. You are all legends, and if I was President of the United States, I'd give you all the GD medal of freedom or something. Hats off to you, you crazy kids. *Heart emoji!*