Chapter 15: Epilogue

Dedication: To a different Epilogue.

When the train pulled up, it was in much the same way that it had, time after time, taking them from the place that never failed to make someplace inside them grow. It always seemed like the irretrievable end of something.

In a compartment, close to the back, there was a boy with red hair. He was alone. There was no laughing friend as there was in other times; the emptiness seemed loud. He was looking far beyond the rolling green countryside. He was somewhere a long time ago.

And a girl appeared, bushy-haired, taller but not that different from what she had always been. It startled him; he had been remembering much the same thing.

It was almost like it, this: like years ago when there was a smaller girl with hair that made a fine sun-spun halo around her head and a small, peaked face. She wasn't pretty, the boy had thought; but then he had seen her eyes. And then he would tell himself that she shouldn't have been pretty.

It had been so very long; but maybe not long at all; maybe it had only been a moment. And so he waited for her to do as she had done, words tumbling in short order off her almost sharp mouth, much like her. She had tried not to care but it always showed through.

Before she did sit down, maybe she was remembering too. A boy with red hair (still as red) and an expression that expected rejection. When he had looked up at her it had been as if he was asking something. She had answered it, very simply. But he still had the expression on his face at times, anticipating failure. She still wanted to wipe it away.

And so she sat down, her capable fingers scrabbling with each other. When she opened her mouth the words almost fell out – but not this time. They smiled at that.

This time her face seemed to ask him something that he actually knew how to answer. And he was the only one who could.

And this time it wasn't glasses that needed fixing, it was hearts.

It was almost like a fairytale, he decided; except he wasn't the prince. He wondered if they should change it, maybe it would be better that way. He was going to say that but he looked at her face and he thought that maybe it didn't matter if he wasn't the prince. And just maybe that was why. Because the question mark of her eyes didn't seem to mind at all.

And suddenly it all seemed so simple to him: like the past years and its complications had never even happened. It was so simple he knew its answer in a heartbeat, he didn't have to try; and so he reached out and took her sad white hand in his finally sure fingers. It was all he had ever needed to do.