The Sketch Rift: The Seal of Demons

Epilogue

Among the many things Sam and Irene treasured about returning home, time-travel jet lag was not one of them.

It did not take much thought to predict Theodore and the twins would be nonplussed by the confirmation of Sam's absurd tales, much less that he was prepared to put them by the wayside. Explaining Bella was a drawn-out chore in itself, and both Theodore and Alice expressed reservations about raising a fifth child, but their support network was robust, and mercy subsumed practicality. Bella would be a fixture in the household, albeit a haunting one, whose perusals of Isabel's room rattled her in comfort and identity alike. Adjusting to contemporary society would be exceptionally demanding, but Sam played as heavy a role he could in guiding her through what few had done for him. (Incidentally, she adored mint ice cream.)

Meanwhile, the hunt for Isabel resumed nigh-immediately. With so few leads and so many risks – notably ACE, a Lint Corp forerunner history taught Sam just enough about to be cautious – he disputed with his parents, intending to minimize his sister's disappearance's publicity, lest they be unearthed by the same unsavory forces that would monopolize the future. He adopted no illusion of imperviousness to danger, lest the future shift; but lest his heart do likewise, he kept his sister in his sights, always.

Sam's other sisters were hardly exempt from these developments. Their coldness faded like leftover lamplight after a flip of the switch. Each grew increasingly affable (and discrete) around him on her own terms, such that their mutually icy suspicion was a relic left in memory. (Their departure for college in a few months' time also eased their parents' spirits from the tumult that was quadruple-childcare.)

Life, in general, had softened. Home's atmosphere was laden with sorrow that hope more than counteracted, and Sam's fraught dual life was dipping below the horizon...

...Yet never quite gone. Moth's note had perished without a trace, so Sam filled its frame with Retna's portrait. The soylent bottle that mysteriously resided in his old pack remained there, suffocated by containers beneath his bed; he favored disposing of it to holding it, but also holding it to inadvertently unleashing any leftover POL, seven decades and two thousand miles early. Any Henderian clothing was treated as fodder for a local bonfire.

One empty spot, though, glared more than any other: the Sketch. Sam was disheartened but not surprised not to locate it, although he suspected Myepe to have snatched it for Moth's "passion project". Were that not the case, and 9101 did not spiderweb across canonical time, Sam barely bothered to devise a reason. All he related to it was that there was no possibility of it returning to his hands, nor of him returning to it, and its gradual alienation from the land he warred to save. Its last vestiges endured in Bella instead – and perhaps, for friends across a chronological sea, the Semblance.

Those friends were now veiled in Sam's history for good, and he made a habit of bittersweet brooding before coming to terms with their severance. There had been a ubiquitous impression of finality about his withdrawal from post-Hendera; their anxiety felt more heartened than at escape from the Facility, and no enigmatic prophets summoned a Master Bringer back. Sam wished his comrades the best. For now, narrative resolved, that could be his only favor. In imminent years, he and Irene owned every privilege – every affliction – to forge new ones.

Soon after her last Riverift ride, Irene had surreptitiously flown back to England to reunite with her adoptive Arthurs, whom Sam still resented somewhat, if only for infusing her with a peculiar hybrid accent. Her correspondence with him filtered through screens, projecting someone much more composed than she probably believed. Anytime either spiraled, the other (accounting for a quarter-day time difference) leaped to console them, but Sam thought Irene markedly more adroit in that department.