My esteemed Observers,
The mandate is done. Both the fish and the fisherman are unfettered to live. Their trawler returns to port, and all are seasick on dry land. Worry not, though; that inertia should subside quickly, and you will realize how little you loved the sea.
Our trek has been taxing. I thank Redhra we retire when we do.
I was a child in denial when our travels commenced, yet now I stand unqualified for what awaits, shoulder to shoulder with the competent and the talented whose apples are ruddy and prospects dazzling. One scans mine and questions the rot, the decay, the tenacity to persist, only so much of which stems from inside. Their answer splinters the tabula rasa, for the saga's line is unbroken: internal volatility guided by those years of external middling. Naiveté transformed into cynicism so penetrating it threatened to poison everything left, but by fire that fantasy dissolved, and revealed the reality of hope. Is that a happy ending?
When I first wrote of death, I did not know what death was. When I first wrote of love, I did not know what love was. When I first wrote of despondency, it, too, was foreign, but fast-encroaching. I anticipated these disservices with a hollow dread, and when I flinched at their arrival, the narrative jumped. It would land on solid ground sooner or later. Its people would carry on with examples to imbibe for me – for us.
Sam, ever steadfast. An objective lens through which to view a world should be impossible, but by sheer neutrality Sam became it, then grew beyond it. He is free now to decide what it means.
Irene discovered that faces differed in the horde. Beforehand, there were only mine and theirs. She had chosen between enough binaries, and having shed them she is ready to live.
Fate to a being as powerful as Charles Hemingway should have been a measly suggestion, but he yielded to it so that others needed not. As for Moth, I owe him reprieve. Let his next work be the docile one; where every arc touches down is rest, and that you deserve, too.
I thank my Ambassadors and my overseers. I thank my Cofontors: the Greatest Warrior, the Suser Kriter, the Evvyn Jowres, the Breyer Bejir – and I thank you. To claim your Observership was essential would, put bluntly, be false, but your promise – your potential – was genuine. On your account, The Sketch lives.
Now, may we all be free of it.
Farewell, my friends. I'll see you someday soon.
–RB
---= THE END =---
YOU ARE READING
The Sketch Rift: The Seal of Demons
Fantasy{Book Three in the Sketch Rift Trilogy} When the Eternal Crusade disbanded without the leadership of the notorious former Sulukridger Ivel, Hendera grew increasingly apprehensive as to the real worth of their very own Master Bringer. Among them...
