Within these walls

Epilogue

There's a girl who refused to travel the roads of the moon...

Vivienne graduated from high school a year and a half later.

Her parents were a little surprised when she announced she'd be pursuing a degree in Art History. When questioned about her choices, she answered: "I was only half asleep during Mr. Ronston's class." No one ever questioned her capabilities, but deep down, Gabe and Daria suspected that she put it all out there, just to get the best excuse to go globe-trotting.

And soon enough, she announced there was a chance to spend a year in Europe. Her arguments, were as usual, very persuasive. She went on about costs covered by scholarships, and not a lot of time to think things over.

Before she left, the possibilities of the house at Rue Renaud were discussed. She begged her parents not to get rid of the property in Baton Rouge during her absence. It was a force of habit request. The future of the Lombardi household had been settled three seconds after the storm receded, and Gabe and Daria saw their daughter come back through a portal. If any, that was the moment to run. They'd never get rid of it.

"It's always good to remember that the best followed the worst." That was her closing argument, and Viv was right.

After their little trial, the relationship between Viv and Daria took a one hundred and eighty-degree turn. Both women seemed to understand each other on a level they had never dreamed of. For the first time in years, Gabriel was getting used to the idea of ​​simply being a father and a husband, not an arbitrator between skirmishes and misunderstandings. Armistice was declared on World War Girls.

When that initial year in Europe became two, and Viv announced she might not be coming back for summer break, Daria's drama returned with a vengeance. After all, she needed something to entertain herself with. Sure, they had taken roots and now worked as local realtors, but what's great about having time to make friends if one can't arrange a social life on behalf of an absentee daughter?

"Keep your princes, Daria." Viv would tell her over the phone. "No, I have no time to Zoom chat with your client's son, even if he does oil on canvas. Art history, remember? That way, I don't have to deal with every other guy with a color palette out there. Let's do something, bury him somewhere, dig him up in five hundred years, and I'll tell you if his technique is the stuff of legend."

Why deny it? They might have made up, and all, but having the last word on her mother still made her day. Life being all about those little instances of joy and undiluted satisfaction, as it goes.

Gabe was another matter. For a brief moment, he was her paladin, the keeper of all knowledge. Subsequently, he became a bench player when it came to all things magic. After the night of the storm, it was established that he had been but a bridge between generations. Yet, her intuition told her that her father might just find out what she was up to, had she not put an ocean between them.

As for Victor... It had been almost two years since the storm at Rue Renaud, and she could still fell that kiss upon her lips. Sweet, with an edge of danger, and so abruptly interrupted. But most of all, she remembered a conversation with a certain serpentine oracle, who proved to be an unrepentant romantic.

Wedo had visited her, knocking shyly at the door of her subconscious. In dreams, he told her of an idea that sounded as enticing as it was difficult to put to ask.

"There might be a way, but it won't be easssy," the boy suggested. And that was enough.

Victor could be bound back into his bones, if she were to neutralize the power of all the scattered pieces that comprised the Mother of Shadows.