A dragon.
Welp. I guess I should have expected that. "This is amazing, Kassam."
"This is your home now, too," he tells me, his eyes bright with excitement. "Anything you want, anything you need, I will provide it for you. Simply speak it, and it shall be yours."
"The conmac?" I ask, because I feel we have to think of them.
He nods. "They will arrive shortly, and I will remove the rings that bind them."
I squeeze his hand. I imagine he's going to have a lot to answer to the moment they get their voices back, but something tells me it'll be fine. "I have you," I say. "I'm good for now."
"Are you tired? Hungry?" His gaze searches mine.
I'm probably all of those things, but it doesn't seem important right now. I don't want it to be about me. I want him to revel in the fact that he's home again after so long. "Let's just explore for now? I want to see everything. Does your whole realm look like this?"
Delight curves his mouth. He likes that I'm asking about his home. "Not at all. This is one small corner, but I thought you might like it."
Oh, I do. I squeeze his hand again, smiling as another shy dryad peeks out from behind a bush to gaze at us. Kassam grins down at me, too, as if he's got some sort of secret he's dying to share.
"Carly?"
I gasp, my eyes going wide. That voice—I know that voice. I drop Kassam's hand, surging in the direction of it. "Ma?"
"Carly!" Up ahead, there's a thrashing of bushes and then my mother—my beautiful, silly, wonderful mother—steps out of the forest thicket in her favorite pink pajamas. She looks just as I remembered, healthy and strong.
The moment I see her, I burst into tears and run toward her. "Mama. You're here."
"Oh, my baby," my mother cries, and then we're hugging and she strokes my hair, and I sob and snot all over her pajamas, and it's wonderful.
We're home. All of us.
Epilogue
"Today is an adventurous day for you, Carly!" my mother sings out as I approach her favorite lily-pad-strewn pool. "I saw it in the scrying waters." She beams at me. "Got anything planned?"
Sharing eternity with my mother as well as my lover is awesome, but it also makes for awkward moments…kinda like right now. At least the whole hedonism thing was broken and my mom no longer feels attracted to Kassam, or things would be incredibly weird. I debate how much to say to her about my naughty plans for the day and decide to fudge it. Trying not to look too guilty, I sit down by the pool with her and put on a chipper smile. "Oh, Kassam and I are going to have a date. Nothing much. How's the scrying thing going?"
My mother lights up, her eyes full of excitement. It's the right thing to say to distract her. For the next half-hour, my mother tells me all about the water-scrying network she's been working with Kassam to set up, as if it wasn't my idea in the first place. The Great Endless Forest is a paradise, and all of our needs are met by either the plants or by the magical dryads that dwell in the forest. We have food, water, and shelter, all by simply asking the forest to provide. Kassam keeps me busy—I help him with his duties and offer advice, and we spend a lot of time thinking up ways to spread the word that he's returned and is answering prayers.
We also spend a lot of time in bed. Which is awesome, but I quickly became worried that my mother would feel like a third wheel. She ran a shop back home, after all. She's a businesswoman and is used to staying busy, even if that business was fortune-telling and tarot cards. Kassam and I brainstormed a way for her to apply her abilities, and thus water-scrying was born. Through any of the pools here in Kassam's plane, my mother can view people, and places. I thought she'd use the scrying windows to chat with Yulenna or Max or Faith—the other anchors—but my mom is clever. She decided she was going to pass hints to Kassam's priestesses (of whom there are few but are growing in number). It's started a bit of a frenzy, with new supplicants sending up prayers and requesting water-scrying constantly, but my mom loves it.
"…so like I sent to that woman Rudith," my mom continues, dragging a finger through the ripples of the pool. "She was asking about her boyfriend again and I can't exactly say through the water, 'Girl, he's no good for you.' So I sent her an image of a shoe."
I frown, my attention snared. "I'm sorry, you what?"
"Sent her an image of a shoe. You know, so she'll boot him to the curb."
That's…random. I chuckle. "You think she'll figure it out, Ma?"
Mom shrugs. "I don't care if she does. I'm not spoon-feeding them here. I have to keep an element of mystery in things. Make them work for it, you know?" She pats my hand. "I'll do that man of yours proud, wait and see."
I hug my mom. "I know you will." I'm always hugging her lately. I think it's because I came so close to not seeing her again that having her with me gives me a fresh appreciation for our relationship. "I love you."
"I love you too, pipsqueak." Mom hugs me back. "Have you eaten lunch? I have some nuts here."
Just like a mom, always trying to feed me. It works, though, because I'm always hungry. Part of my bond with Kassam, I suppose. I don't mind it, though. Thanks to his magic and this plane, there's an endless supply of fruits, vegetables, and nuts to eat. Mom has turned vegan, just like me. Sometimes I miss a good steak, but it's hard to think about eating those kinds of things when you're surrounded by deer and foxes and squirrels, all with big, beautiful eyes and all of them acting like pets.
So nuts it is. I crack a few and eat, and we talk a bit more. Once I've finished eating, I brush off my mossy skirts and get to my feet. "Oh, Ma, I almost forgot. Kassam asked if you could watch over the conmac for him? Just keep an eye on what they're doing and report back if any of them even look as if they're trying to shift?"
Her expression grows sad. "No progress there, I take it?"
"Nope." The conmac have been brought to the Great Endless Forest, the magic rings removed from their noses and…they disappeared again. They haven't changed back to their human forms (or fae forms, I guess), and it's another thing that eats at Kassam. He worries over them, but they've been wolves for a thousand years. They probably need time before they're ready to change back, or they need to remember how. Either way, we'll keep an eye on them. "So if you could peek in on them, he'd appreciate it."
"I'm on it," Mom says with determination.
I press a kiss to the top of her head. "All right, I'm off. Love you." I pause, and then snap my fingers, hoping my acting doesn't look too obvious. "Oh! One more thing, Ma." As if this isn't the thing I came over here for in the first place. "Can you uh, stay out of the deep thicket this afternoon?"
"Absolutely."
Whew. "Thanks—"
"I'm still scarred from the screeching you were doing in your last sex game," my mother says, cracking another nut with a squeeze of her palm. "Trust me, I don't want to hear anything."
I wince. So much for subtlety. To be fair, I was screeching quietly, hoping my mother wouldn't hear her son-in-law railing her daughter. Guess I wasn't as quiet as I'd thought. Today is probably going to be just as noisy, too. "We're just having a date. But like…yeah. Don't come near the deep thicket."