Where We End And Begin Novels & Stories

With everything we'd survived and everything we'd built and everything we were still becoming. We were home. We were whole. We were happy. We were exactly where we were meant to be. THE END

Or void beings who never quite give up on their grilled cheese metaphors. This wasn't an ending. It was a beginning. A beginning of infinite possibilities. A beginning of supernatural evolution. A beginning of becoming more – together. And honestly? I wouldn't have it any other way.

He chuckled, bending down to press our foreheads together. And with the night waning, and the world about us starting to heal, I knew— This wasn't an ending. This was a beginning, one much, much larger.

The child squeezed her hand again. “It feels like everything is already moving,” he said softly. Evelyn looked at him. “And does that feel like an ending?” He shook his head. “No,” he said. “It feels like nothing can stay not-starting anymore.” The Bell Tower field responded once more. And inside that response, initiation no longer marked a beginning. It marked the absence of anything that was not already beginning.

“You really believe that?” I nodded. “Yeah. I do.” And in that moment, raw, terrifying, and painfully beautiful I understood something with absolute clarity. This wasn’t the end of our story. It was the beginning of something far bigger than either of us had ever imagined.

We stood in the middle of everything we had built and found and been given and earned, and the room was full, and we were home, and that was everything. That was always going to be everything. That had been everything from the beginning. We just had to find our way back to it. And we had. Finally, completely, permanently. We had. THE END

We know this is not yet the end. There is a sequel in every story. Ours would have a beautiful beginning, and we will make sure every chapter has a beautiful ending.

I said finally. "Most people don't. You can start anywhere. The beginning, the middle, the part that hurts the most. There's no wrong answer." I thought about it. About all the places I could begin. The night I got pregnant. The night I left New York. The night Aiden showed up in Miami. The night Vanessa left the casserole on our porch. The night Charles Whitmore broke into our house. Every beginning led to another beginning, and every ending was just another start.

So it has come to this, the end, the end of the game, the end of my life. They say that at the end of a game there has to be a winner and a loser. And that every story has to come to an end. Is this my end? Is my game up? Has my life come to an end? But then there is that cliché saying that with every end there is a new beginning. Whichever way you look at it, whether you live or eventually die things will always come to an end.

"When all thirteen halls are standing and the solstice check gets all thirteen answering. It does not end there." "No," he said. "The fourteenth," I said. "And whatever comes after. The network that was interrupted is also the network that was growing." I paused. "Restoring what was is not the end point." I paused. "The end point is what the original community was moving toward before they were stopped." "Which we do not know yet," he said. "No," I said. "We can only see the next step." "Yes," he said. "Just the next step."