"Clef…" Aston whispered, looking down at his brother. Even the stone on the magician’s forehead had cracked, and he was still half-buried in the debris.

"He saved us all…but at such a cost…" Cressida said. "I’ve never had a vision go wrong before. I thought things would turn out all right…"

"I won’t let it end like this!" Miata screamed, her voice tearing in agony. "This is wrong! I will not have him returned to me, only to be stolen away again!" She gently lay his body back down on the ground and stood, her expression changing from sadness to anger. She walked up to the High Priest and seized him by the throat.

"You owe me," she said, her voice deadly and quiet. "All of you owe me! For my mother, and her mother before her, and all the way back to Aurora, every woman you forced to live in agony! Because you stole me away from him when I was Aurora. I won’t let it happen again."

Everyone had gathered to watch her, now. "Bring him back," she demanded, and let go of him.

"What makes you think that I have this power?" the High Priest asked.

"For thousands of years, you slept like death," Miata said. "You have all the magic of the Cathedral at your disposal. I don’t want to play around on this, understand? Just do it. Now."

"You have done as you promised," the High Priest replied. "A reward is to be yours. But what you have asked will drain away all the magic of the Cathedral, all that makes us what we are."

"What do you mean?"

"Through the magic of the Cathedral, we have been able to devote ourselves completely to the people of Cephiro as a whole," another priest explained. "The longer once stays in the aura of the Cathedral, the more of its magic they absorb, and the more they can care for Cephiro. If you intend to take that away from us, we would be no more than—"

"Than human beings?" Miata interrupted. "People, with emotions? Are you afraid to return to this form? You should not be. The times are different from those you remember."

"You are right," the High Priest said softly. He raised his staff, murmured something—

And nothing happened. The entire cathedral was silent. For a moment, everything was still.

And then they heard the rubble shifting, as a figure in it shifted. He touched the broken stone on his forehead, then looked at his hand in awe. It was no longer the hand of a child.

"I’m here," he gasped.

"Guru Clef!" The Magic Knights ran towards him, but Miata beat them all there. Cressida looked at Aston, and to the other Priests and Priestesses, and sighed.

"If only Emeraude could be here," Ferio said, echoing her thoughts.

"She is happy where she is," Cressida replied. "You shouldn’t be here, Ferio. You should be over there, where your friends are."

"But what about you? Do you have any friends to talk to?" Ferio addressed both his parents. His mother smiled.

"Not yet, exactly," she said, looking towards the other Priests and Priestesses. "But I will not be long in finding some. Once they get the hang of being human, anyway."

*

"You’re not a midget anymore!" Umi said to Clef.

"He doesn’t seem to be paying much attention to you, Umi-san," Fuu said, tapping her shoulder.

"Hikaru, would you kill me if I said that this powdered lillis stuff is…" Hayase paused for dramatic effect. "…’da bomb’?"

"You--!" Hikaru gasped, taking off after him. Umi and Fuu laughed.

"Some things never change," Fuu said.

"Are you guys going to go back to Earth now?" Ascot wondered. He looked sad. Umi shook her head vehemently.

"Are you kidding?" she asked him. "What, you have so little faith in me that you think I’d run off on you like that? Of course we’re staying here!"

"We may have to go back to Earth sometime. Our families will miss us," Fuu said.

"Well, of course we’ll visit, but how could we stay there? We obviously belong here!" Umi said.

"Oh, won’t your mother and father be so proud when they find out little Umi-chan’s in love!" Hikaru, now done chasing Hayase, teased. Umi turned bright red.

"Oh my god! We disappeared from my wedding! What are they going to think?"

"If we can go back to the chapel, only the two of you switch places…" Hayase said, and it was Hikaru’s turn to blush.

"Uh…Just what are you implying, Hayase?" she stuttered out.

Ferio walked up behind Fuu, and put his hands on her shoulders, whispering in her ear.

"So are you telling her that you love her? That you want to marry her?" Umi asked. Ferio jumped a little and put his hand behind his head, blushing.

"Hey, I don’t think that’s any of your business!"

"Tell us tell us tell us!" Umi cried. "We want to know!"

Clef and Miata stared into each other’s eyes.

"So, we really have come out all right," Clef whispered.

"Shh. Don’t say anything about that. You’ll jinx us."

"What now, then?"

"Well, I think I’d like to have children sometime, but right now, I just want you to myself. I say we have the High Priest here marry us as soon as possible, and then we go somewhere far away for our honeymoon. Then we come back here, and leave our mark on this new world we’re building."

"Sounds like a good plan to me," Clef said.

"You know, I think you were cuter as a little kid," Umi teased him. Clef spun around.

"What?" he gasped in mock-anger.

"Then I suppose you’d want Ascot back as a little kid too, then?" Miata asked. Umi gasped.

"Of course not! How’d you know about that, anyway?"

"I watched you while you were on your journey," Miata replied. "Not all the time, but enough to know how you were doing. So, when are you and Ascot going to get married?"

Both Umi and Ascot froze, and Miata laughed.

"Get away from her while you can, Clef! She’s truly evil!" Ascot said. Clef laughed.

"I’m sorry, but I think I’m stuck with her."

"You’re not stuck with anyone. You wanna go, then go. See if I care. Bye!" Miata said. Clef mock-pouted.

"I’ll only go if I can take you with me," he said.

"Sure," Miata replied. "Where are we going?"

"I haven’t decided."

"Great! Let’s go! The sooner we get there, the better!"

"Weren’t we supposed to be married first?"

"Clef, you should’ve brought that one up two hundred years ago." Miata reveled in the Guru’s look of embarrassment and everyone else’s discomfort. "Well, what would the two of you do if you had the Forest of Songs to yourselves?" she asked, turning her attention on Ferio and Fuu.

"We would be married, first," Fuu said. Miata sighed.

"Well, better late than never." She and Clef walked over to speak with the High Priest.

"Aha! So you are going to get married!" Umi said accusatively towards Fuu and Ferio.

"A brilliant deduction," Ferio sighed.

"I suppose that technically neither of you has dated anyone else for the last five years, but then again, you weren’t exactly dating each other then, either…"

Ferio and Fuu got sweatdrops. "Don’t you think that Ascot deserves some of that attention that you’ve been showering on us?"

"Ascot already knows that I love him."

"I…I do?" he stuttered. Umi turned to face him.

"Of course you do! And I know that you love me, too. It’s nice, isn’t it?"

Ascot nodded emphatically. "Yes, Umi, that’s very nice."

Hikaru and Hayase were bickering again over something-or-other.

"As for them…" Umi drifted off.

"They’ll come around," Fuu said. "They haven’t known each other for very long, but Hayase has matured quite a bit just in the time that they spent together. They’ll be all right."

"Yes," Umi agreed.

*