Epilogue 4 - The High Lady of Colour

The room pulsed with colour.

It wasn't painted. The hues seemed to live in the walls themselves, shifting gently from lavender to gold to turquoise as if the pigments breathed. Elorae stood at the center, surrounded by the slow swirl of living light. It was quiet here, the only sound a faint hum beneath her heels — the sound of her world healed, alive again.

In the wall ahead of her was the portal.

It was a simple thing, almost humble in its design: a perfect circle of metal set into the wall, its edges engraved with symbols no one remembered carving. The surface shimmered faintly, like sunlight rippling across water. A hallway could be faintly discerned if you looked hard enough into the shimmering light.

Elorae knew that her unique connection to Joey gave her insight into the world that once was, things that others could not see, things that others would not believe. Once, that place had been a tear in reality — jagged, raw, impossible. Joey had used his power to touch it, and the universe had bent like silk. He'd made the impossible seem simple, a passage between their two worlds, as easy as walking down a hallway and emerging in a special room in Joey's own home.

Of course, these memories, the insights into the world before he changed it were hazy, brief images. Only with great concentration could Elorae hold onto them. The other memories, the ones she shared with the rest of the world, were significantly more real. This portal had always been there, only discovered after the ether retreated, after her world had been saved. It was from the before-times, the time before her world had fallen into hopeless and colourless subsistence living. Its discovery was a victory for her as it could reunite her with her great love across the span of universes.

Elorae gazed down into the light, her pulse matching its quiet rhythm.

She missed him.

A year since his visit to her world, and not a day had passed when she didn't ache to see him. To hear his easy laugh. To feel that strange gravity that pulled at her when she was near, that unshakable certainty that made her world — any world — make sense. She had managed brief visits through the portal now and then, but none had let her be as immersed in his life as she longed to be.

Her reflection shimmered faintly on the portal's surface. The woman who looked back at her was not the same one Joey had met.

Not just because he had used his power on her, just as he had on her world. That Elorae, the one before his glorious power had given her rebirth, was a distant memory. She could hardly remember her old life. Why would she want to? His truth was more real than anything from before.

But as the world healed, so had she. Gloriously, impossibly, remade into something new, something better.

Once, her city had been as grey as despair. Now, it blazed with gardens and banners, with festivals that lasted days. Life had returned as if the ether had never swallowed it. The people — her people — had found joy again. They had instinctively known whom to thank.

They'd built temples for her at first. Shrines of glass and crystal, bright as sunrise. But within weeks, the images inside had shifted. It wasn't her face they worshipped anymore.

It was his.

Churches, like the one she had seen in Joey's world that had so fascinated her as Steve drove her through Joey's city, had risen all over the world — each one devoted not to a god, but to him. Joey Granger. Their saviour, their myth. In the sermons she'd overheard, they spoke of his kindness, his power, his boundless love for those who believed. They called him the Bridge Between Worlds. They prayed for his return.

Elorae didn't mind. She understood better than anyone why they believed.

She believed, too.

Some nights, she would lie awake, whispering his name to the darkness — a prayer and a memory in one. Steve would be there, at her side, on the most lonely nights. She would speak to him, he would listen. A servant such as he was hard to find in any world; so dedicated was he that he refused to sleep away from her chambers. Some nights she would catch him sitting and watching, a silent vigil as he counted every breath she took. She loved him, in a way. He was, after all, a product of her own power, a creation that was not intended, but still needed a place in the world. He was dedicated to her in a way she could only see reflected in her own dedication to Joey, and so Elorae had long decided that she would care for him for all of his days. If he needed to be by her side to thrive, then by her side he would live.

But not all the changes to her world had been expected.

It began quietly: a nobleman here, a general there — men whose ambition curdled into cruelty. Each time, they transformed in a flash of light. Without warning, without pain. One moment a tyrant, the next... something radiant. Feminine, kind-eyed, trembling with the shock of rebirth. Just like Vaelith had been, the first and the greatest of them. Each one so similar to her own visage she had to concentrate to tell the difference.

Elorae had seen it happen once — a merchant prince from an island nation whose greed would have bled his city dry. Before her eyes, his voice faltered, his face softened, his body reshaped until the cruelty was gone. When the change was done, the newly formed woman had fallen to her knees, whispering, "If Joey ever comes again, tell him I'll serve."

Elorae had sent her away with compassion, forgiving any transgression — and a quiet understanding that the world was still healing, still reshaping itself in his image. The last she heard, the woman had given herself to a life of servitude in the cathedral dedicated to Joey in her nation's capital.

Now, as she stood before the portal, she brushed a strand of hair from her face and smiled faintly.

Tomorrow would be the start of her first true time off in months. Two weeks away from the burden of leadership. Two weeks in her lover's arms.

The Council had begged her to rest. The people called her High Lady of Colour, a title she bore with pride. She had never thought of a life where she would lead. Leadership was for others, not for someone like her. But Joey had believed in her, and so she believed in herself.

So she had dressed accordingly.

Her outfit blended authority and allure, just the way Joey would have liked — half regal commander, half stage performer. A jacket tight enough to remind anyone who saw her what kind of woman Joey could love, but official enough to remind people of the office she carried. A tiny skirt of iridescent feathers celebrated the colour that had been returned to her world, while her legs were encased in fishnet stockings, the kind that Joey had so liked the last time she saw him.

She was, in every sense, herself — radiant, unapologetic, alive.

Elorae knelt, resting her palm on the cool metal rim of the portal. The surface rippled beneath her touch, recognising her as it always did.

"I'll see you soon," she whispered.

The words echoed softly in the chamber, swallowed by light.

Above her, the colours shifted again — deepening from turquoise to rose to the warm, impossible gold that always reminded her of Joey's eyes.

The hum beneath her feet quickened, like a heartbeat answering her own.

For a moment, she swore she could feel him there — just beyond the veil, smiling that crooked smile of his, waiting.

Her messiah.

Her love.

Tomorrow, she would go to him.

And for the first time in a long while, she let herself close her eyes and imagine the world she could have if she didn't have to return.