[Dictated]

[lightbranded]

 Rather a lot of children in the castle now, aren't there? [Will pauses, and then continues with a small laugh.]

Not even my family ever had quite this many.  Even from what I remember of my older brother's stories. Of course I was the youngest, so I've never been around kids much.  But I guess I could still offer my help.

[Another pause, as Will thinks over his words.]

There is one other thing, I suppose.  I've been thinking a lot recently over some questions. Has anyone ever wondered what happens to a story what it finishes?  What the people in a story do in the after?

Comments

[lightbranded]

Depends on what you mean by story, I suppose.

[kethedammit]

What d'you mean, then?

[lightbranded]

The grand stories, I suppose. Battles between light and dark, with destiny all mixed up.

[kethedammit]

Yeah, I meant those.

[lightbranded]

But even those will finish one day. And when that happens, when Drake no longer waits in his hammock and when Arthur no longer lies sleeping anywhere, in that time what would happen?

[kethedammit]

Kid... the stories ain't real. Even if they're about real things, the parts that're stories, they're just that. After a story ends, it's ended.

[lightbranded]

In every story, there is a piece of truth. I think. It simply makes me wonder.

[Will doesn't say that he is truly speaking of his own life. An Old One had cause to know what truth lay within stories. And he, more than any, had reason to think on this. Six months and more since the great task of his kind had been completed, and Will had been left behind to watch. And still he struggled with the question of what he was meant to do with all this time.]

[kethedammit]

'Course there is. But the folks in the story aren't real, they're just... echoes. When the story's over, they stop echoing.

[lightbranded]

Do they? What if the echoes remain?

[kethedammit]

Then that's folks making up new stories. Don't got nothing to do with the people who was really there. Stories're just stories. People telling 'em make 'em what they is, not what the stories're took from.

[lightbranded]

True enough, I suppose. For some stories.