The Lamplighters

Epilogue

It was done. For another season at least, it was done.

Morning broke over the island. Sunlight the color of blood oranges shone on the windows of the great white stucco houses, kissing away the last chill of night. Tropical birds went about their toilet, nuzzling at their feathers to release the natural oils essential to their first flight of the day. Taking to the wing, they glided over the treetops and out over the waves that rolled freshly in from the warming ocean. Crickets began to chirp a gleeful cacophony that would last the whole day through, and butterflies rode the breeze of their music above rich outcrops of wild flowers and grasses.

Atop a ridge, The Consortium stood silently welcoming the dawn, dressed now in understated linens. Some had brought Thermos flasks filled with hot black coffee. Others had dragged picnic baskets all the way up here, eager to breakfast in the first light of a very new day.

Marla Neuborn was among them too, a part of each and every last one of them, dissolved into their bright bodies and dark hearts. She looked out with new eyes across the ridge and fixed her gaze on the vanishing point where the sky met the sea. Somewhere out there in the world the first pieces of a puzzle were being laid out. A plan was slowly coming to life, like the start up chime of a computer, the soft glow of a screen. She had already forgotten her name as she stood there, proudly young and virile, with the beautiful people. Marla Neuborn had ceased to exist, even as her youth and beauty lived on. The dying whisper of her name had joined a new call.

A call to new flesh.

A call to The Lamplighters.