Carol raised her hand slowly and brushed her hair back, once on either side, and Therese smiled because the gesture was Carol, and it was Carol she loved and would always love. Oh, in a different way now because she was a different person, and it was like meeting Carol all over again, but it was still Carol and no one else. It would be Carol, in a thousand cities, a thousand houses, in foreign lands where they would go together, in heaven and in hell. Therese waited. Then as she was about to go to her, Carol saw her, seemed to stare at her incredulously a moment while Therese watched the slow smile growing, before her arm lifted suddenly, her hand waved a quick, eager greeting that Therese had never seen before. Therese walked toward her.
There are endings. There are beginnings. Sometimes they coincide, with the ending of one thing marking the beginning of another. But sometimes there is simply a long space after an ending, a time when it seems everything else has ended and nothing else can ever begin.
Most journeys have a clear beginning, but on some the ending is less well-defined. The question is, at what point do you bite your lip and head for home?
This haze of blood must subside, the palace must collapse under the weight of the riches it conceals, the orgy must finish and the time come to awaken.
The two of us in that room. No past, no future. All intense deep that-time-only. A feeling that everything must end, the music, ourselves, the moon, everything. That if you get to the heart of things you find sadness for ever and ever, everywhere; but a beautiful silver sadness, like a Christ face.
"I have a story to tell you. It has many beginnings, and perhaps one ending. Perhaps not. Beginnings and endings are contingent things anyway; inventions, devices. Where does any story really begin? There is always context, always an encompassingly greater epic, always something before the described events, unless we are to start every story with "BANG! Expand! Sssss...," then itemize the whole subsequent history of the universe before settling down, at last, to the particular tale in question. Similarly, no ending is final, unless it is the end of all things..."
Across the world millions of lives are altered by the absence of the dead, but three members of Teddy's last crew--Clifford the bomb-aimer, Fraser, the injured pilot, and Charlie, the tail-end Charlie--all bail out successfully from and see out the rest of the war in a POW camp. On their return they all marry and have children, fractals of the future.
"Furono trovati tra tutte quelle carcasse raccapriccianti due scheletri di cui uno teneva l'altro strettamente abbracciato. Uno di questi due scheletri, che era quello di una donna, aveva ancora qualche brandello di una veste la cui stoffa doveva essere stata bianca e intorno al collo una collana di adrezarach con un sacchettino di seta, ornato di vetri verdi, che era aperto e vuoto. Quegli oggetti avevano cosi poco valore che senza dubbio il boia non li aveva voluti. L'altro, che teneva questo primo scheletro strettamente abbracciato, era lo scheletro di un uomo. Fu notato che aveva la colonna vertebrale deviata, la testa nelle scapole, e una gamba piu corta dell'altra. Non aveva pero alcuna rottura di vertebre alla nuca, ed era evidente che non era stato impiccato. L'uomo al quale apparteneva era dunque andato la, e la vi era morto. Quando si cerco di staccarlo dallo scheletro che abbracciava, si disfece in polvere. " - Notre-Dame de Paris, V. Hugo"
And with a massive roar the fifth wall comes down and the house of fiction falls, taking Viola and Sunny and Bertie with it. They melt into thin air and disappear. Pouf!