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The night after Stella makes her decision, she wakes to find herself clutching something. She cradles it in her hands, the metal unyielding yet warm. In her hands, a single obol gleams and Stella knows what it means.
How many of these has she accepted herself? She never really thought about the obols all that much, had only taken each one as they came and used it to gain new abilities.
But obols are the price one pays. The toll to go to the next place. For Stella, it helped her go further and further. A coin just like any other currency. For everyone else, it let them get to where they needed to go. No mere coin at all.
And now, Stella finds herself in their place.
But who does she give the obol to? There is no ferryman to take Stella to her final destination. When she goes, she will go alone.
But the obol… She needs to pay the toll.
Stepping out onto the deck, Stella considers the ship that has become her home. Daffodil purrs loudly, rubbing against her legs, and Stella swoops to offer the cat a pet. Daffodil takes the tribute she deserves and then wanders off, heading in the direction of the gardens.
Stella doesn’t follow. Instead, she shades her eyes with a hand and looks at the horizon. Logically, she knows that there’s only blue where the ocean meets the sky and yet… she can’t help but thing that the sea looks like a bloody shade of red.
The obol in her hand is heavy.
The ship, slowly, begins to move. Without word and without guidance, but Stella knows where it is going. She knows where she’s going.
She knows where she needs to go.
It’s the way of things to become home and to be left behind, Stella knows. That doesn’t mean you forget them, though. Even if you choose to walk away, you are still allowed to grieve them.
But the thing in her chest does not feel like grief, not really. It feels like something much bigger, like something much smaller. And the choice Stella’s made, she doesn’t regret that. Not the choosing it to begin with and not with choosing the end either.
Everyone goes alone, at the end, but the journey to the end—you don’t have to do that alone.
With the obol still clutched in her hand, Stella makes the rounds. And yet there’s not much to see, not anymore. The houses stand solid and real, but they hold nothing inside them. Mementos of those already gone. Echoes of old ghosts who aren’t forgotten. But never the warmth they once held.
Still, she checks on the gardens. Plays the guitar and watches the plants wave and grow and grow and grow.
Beside her, Daffodil sings along.
She stands at the front of the ship, arms spread open wide, and the wind hugs her. She laughs at the sea spray and the seabirds shriek at her and she grins back.
She leaps and climbs her way up to the very top of the ship, and then glides and slides and flips her way down. Every step she takes, every leap she makes, she knows where she’ll land. She’s never been this sure of her footing before.
But then, the ship begins to slow, and the sea is red, and the obol is warm and warm and warm in her hand.
Buck meets her on deck. He doesn’t say anything. Just opens his arms wide.
Lily meets her next, voiceless, shapeless, but there all the same. It is Stella, this time, who throws her arms wide open, but Lily, as she always does, vanishes into a swarm of butterflies that kiss Stella’s skin gently before fluttering away.
The obol in her hand is heavy.
The rowboat has been set down to take her to the Everdoor and Stella is ready. She doesn’t want to stay.
But there’s one more thing to say goodbye to.
Stella steps up to the mailbox and with hands that don’t shake, carefully slides the obol in. It clatters into the mailbox and it seems the entire ship shudders and sighs.
“Goodbye,” Stella says and then, having paid the toll, turns for the rowboat and the red sea and the Everdoor that calls her home.
When she goes, she goes alone.