EPILOGUE

The mighty Fozz looked down through the layers of creation and was aghast. The mirror he had fashioned to keep everything in its allotted place had shattered, scattering shards of reality throughout the various planes of existence. Quickly he set to work gathering the fragments together. He would need to find them all before he could rebuild it. One was situated on the earthly plane directly above a small spider’s web. He was just about to retrieve it when he saw that the spider, whilst seeming small to him, was several thousand times larger than others of the same species in that place. It was obviously out of its natural habitat. He reached through and gently gathered the creature, making a cage of his fingers as he pulled it back to where it belonged. The spider, maternal instincts raging, grabbed firmly onto the egg case and this was lifted too as the filaments of the web stretched and then gave up their hold on their supports.

The mighty Fozz continued to collect fragments of the dark mirror from here and then, there and now. Some shards had allowed transfer between planes, causing problems – especially on the earthly plane. The spider had already been dealt with and was now rearing her brood in her natural habitat. A wish vampire had attached itself to its second victim, but was losing its grip as he watched. A sorceress and her familiar seemed to have landed in a highly unsuitable place and damage had been done, including a fatality. A shard had allowed four people to move into areas of opposing time, two were dead as a result. In addition a man had become an infant and an elderly woman had not only become young, but had conceived an inter-dimensional child. Another vampire had slipped into a communications device and was consuming life force at a steady rate. The dimension it originated from was easily identified, but the shard through which it had slipped was missing. Fozz had to use all of his powers of omniscience to find it hidden securely inside a small flat tin in the pocket of one of the vampire’s victims.

With one exception Fozz moved everything back to where it belonged and gathered up the pieces, effectively closing the portals between the worlds. The exception was the pregnant woman. He did not wish to terminate the pregnancy, particularly when the child had such a destiny ahead of it; too many had already died and to return her to her true age would certainly kill both her and the infant. As a workable compromise he changed the other infant back into a man and left her as she was. To avoid further complications he cast a blanket of forgetfulness over all who had been affected, though he did allow the latter couple to remember that they were having a child together.

He prepared to rebuild the mirror, but when he looked down he saw that the many layers of creation had remained separate without intervention from him. And so the mighty Fozz returned the fragments to their original elements and chose not to fix that which was no longer broken.
 
Copyright 2003 Susan M Phillips

No part of this work or associated illustration may be copied without the consent of the author