And I am ready to die.

My grandson, Darkhanis, comes to my side. As he offers me his cool, grey colored hands, I hold them tightly as I can. This body fails me.

All but my voice.

And I whisper to him the secret of our line, the secret which he must preserve and pass along to another trusted family member when he too passes beyond.

With a sigh, he holds the knowledge and keeps it the way he always had: private.

As I expire, it is as if the world's supply of butterflies explodes into the air all at once.

It is a glorious feeling!

There are others here in this white place, a place after the death and the soft, cool grace of the Zekiran afterlife.

How we miss it!

I can sense them, beyond the walls. But I am not to remain with them, the other Outsiders still do not know of my existence. I shall remain with my daughter and be silent.

It is hard. Oh, I know it will be a life forever, with Viaan and the others at my side eventually... but for now, it is full of pain and dark thoughts.

One shining pleasant fact remains: though Darkhanis died nearly eight hundred years before I was brought back to life (much later than the other Outsiders, in fact), our secrets have maintained. His grandson Risk moved the secret to another granddaughter, and she to her neice's son. In all this time, I wonder who else has known our secrets?

But I return to my dark thoughts. When I was alive, the world did not weigh so heavily on me! Now, all I feel is the flesh of this body which I was not born into. This body given form by my own ex-lover Etan, my beautiful yellow-haired enemy. The father of my most important child Viaan. He and the wretched Archeria had the nerve to compete with one another about bringing us back to life, though when I came back, he was obviously not interested in showing me off to her.

Viaan arrived shortly and saved me from a life with a man I dispise.

Now, I collect my wits, and my children, and I wait.