With the moon slowly fading out of existence, and with it, all that was left of everything, it wasn’t long before Dreadlilocks decided the time had come to leave the safety of Jack’s rocking chair and go to the Deathbed.

Before she left, however, Jack did tell her the story of his first and last visit to that somber place. And as she wrote her way towards it, infinite basket in hand, she recalled it, in between each timescaled millisecond that passed.

“Mr. Jack…picked up his feather pen,” she narrated to herself in a soft voice. “He started to write something in his book…a story for Mère L’Oye, his mother. And just before the Odsplut appeared to stop him, he thought about…the last time he saw her.

“That day started with him talking to Gin, his friend. He told her his mother had been getting weaker lately; she was staying in bed all the time. And she was getting depressed, too, and frustrated about trying to write her stories when she’d keep forgetting things, and Mr. Jack was sad for her.

“He knew that someday she would die, and that she worried about it a lot…she wanted to go on writing forever; she couldn’t imagine things being any other way. So Mr. Jack thought…he thought he could make her feel better if he took over writing for her, if he promised her that all her stories would go on, even after she was gone. He told Gin about his plans.

“Gin didn’t like them…she thought that Mère L’Oye was too mean and selfish to agree with him, and that she might hurt him. But…Mr. Jack believed in his mother. And he thought she needed to hear that he wanted to help. So he left Gin’s house and went to see her.

“The Odsplut started to rise up out of the floor…but Mr. Jack went on writing and thinking. He thought about…when Mère L’Oye said that he was hers. And when she said that he couldn’t survive without her, and that he didn’t deserve to survive without her. And when she said…that this was her world, and no one had any right to decide what to do with it but her.

“Mr. Jack never cried about anything, but if you looked at his eyes you could tell that it hurt his feelings when she said those things. And it hurt his feelings even more when she decided she needed to lock him up, to make sure he couldn’t do anything to stop her from unwriting the world.

“So now…um, probably while the Odsplut is rising up, and preparing to strike…he’s writing a story for her. The story of the end of her life…”

~~

The cobwebs appeared first: pale, stringy clumps that hung suspended in the air, and brushed against Dreadli’s arms as she walked.

The sound of her footsteps dulled, and then disappeared. She looked down, and found herself standing in a sea of feathers: pure white goose feathers, as far as the eye could see.

“…I’ve been waiting for you,” said a sudden voice. Dreadlilocks turned around.

And finally, she saw it: the great crescent moon chariot, gilded with gold, filled with down pillows, and draped with delicate sheets and veils.

The birds rested before it, just out of her reach: one white and stately and real, one black and elegant and nebulous, both with their long necks bent and their heads bowed beneath the weight of their glistening chains.

Feathers fell through the air, like the flower petals in the failed ballroom scene, and the blinding brightness of it all made Dreadlilocks think of heaven— a strangely foggy and melancholic heaven. She stared at it in awe.

And through the sheer curtains of the chariot, she saw a faint figure, lying in bed.

Slowly, Mère L’Oye raised her head.