I started this story nine years ago. It seems impossible to believe. I was sixteen; now I'm 25. I was depressed; now my life is an endless horizon of joy and peace. Two college degrees, an apartment, a dog, and more friends and good memories than I could ever imagine having.

Sorry, allow me some poetic waxing. It's been seven years since Chapter 13. I got hung up on a small detail, and that sent me into a typical tailspin of procrastination.

Let's begin again. Or rather, let's end.


Artemis had run away, for perhaps the second time in his life.

He'd cast away his shoes to dig his toes into the sand, which was wet enough to send shocks of icy chill through his bones. In his younger years, Artemis had mocked people who approached the ocean to find internal peace. What would the ocean bring, he had murmured to his sister on family vacations, that feeble minds could not already produce?

Now, his eyes alight with the glimmering curls of the water, Artemis understood.

One. This was not the second time he had run away. He had been running away many times throughout his life, from many things. Anyone of his intelligence and claimed maturity should have recognized the propensity to avoid any difficulties as weakness.

Two. The ocean brought him a mental peace he could only now value. The ocean was vast, entirely unaffected by his own turmoil, and far beyond any hope or possibility of his full comprehension.

Three. He should have visited this place more often. More than just the two occasions where he had sneaked away from home.

"Beautiful."

Artemis had been dimly aware of the presence approaching and halting a few feet away at his side. He turned now to the older man, a somewhat short figure with thick and wavy silver hair. The man's face, adorned with wrinkles no doubt born from many moments of laughter, glowed from the light shimmering on the water. He did not watch Artemis. Artemis unabashedly watched him for a few moments – an older, sociable stranger who knew nothing of Artemis's identity and many things about the value of good conversation.

Artemis pulled his chin and his gaze back to the water. The slight foaming waves dancing just inches from his toes still made the sandy icily cold, but the heat of the sun glowed on Artemis' skin, and he lifted his head to enjoy it fully. "It is," he replied.

"I take my boys here every year, and I probably will until they have to take me," the man chuckled. He shifted himself slightly as he slid the zipper of his quarter-zip sweater a little higher.

Sensing no threat or possibility of crossing paths again with this man, Artemis nodded and said, "I ran away here with my sister once."

The stranger's wrinkles bore cracks across his face as he laughed.

Artemis nodded slightly to the dock a mile away on the coast to their right. "We enjoyed a challenge, and we correctly surmised that obtaining a boat would be sufficient to test our abilities."

"A good adventure will draw in any mind," the man agreed.

And, for reasons Artemis couldn't quite remember but would later study carefully in leading psychological textbooks, saying the rest of the story didn't hurt in the way he always hypothesized that it would. "I survived," he said. "She did not."

Another hypothesis that in his foolish youth he held: he would be able to pick out the exact spot where everything went horribly wrong. Where high tide obscured a rock jutting far too high out of the sand, where Athena's eyes were spheres of petrified ice, where the sailboat they'd procured began to sink with a speed neither could have predicted. His eyes could not find the spot.

The man said nothing. He had no helpful or conciliatory platitude that no doubt would have stirred Artemis's irritation.

"Our bodyguard was hardly foolish. He had tracked us to this location."

The two figures listened to the washing of the waters.

"He saw fit to wait. Thus all three of us fell victim to the same erroneous belief that our intelligence would pull us from any danger unscathed." How quickly and coolly the sentences strode across his tongue, Artemis marveled. "We had taken no note of obstacles or concerns, so when our vessel hit rocks at a dangerous speed, we were forced to confront a mortally obvious reality."

"Neither of you could swim, I suppose." Artemis's peripheral vision told him that the man had his eyes trained on the ocean.

"No." Currents had pulled the twins too far apart. And Butler had been forced to choose only one child to save.

Never, certainly not in his childhood hubris, had Artemis ever asked himself if Butler had chosen the right one.

He tried to imagine Athena, her cold smile beneath a set of reflective goggles, staring down Captain Holly Short in a grassy field. Bantering with Foaly across miles of wiring and magic. Sprinting into his father's arms. Glimmering into another dimension atop Taipei 101. Balancing over a gorilla exhibit. Staring at the ceiling in his own hospital room.

Hypotheticals rarely lead to provably correct answers.

"So she lost her life, and you kept yours. Some kind of blessing, perhaps?"

"An opportunity," Artemis said. The man nodded.

Artemis twisted to stare around, noting the lack of other presences and the single car in the car park. "You said you brought your sons here," he observed.

The man nodded. "Usually," he agreed. "I don't do much quiet contemplation, but I thought today might be a good day for it." He offered Artemis a small half-grin. "If you don't mind the company."

Artemis did not respond. The two stared out at the sea. Both thought carefully, still in the breeze and the chilled air, even as the sun slowly slid down toward the horizon.


Of course the LEP kept tabs on the Fowl Manor, and Foaly called Holly when he saw an alert for a break-in that ended milliseconds later with an override code from within the grounds. Foaly, Holly, and – when they passed on the news – Butler were relieved rather than concerned. They correctly guessed what Holly went to prove with her own eyes anyway.

"You've got a lot of nerve, haven't you?" Holly walked into the twins' playroom and abandoned pretending to be angry before she even began speaking.

Artemis was covered in paint of so many hues that he looked like a Pride parade. Beckett had apparently graduated from traditional canvases to live subjects. His older brother was sitting cross-legged on the floor and patiently enduring Beckett's experimentation even while explaining some "basic" tenet of chemistry to a vaguely attentive Myles.

"…when of course we attend to traditional perspectives of single-cell organisms." Artemis offered a tiny grin to Holly. "Captain Short. Always a pleasure."

Toddlers had no interest or attention span for magical creatures, and Myles and Beckett were no exception. Slicking some paint out of his eyes, Artemis shuffled around to face Holly.

"Where did you go?" she asked, crossing her arms.

"I visited the scene of Athena's demise."

She nodded. Was she supposed to offer sympathy here? Would Artemis even want it?

"And how did that go?"

Artemis nodded. "I found some cathartic reward." He lifted his chin. "For the purpose of thorough security, have Foaly check the background of one 'Eoin Colfer'."

Holly smirked and asked, "Someone suspicious?"

"No. He was a perfectly civil-seeming gentleman who was a willing and polite subject of my more loose-tongued moment. Mr. Colfer did, however, mention at the end of our time together that he was a writer, and writers have a well-documented history of insanity often written by themselves."

"Noted."

Beckett launched himself into Artemis's arms. Artemis wheezed slightly, not used to any heavy lifting even prior to his long hospital stay.

"Thank you, Holly," Artemis said, once he regained his breath. "You have well-earned the title of being a best friend."

Holly perched on the floor at his side and snorted. "If anyone had told me that snotty Fowl child would be my best friend…" she shook her head. "I'd've locked them up and kicked in their knees." At Artemis's raised eyebrows, she laughed and said, "Yes, in that order."

They listened to Myles's ramblings as he fussed over his chemistry set.

After a few moments, Artemis said, "Proceed, Holly."

"Sorry?"

"I know you want to interrogate me."

Out of spite, Holly immediately tossed out the ten questions she had for him and kept the eleventh. "Do you think you'll return to the ward?"

From some distant hallway, they heard Angeline cheerfully calling for the twins to run for the dinner table.

"I think the healing process will be at my own pacing and control from this moment forward," Artemis said. He didn't move.

"Well," Holly said, nudging him with her shoulder. "I'm no Athena, and I certainly won't be some partner-in-crime, but I hope you're not idiotic enough to think that process will be a solo one."

Artemis offered her a full grin. Not a vampire's smile, not a grimace, not a cold and haunted twist of lips. "At this point, Captain, I cannot conceive of attempting any form of adventure on my own."

"Translation?" Holly snorted.

"The first part of the healing process will be admitting to myself that Athena would have never accompanied me on any of my escapades in the past few years." Artemis struggled to his feet and managed to toss Beckett across his shoulders. Listening to the boy laugh as the four sauntered to the kitchen, Artemis huffed out, "You, Holly, will certainly accompany me on all of them."

"No more running away, then?" Holly smirked.

Artemis returned the smirk himself. "I make no promises."