Bottle, Epilogue

Many many many mornings later, the creatures still remained quiet. Nobody missed or mourned the loss of the bear. Why should they? He had put everyone through hell and back. Some creatures had died and were martyred for it. A great and noble cause, some said. A violent bloodbath, I give it 8 stars up, others said. They all rebuilt in their own way. Collectively, everyone rebuilt slowly, and carefully.

The rest of his family packed up what little they had left and returned to the home country. There was nothing for them anywhere but the shame of being associated with the bear was too much to handle and it caused them to feel guilt and remorse and general shame. So much so that they just left, rather than rebuild in their own way what they had lost. Though one would argue that once your relative goes absolutely batshit crazy and destroys everything, it's really all over.

The fox had abandoned town to be on his own completely. Nobody but him knew where he was headed, which is how he liked it. He felt that if anyone knew where he'd go, they'd just bother him with endless songs of praise. He had nothing to be proud of. Of course, he would only admit this to himself. He wouldn't admit it to anyone else because there was no one else.

The cranes, who had suffered a great loss, moved on. They were absolutely devastated but accepted that life is fucked up and that some things just happen, no matter how hard we try to deny it. We will be nice, cruel, kind, vile, passionate, and so forth. This is a universal truth, we will always be something. Something consistent, something different, something. This cannot be denied. They knew this to be true and though they had disapproved of her behavior, they accepted it and took some degree of comfort in knowing that she had tried to do the impossible or what nobody else would do- be warm and kind in a cold cruel world.

The sun rose.

Fin.