Strangers

The closing address, spoken from beyond the end, tender and terrible at once. The narrator speaks to the one who consumed her and, finally, to her mother, asking to be remembered as more than what was taken from her.

It is the saga’s last word: an act of grace extended from the far side of everything, and a plea not to be reduced to the horror of her ending. The whole mythology that follows is, in a sense, that plea being answered.