This document is the official record of the dissolution of all assets belonging to Adonna Carrel, to be passed into the care of the new Carrel Trust. The businesses previously held under the Carrel name will be put under the management of Adams Prosperity. These include…

…The Carrel Trust shall also redirect a percentage of its proceeds to Wren Kalen, until such time that the signed should pass away or renounce this trust. Following, the Carrel Trust will donate the same percentage towards ensuring the safety of young orphans of Bexgate.

Signed:

Adonna Carrel………….Wren Kalen………….River Adams

Adonna Carrel has not been home in many years. She walks down the cobbled streets of Bexgate, past bollards and cameras, and steps on to grass, soft and yielding to her stride. The fens are welcoming, and so achingly familiar. She walks further and further, a black cat by her side, until she comes to a copse of trees – behind her, Bexgate is barely a smudge on the horizon.

For the very last time, two black lace gloves are pulled off and tucked away, and without a word, Adonna holds up her unveiled hands to the sunlight. Her palms are marred with deep scars, each line coming together to form two identical versions of one clear shape - the outline of a butterfly. But as she turns her head to the sky, all she sees is the sun as it illuminates her skin. It is not silent out here: birds sing their rituals, a stream murmurs nearby, and Arsenic meows by her side. Never again shall deathly quiet haunt her.

Belladonna Mornwithe walks into the fens. But it is Adonna Solancia, Witch of the Woods, who takes the next step.

But she does not live entirely in solitude. Adonna Solancia chooses her own company, and sometimes, that takes the form of a travelling stray cat; Wren Kalen knows the path to her home, and is always welcome. Little is actually spoken during these visits – it’s not necessary, when both understand the other just fine without. Arsenic jumps into Wren’s lap, enjoying the new company, and the children of the fens spend their time in companionable silence, until it is time for the stray cat to leave again.

Really, Adonna’s name will forever stay in Bexgate, one way or another. Newly-restored memory is not so easily stamped out. Like the flap of a butterfly’s wings, Adonna’s acts have changed Bexgate forever, and invite much speculation: the disappearance of a town elder, the details of the Bexgate Crisis, the dissolution of the Carrel wealth. Even individually these facts would be enough to immortalise the myth.

But to be immortalised is to be constrained. That is not a part of Adonna’s future. No, her life is in her own hands, perhaps for the first time, and she intends for it to stay that way. A flower cannot bloom in the shadow of someone else’s debt. She is without debt, without chains, no longer playing chess against unseen enemies, or listening to her name be spoken in hushed tones. Of course she is still mentioned. Still a myth.

But the name they do not know – the only name that really matters – is the one she chose for herself.