In town Jebous woke up in the hotel room he had been given, he had been asleep for days; he thought of Tate and was upset he hadn’t seen her in days.  He began having the lonesome empty feeling he had had so many years ago.  He quickly gathered himself and his belongings and left the hotel.  He hurried home.  It was a long drive it took him all day,  as he was pulling on to his property he noticed something strange going on, things looked different.  He speed to his house and ran in.  As he opened the door a bright light blinded him, it was like he was looking at the sun from only a few feet away, there was a loud noise that was intolerable he quickly covered his ears and fell to the floor hiding his head between his legs, after a couple of minutes the noise and light were gone.  The house looked as if it had been rotting for years.  There were holes in the walls and the roof was falling in.

              Jebous got up and looked around for Tate, he finally found her lying on the floor next to her journal, and she wasn’t moving.  He quickly moved toward her and called out her name, no answer, he nudged her but she didn’t move. As he picked her up he noticed that she wasn’t breathing he pulled her onto his lap to hold her close, as he did that she dropped something, it was the key to her box, still shiny gold as if it was just molded.  He just held her and rocked back and forth he felt tears swelling up in his eyes, the tears began to flow the first drop trickled down his face leaving behind a streak of moisture.  Others followed until he couldn’t control himself he sobbed for a while saying her name over and over.  While he was crying her soft limp body began to grow cold and hard, he looked down and saw that she was slowly changing back to the tall, pale, turtle form that he had created so many years ago.  This made him even sadder, he wanted to bring her back but for some reason the words “things will never be the same, when you return”, came to his mind, and he knew now what she meant.  He wondered what he could have done to have prevented this and then thought “if only I didn’t go to town in the first place.”  A little while later she was changed completely into her original form, he kept holding her close as if he were hugging her.  He felt like he could still feel her soft warm touch.