Author's Notes: Before you start to read the story, I wanted to say thanks to all people who helped me with it: Marco Berzacola for drawing beautiful pictures that inspired me to write it; Vika Kovalenko for helping me with translation; Chris Dawson, Rich Wilson and George Harrison for proofreading and corrections. Also thanks to everyone who have read it in the past and posted their opinions, and who have drawn their own pictures based on the story, I appreciate it very much!
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Epilogue
Sitting at the table in her room, back at their old house, Lisa intently nibbled the tip of the pencil, staring at her diary. It wasn't easy to describe everything that had happened to the Simpson family during the past month... but Lisa wanted to do it, while the memory of it was still clear in her mind. It would be even harder to do in the future - because this story was so incredible and dream-like, and even now she could hardly swear that all of it had really happened to her.
After that final night, things had advanced in a natural way. The Simpsons' uninvited guests examined her, then collected their stuff, got into their vans and drove away, visibly disappointed by somebody's stupid joke. No-one mentioned that they had seen Lisa in the sky - maybe they had considered that as just their imaginations - a momentary lapse of reason. Or, more probably, decided that they had seen an ordinary bird there, and Brockman acted like the others. Shortly after the Simpsons returned to their old house on Evergreen Terrace, they received a notice of appointment for Homer. Judge Snyder, who knew the Simpsons very well, decided not to delay the case and ordered Homer to apologize to Brockman... and he did so in the blink of an eye. After that their life had returned to its usual routine.
Lisa wrote a few more lines and stopped, feeling already exhausted. She closed the diary and looked at her reflection in the mirror above the table with frustration. Somebody knocked on the door.
"Come in!" she shouted.
The door opened, and Bart stepped inside the room. He looked as cheerful as ever. This is the one person who wasn’t affected by those events at all, Lisa thought, and grinned in spite of herself.
"How are you, sis?" he asked, sitting down on her bed.
"I'm fine... hey, since when did you become concerned with my well-being, Bart?"
"Heh... I just have a feeling that you're still upset about... you know."
"You think I miss them?" Lisa chuckled. "Oh no... no. It was wonderful at first - especially when I learned to fly, but then they started to sink in... I felt like I wasn't a human anymore... and when something started to threaten my freedom, I nearly went crazy. I don't want to go through all of that again, Bart, really." Lisa lowered her head and added, "The worst thing is that I forced all of you to go through it with me..."
"No worries, Lisa. It was just another crazy adventure for us. Don't worry about it... but this isn't the only thing that's got you upset, is it?"
"Well, you see... the past few days I've been starting to ask myself - was it real or just my imagination? You know, when we returned home, it appeared that there wasn't any evidence that somebody with wings had lived here." Lisa sighed and shook her head. "This was the most bizarre, uncommon thing in my life... and now I'm just sitting here and asking myself, was it just a dream of mine?"
"It wasn't." Bart stood up and carefully took something out of his pocket. It was a folded sheet of paper. "I found this in my room yesterday... this is from the day when we found you alive in the canyon. I thought I'd lost it, but... well, I think it's yours."
Lisa stood up from the table, accepted the sheet and unfolded it. There was a feather inside... her own feather. Long, wide and a brilliant white, it seemed to shine from within, even against a paper background. Lisa took the feather in her hand and looked at it, hardly believing her own eyes. Finally, she put it down and turned to Bart, smiling.
"Thank you..." she said, tears beginning to roll down her face. She turned to her brother and hugged him tightly.
The End
