Epilogue

Epilogue

"Ah," Patricia sighed, leaning back in her rocking chair and smiling at her granddaughter, seated on the couch across from her, and both with a cup of tea in their hands. Patricia lifted her own to her nose: the warm, comforting scent of caramel-flavoured Earl Grey greeted her, and she wondered how she could possibly have gone her life without trying it. Thankfully she had had the opportunity to stop into a nice little tea shop in San Francisco the day after the Night of Writing Dangerously.

A fluffy shape shifted in her lap, and Patricia smiled down at Alfalfa, who twitched his ears at her.

Patricia had just finished explaining to her granddaughter the whole long story, with additions from what Flopsy and Alfalfa had explained during her dreams after she had returned to her hotel room after the Night of Writing Dangerously, and May had forgiven her for not calling before heading to San Francisco. It helped that, sometime during the adventures in the ballroom, or possibly during Flopsy's ordeal in the realm of the plot bunnies, whatever had been happening with Alex, Chrissie, and May had suddenly stopped.

In fact, it had stopped, and Chrissie had dumped Alex, who had immediately left Chrissie's place and gone to the storytelling workshop where May had been, and after it had finished, the two had sat and talked for hours, and were now the best of friends – with none of the awkwardness that had crept into their relationship over the previous few weeks.

It was now the evening of the 5th of December, and Patricia and May had just returned to Patricia's apartment after attending the Thank God It's Over party for Vancouver, at which Jamie had shown Patricia the section of his novel that dealt with the solution he had come up with for the plot bunny army in his novel. Patricia had laughed until she cried, and May had stopped talking excitedly with Zale in order to check to see if she was okay. Jamie had come up with exactly the solution that Patricia had proposed, modified to include a dragon monitoring the daycare centre and the peace between the humans and their pesky bunny neighbours.

Kara and PJ had agreed to meet Patricia there, and Kara had already started plotting the novel that she planned to write the following year – and agreed to help with the Plot Bunny Daycare whenever Patricia needed an extra hand. PJ had also agreed to help, and had managed to convince Hopert to share dreams with him in the coming days, for PJ was desperately interested in seeing what sort of creativity the input of a plot bunny could make in the dreams that formed the basis for PJ's employment.

The plot bunnies had been present as well, and Alfalfa had pointed out to Patricia the two bunnies, Earry and Flopsy, snuggled together under a table in the corner.

In fact, the TGIO had been the first of the non-National Novel Writing Month events at which Patricia and Alfalfa had arranged for storytelling of narratives, and it had gone exceptionally well. Harey and Hopert had teamed up with a pair of the Vancouver writers and together they had told a chilling story of murderous mayhem, and then Alfalfa had provided a love triangle plot for a comedian from Granville Island who had had everyone present splitting their sides with laughter. Chance had spilled his Guinness all over the lap of Sarah, and somehow that had ended up with the two deciding to go to dinner together after the TGIO party.

There, someone with a smart phone and wireless access had also shown Patricia what had happened to the collective word count of the National Novel Writing Month novelists throughout the world: after November 21st and the Night of Writing Dangerously, the count had exploded – even with NaNoWriMo novelists doubting they could possibly reach either 50,000 words or the ends of their novels in just the final nine days.

And now, here Patricia was with her granddaughter and her favourite plot bunny and a very nice cup of tea. She breathed in its aroma, and took a big sip.

"Feel like getting trounced at a round of air hockey, May?" she asked, and settled her now-empty cup down into her saucer.