10. Epilogue

Pin had to be carried. He wore an eye patch in front of his left eye that had gone blind. Their parrot joked that he now looked like a pirate; Pin didn’t find it funny.

The black strap of his helmet had been permanently pressed into his chin, burned into it by the gas. The same was true for many of his species, which earned them the nickname chinstrap penguin. He also didn’t find that funny.

Dannis had lost his voice. Only recently he was able to speak his first sentence again, and he would have performed a victory dance if his body could still dance.

“I ask a final time,” the Ape Lord said. When news of the gas reached him, he instantly traveled to the Frambozi Forest to control the situation. “Give us the formula for the gas. I know you plundered that laboratory.”

Pin looked away and stayed silent.

“You are a soldier, Pin. It would be incredibly stupid to let our enemy keep this advantage. Tell us the formula and we can hit back with our own gas. Make the war fair again.”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about. Feathers and fables, feathers and fables. Laboratory? What laboratory? That’s not even a word, you’re making it up.”

The Ape Lord sighed. “Dannis has stolen the secret to ammonia from the lab and given it to us. Thanks to him we can make our soil fertile again. Thanks to him, nobody is hungry anymore. Let your best friend be an example.”

Pin and Dannis looked each other in the eye, but could barely see each other.

“I do follow my best friend’s example now,” Pin said. “I don’t have the formula. I thought I had it, but it turned out to be a drawing of a gas mask.”

Pin demanded a paper and pencil. He drew the sketch as well as he could from memory. “I propose you make these masks in bulk. And assume the Freethieves will do anything. Especially as long as they have Bitz.”

The Ape Lord slammed the table. “Darn it, Pin! You leave me no choice. You are both honorably discharged from the army, effective immediately. Better than you deserve; but the others will never stop treating you two as saviors and heroes.”

He placed a medal around Dannis’ neck. He did the same for Pin, but he pushed the commander away.

The penguin raised his wings. “I am going home. Don’t stop me.”

They soon found themselves in an automobile driving home. They drove past fields of grass bathed in sunlight. Past full fields of grain and endless rows of corn.

The process to make fertilizer had been given to all territories of the Godesweets. Because of the abundance of food that could be grown now, the population only grew faster. Until a century ago, there were at most a billion animals on the entire planet. Now, suddenly, that number had doubled.

They joked about the animals they recognized in the clouds. About patterns in the fields of grain that might mean something. Pin confidently claimed they were made by aliens—Dannis confidently scoffed at that. But then he secretly prayed for the godchildren to come back to Somnia and stop all this madness. That they were still alive, just hiding on another planet all this time, and would return to end the Second Conflict tomorrow morning.

Watching the endless fields of grain, Dannis and Pin knew they’d find food when they came home.

They also knew home didn’t mean the same thing for both. An antilope could not live on the Southern Icesheets, and a penguin could not live on the rainy island of Casbrita.

They purposely took the long way home, with many suspicious flat tires and family members in faraway forests they just had to visit.

Also to give Pin the chance to throw away the papers holding the secret of the gas. In a safe place where Godesweets would not find it.

In reality, he’d only delayed them a few years. Then they discovered the secret to the gas themselves and used it too.

Bitz had selected his best glasses, cleaned his fur twice, and practiced his speech ten times over. The war was over. For now, at least.

He reassured himself that there’d always be a next war. The world blamed Doveland for the whole thing and required they pay millions of Soliduri for “reparations” and “peace”. Many Freethieves were already angry about it. Some called the peace treaty nothing but a “pause for twenty years”.

He’d won the Knobbel Prize. For chemistry, for his invention of fertilizer.

He pushed open the doors to the prestigious room, smiling. He looked over the luxurious and decorated hall with … nothing but empty chairs.

Only a lone ape, who handed out the prizes, stood on the stage.

All other scientists, including the winners, did not attend.

“Am … am I too early? Too late?”

Bitz studied himself in a shining piece of crockery, unused. He cleaned his whiskers again.

“You are here. That’s the problem,” the ape grunted. He threw the Knobbel Prize into the air. Bitz had to jump and catch the object before it would shatter on the floor. “That’s that. I’ve officially handed you your prize. Now get out.”

Bitz shook with anger and ran onto the stage. “This is because I’m a Jurad, isn’t it? You must shake my paw. It’s the rules! Rules you invented yourself! It’s only official if you shake my paw.”

He extended his paw, across the edge of the stage. The ape stood frozen like a statue, taller than the beaver and looking down on him.

“I’ve discovered what’s inside the smallest particles on Somnia,” the ape said. “My theory about the atom was revolutionary and opened the doors for many good and useful inventions. Just like your process to create fertilizer.”

The ape stepped of the stage. “I recognize you are worthy of this Knobbel Prize. I won’t shake your paw.”

Bitz was left behind in an empty room. He pressed the Knobbel Prize against his chest, just as Bilara had pressed his gas invention to her chest all those years ago, when she begged him to stop pursuing it.

Apparently it still wasn’t enough. Oh, he heard them talk. Doveland increasingly treated every Jurad as if they didn’t even exist.

He threw himself into his work, even more than before.

A while later, he brought another revolution to agriculture. He made a pesticide: a gas to spray onto plants to keep nasty insects away. Any beast who wanted to take a bite out of your precious crops would be paralyzed. It was so dangerous that he had to add a smell and color to it, otherwise the farmers might miss it. He called it Sikkel-B.

Perhaps he’d learned from his mistakes, perhaps not.

In the six years that followed, he tried to help Doveland pay their debts. He was convinced he could find a process that turned sea water into gold.

He didn’t find it. He lived in fear. Any time now, they might arrest him for his war crimes, but they never did. When the hatred for Jurads reached its peak in Doveland, he had to flee to another country.

He died from a heart attack during the journey.

He didn’t experience how the Second Conflict continued, how war started again, and his invention Sikkel-B would again become its cruel heart.

And so it was that life continued …