Epilogue:  One Particular Sunday
 
It's not so much that I woke up as I realized that I had been laying on my back with my eyes closed for a rather long time.  I unnecessarily fill my lungs, marking the end of the downtime that has replaced my sleep.  It still feels like I'm just wasting time when I do this, but I start to get disoriented and unfocused if I go more than a couple days without.  
 
I open my eyes to see hers.  Flickering blue light colors her features as she smiles warmly.  "Morning."
I hum in response.  "You look like you were waiting."
"I don't mind."
I lean in, slowly placing my lips barely against hers.  Aside from the faint tingling it's not particularly enjoyable, but I do love the way it makes her squirm.  She maneuvers to press us closer, but I've already moved back by that time.  She whines plaintively, "You aren't supposed to tease your wife on your anniversary."
I smile, "You're right.  I should be giving you presents instead."
I roll over to get up only for her to take the opportunity to jump on top of me.  Her voice dips slightly, "Hmm, that sounds more like a human custom, don't you think?"
 
I feign thought.  "I guess you might be right."  She smiles, satisfied, before leaning in for a kiss.  "But you know, our anniversary doesn't technically start for another few hours."
"Close enough," she sighs.
I dodge the kiss.  "But wouldn't it be more romantic to wait until then?"
Her eyes dart open and her expression very quickly turns worried.  "No," she states emphatically.  "No," she repeats, more emphatically.
 
I wrap and arm around her and pull her tightly enough that she can't do much of anything.  "Nonsense, I think it sounds terribly romantic."  I gesture toward the television, "So, anything interesting happen while I was out?"
She stares at me for a long moment, before burying her head into my chest.  She mutters her answer into it, ignoring that I can't hear her.  That's okay, though.  I peer over her back to have a look.
 
Oh, wow.  "Did you see?  Yuriko just had her first child."
"Good for her," Jen sullenly mutters.
 
---
 
I tilt my head to the side, resting it on hers.  Her head keeps shifting, though, because she keeps swallowing.  It's instinctive; she has that taste in her mouth and it triggers the reflex, regardless of whether or not there's anything in there.  It takes a long while for her to stop, and longer after that to come to her senses enough to talk.  "Do you think things will change?"
"How so?"
"When the demon lord and the chief god died, the world became a lot different.  Now that their influence is gone, think that things'll change again?"
I shrug as much as I can without changing her position.  "It's possible, I guess.
 
---
 
Something is jostling my shoulder.  I open my eyes, as awake as always, looking out over my blue-tinged room.  "Hey, dude, check it!"
I turn to the screen and proceed to check it.  Jen's mashing the remote, bringing the volume up.
 
"H-hey," the barely lit figure asks while trying not to drool, laugh, or tremble and simultaneously doing all of those things.  "This is the place right?  The place where- feh-heh heh, where I can go to where the boys are?"  She shudders violently in open lust, "I just guh-huh, gotta take a test?"  The clip goes silent, though continues to watch as her half-covered face turns upward and smiles luridly at the camera.
"Late yesterday night, the Feral Reintegration Center in Zipangu received its first Ushi-Oni participant.  Her name is Yuriko, seen here requesting entry into the program."
 
"Neat."
 
---
 
"Well you seemed pretty interested at the time."
"I was," she pouts.
"Oh come on, what's the matter?"  I slowly pull her against me in the way that she likes.  "You can't be hungry this soon after last night."
"'M not," she admits.
I pull us both into a little ball, wrapping around so that my mouth is right next to her ear.  I whisper "Then is it that you don't want to be teased for hours before a full day of slow, methodical, relentless anniversary-ing?"
This at least gets her to squirm.  She doesn't answer, though, which is answer enough for me.
 
"Or," I begin as I slowly start leaning forward to breathe on her neck, "we could just skip all of this."  She tilts her head away, exhaling slowly.  I barely whisper "And we could get straight.  To.  The.  Waffles."
She trembles, and quickly nods her head.  "Uh-huh."  It takes a second before her brow furrows and she perks back up.  "Wait."
 
I'm already out of the room when the yelling starts.
 
---
 
The waffle iron was one of the few appliances that she didn't think needed to be extracted from my house by a biohazard team.  I couldn't blame her; I'd used the house more as an armory and bunker than any sort of home.  I'd also taken to throwing things at the Kikimoras that kept showing up.  Aside from making sure that the fridge was stocked, there was nothing I'd brought in or set up that wasn't directly related to adventuring or resting between adventures.  We've invested a lot of time into making the place look like people actually live here since then.
 
"Smells like you burned one," Jen states as she walks in, drawing me out of my thoughts.  I open the iron and, sure enough, she's right.
I refill it and ask "Anything for me?"
She keeps shuffling through the stack as she mutters "Not sure yet."
"We really need to check the mail more often."
She smiles idly.  "Well, we were busy yesterday."
"By that argument, we're always 'busy."  I wait for the laugh, but it doesn't come.
Instead, she frowns and asks "Oathbreaker?"
 
I turn to her, looking at the letter she's holding.  Sure enough, it's addressed to "Oathbreaker."  I take the letter and cut it open.
The floral text on a slightly less floral background happily informs me that "You're Invited to a Wedding!"  A small green lip-print is pressed into the corner.
"Ah."
 
---
 
His grip tightens again, threatening to cut off circulation if I relax the muscles in my neck.  He half-shouts, half-cries into my back "Are we almost there?"
I answer back through gritted teeth "Sure.  Just five more minutes."  I reach up and grab the next knotted section of rope leading up and out of the pit.  A half-dozen whining complaints signal from below, followed by shouted promises of pleasure if we'll both just go back down.
 
The rope slowly swings us in a tight circle as we make our way back up.  I'm only trying to distract myself from the orgiastic pit below as I ask "Why'd you come out here?  What did you think would happen?"
His high-pitched, nasal whine answers "It was for science!  We just wanted to see what species of ant they were most closely related to."
Blasted scientists, trying to explain magic for hells-if-I-know why.  I haul us another foot up, grunting "And you went without gas masks, why?"
"We had them on, but they ripped them off!"
Oh, of all of the stupid-
 
With one last heave I grip onto the surface and haul us both out of the hive.  The light of the stars and half moon shine down, and I am grateful to be only one of the light sources in the world again.  The lanky noodle of a man pants as he crawls away from the hole, as though he'd exerted some sort of monumental effort.  Eventually he remembers the man whose back he'd been glued to for ten minutes, and turns to hoarsely mutter "Thank you.  Oh wow, thank you.  If there's anything I can do."
I don't need to think on the offer.  "Yeah," I start as I lift myself up.  "Yeah, you can do something for me.  I want you to start walking a trail."
 
He reacts the same as all the others: confused.
 
---
 
"Someone you know," Jen asks.
"Yeah.  I broke a promise a long time ago, so I made another one instead.  I didn't think she ever forgave me, though."  I stare for a while longer at the invitation, letting my smile wander across my face as it will.  I think that's it; the last piece of my time as an adventurer that I can bury.  I'm not that man anymore.  Now I'm just a particularly indolent undead, living his unlife and making some-
I completely forgot about the waffles.  I turn to see the dark grey smoke rising up in serpentine coils.
 
It takes a while longer to clean everything out, finish the eggs and set the plates down at the table.  Jen is eying me far more intensely than she's ever stared down a plate.  The morning light reflects off of her hair now that it's taken on something of a silvery sheen.  A byproduct of the ridiculous amount of spirit energy she's taken in in the past year.  Normally the eyes turn red first, but hers haven't.  I'm glad; I rather like her eyes as they are.
 
I turn to my breakfast and tuck in.  I went a while without eating since it wasn't necessary, but I've come to realize that while I don't need to worry about keeping myself physically strong or healthy anymore, my mind is another matter entirely.  However much my body changes, my brain is still wired to keep a living body going.  I breathe, eat, and "sleep" like a living person, all to keep myself sane.  Apparently I'll need this progressively less as time goes on, but it takes a while for life-sustaining behaviors to disappear.
 
Also, why in the hells would I want to stop having breakfast?
 
Jen, on the other hand, is barely touching her food.  It's not just frustration, either.  Her eyebrows don't twitch like that just from being teased.  "Penny for your thoughts," I ask between forkfuls of buttery goodness.
She sighs - something she only does to show that she's thinking - and pauses.  "I don't know.  I was just wondering if this is how things are always going to be."  The shift in mood is fast enough to cause whiplash.  She seems to catch herself, and quickly shakes her hand, "No, that's not what I meant.  I don't mind the teasing," she blurts out, before stopping to grin in awkward embarrassment and look away.  "I was just thinking that it's been a year for us, and a lot has changed, but I wonder what else will."  
 
I finish chewing and set down my silverware.  I've been thinking about something similar for a long time now, but hearing her talk about the time we have left only sets it in stark contrast.
It's not unhappiness.  Not by the furthest stretch of the imagination.  I've been deliriously happy for months.  I've had everything I've ever wanted.  I had to go through the hells to get it, but every second has made it worth the ordeal.  
 
No, it's not unhappiness.
 
I look up from my plate to see her staring at me, frowning in concern.  "Are you all right?"
"Yeah," I half-lie.  I get up, turn, and head outside.
 
She asked the first couple times, but stopped after that.  I think she realized that this was just something I needed.  The weathered rocking chair was five gold pieces at the second-hand store, and has paid back that investment by an order of magnitude.  I have trouble thinking when she's around, variously trying to make me laugh, make me entertain her, or get me to feed her.  Out on the porch, looking out into the woods, I can clear my head; let all the trains of thought come to their conclusion.  Most of them lead to the one that she reminded me of - the one that's been chugging along for the past eight years.
What do I do with eternity?
 
It's my own concern to bear.  She honestly doesn't worry about it.  The undead just don't concern themselves with that sort of thing; they're born with eternity ahead of them, and since most don't have any mortal family, they can simply smile and be content with their existences.  They're born with the mental tools to handle millions of years of time.  It's the incubi who have trouble with it.  It's not that humans aren't capable of handling immortality - a handful of archmagi have proven that - it's just not native to our beings.  We need to sit and think and find ways to keep ourselves sane.  Maybe mine will just be sitting in my rocking chair, feeling like an old man watching the world go by.
 
It doesn't hurt that I've grown a great deal more patient since I ceased to breathe.  Something about having a still heart changes how one perceives stress.  It's not that I'm calm all the time, just that I feel that way, and that's enough to trick my brain into thinking that I am.  I can sit and rock and watch the sun move in the sky without feeling any particular need to be active.  My muscles don't ache from the inactivity and my mind doesn't balk from boredom.  When I feel like it I can simply rest and be just another part of the scenery, watching.  The seasons can pass, the world can turn, and I can watch it all without tiring.  I'd find that frightening, if it wasn't a comfort to know that I'll never go insane from the life that I'll lead.  Time is simply different for me, now.
 
My several hours of idle thought are pleasantly interrupted as Jen steps out onto the patio, smiling in the waning sunlight.  The last rays of light are shining through the sheer silk fabric of her chemise, driving away any prospects of serious thought I was having before.  She doesn't say anything, choosing instead to join me by placing herself on my lap and resting her legs over one of the armrests.
 
"I talked to some old friends a few days ago," she starts.  It's an odd start, because it has absolutely nothing to do with what I know that she's interested in.  "They were really surprised by how I hadn't changed."
I raise an eyebrow, "You haven't?"
"Well, physically, I mean."  
I raise the other eyebrow, "And what, they were surprised you weren't aging?"
She quickly shakes her head, "No."  A pause forms as she thinks and slowly smiles.  "Well, they might've been bothered that I don't look any older, but no."
 
"For most of us, we change a bit after we get married.  A little bit bustier or flatter, slightly different faces, different curves; a lot of little things change.  Our bodies shift to be more attractive to our husbands, after all."  She stops and waits for me to pick up my end of the conversational weight.
"But you didn't."
"I didn't," she agrees.  She presses herself a bit closer as she slowly continues, as though talking to herself, "There's only one reason why a mamono wouldn't change, though: if her husband didn't want her to change at all."  
 
She waits, watching me as her statement slowly settles in.  Her eyes follow mine, seeking contact; seeking closeness.  It's not urging or hurried, simply hungry for intimacy.  A finger presses against my lips as I move toward her.  "It's still an hour until our anniversary starts."
"Close enough," I sigh.