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This was the play’s end. The audience was silent, except for Hattali, who cried, "Excellent! Excellent!" Taking their cue from the old lady, the rest of the Ettin began to stamp and shout.
A day later, the actors were on the road. They left behind Haik’s book and the new masks. Dapple said, "My play doesn’t work yet, and maybe it never will. Art is about the known, rather than the unknown. How can people see themselves in unfamiliar animals?"
Haik said, "My ideas are in my head. I don’t need a copy of the book."
"I will accept your gifts," said Hattali. "And send one copy of the book to another Ettin house. If anything ever happens here, we’ll still have your ideas. And I will not stop eating, till I’m sure that a few of my relatives comprehend the book."
"It may take time," said Haik.
"This is more interesting than dying," Hattali said.
The story ends here. Haik went home to Tulwar and made more pots. In spite of Taiin’s promise, the Ettin did not buy all her work. Instead, merchants carried it up and down the coast. Potters in other towns began to imitate her; though they, having never studied fossils, did not get the animals right. Still, it became a known style of pottery. Nowadays, in museums, it’s possible to find examples of the Southern Fantastic Animal Tradition. There may even be a few of Haik’s pots in museum cabinets, though no one has yet noticed their accuracy. Hardly surprising! Students of art are not usually students of paleontology.
As for Dapple, she continued to write and perform, doing animal plays in the south and heroic tragedies in the north. Her work is still famous, though only fragments remain.
The two lovers met once or twice a year, never in Tulwar. Dapple kept her original dislike of the place. Often, Haik traveled with the actor’s company, taking pots if they were going to Ettin.
Finally, at age fifty, Haik said to her senior relatives, "I am leaving Tulwar."
The relatives protested.
"I have given you three children and trained five apprentices. Let them make pots for you! Enough is enough."
What could the relatives say? Plenty, as it turned out, but to no avail. Haik moved to a harbor town midway between Tulwar and Hu. The climate was mild and su
Imagine the two women growing old together, Dapple writing the plays that have been mostly lost, Haik making pots and collecting fossils. The creatures in those hills! If anything, they were stranger than the animals in the cliffs of Tulwar!
As far as is known, Haik never wrote her ideas down a second time. If she did, the book was lost, along with her fossils, in the centuries between her life and the rediscovery of evolution. Should she have tried harder? Would history have been changed, if she had been able to convince people other than Ettin Hattali? Let others argue this question. The purpose of this story is to be a story.
The Ettin became famous for the extreme care with which they arranged breeding contracts and for their success in all kinds of far-into-the-future pla
"Those willing to learn from her are likely to go forward. If they don’t, at least they have shown the Great Mother respect; and she–in return–has given them a universe full of things that interest and amaze."