[Z, his husband, and the couple they’ve paired with raise four children together on Amenta. It’s not always easy and things don’t always turn out as planned — when there is a plan — but they are happier, on the whole, than any of them would have dreamed when they were young.
The spring when industrialbruise and artisanalclusterfuck turn 40, they throw themselves a party, a celebration of their lives nearing their ends, of the family they’ve found and grown, of things going right for them when they could have gone wrong.
They pack some very unusual bags, and let the people closest to them know before they leave for the rainforest that they don’t plan to come back. They get to really say their goodbyes.
Z finally experiences the terrible things — and his husband gets to do the terrible things — that they’ve been imagining all their lives.
Z dies happy. His husband dies in flames, holding him until the end.
They meet again, elsewhere.]
