Reach for the stars. That was what my parents used to tell me when I was young. Reach for the stars and someday you will be able to hold them as your own. Maybe you could even count them, if you were patient enough. My parents might not have played an active part of my life anymore, but I never forgot the lessons they taught me. I reached for the stars and now I danced among them. I allowed them to light my way home and now the light would shine forevermore.

It took me six years to complete my journey. I reveled in triumphs and suffered in trials. I started with nothing and ended with everything. From a boat rocking violently through the storm to working as the official main assistant to the leader of Nook Incorporated, I discovered not only how to change the world but to change myself. I came across many faces during my travels, most of which had to leave my life when it was right. I listened for their names, listened for how the ones I had left behind proceeded with life after we split ways, and remembered those six years every single time.

Many of the names slipped my mind as the months crept by at time's steady pace, but still more that managed to remind me. Since I had last known her at the beginning of my journey, Katie had pursued a career in professional photography, singling out room interiors and exteriors. Blathers, the owl friend that Tom had when I had first started working for him, was responsible for making the location of our new museum possible and arriving back into our lives when I least expected it. Link and Zelda had returned safely to their home of Hyrule Kingdom to find a peaceful life. Redd's unlawful business practices were eventually discovered and he lost authority of the emporium where he once spent most of his days. I even heard somewhere that he was finally arrested, but rumors tended to circulate. Still, there were some old friends I didn't have the chance to hear about, a life of mystery that I was missing out on. I never heard another word about my former best friend of several years, Goldie, the perky golden retriever who had assisted me so diligently when I placed my trust in the wrong animals. I had no other choice but to assume she was out living her best life as I was and that I would never share the blessing of meeting again.

In regards to work and business, Mario Mario kept himself busy in the years of my absence at Smash Ultimate. Here and there, I caught an article in the news of the next newest company he planned to open. Even Peach was scheduled to open up an establishment under her own name within the next five years. It was beyond me how they had enough energy to take up so much work. I kept myself well informed on the happenings around Smash, well enough to know that Link never came back. There was no word of him rejoining the company or even making a presence anywhere remotely in the area. It seemed our company was no longer meant to be, and though I deeply valued our time together, there was no one to blame for our separation. Sometimes loved ones were meant to disappear and life went on.

Similarly, Digby and I failed to reunite in person. Life had just gotten too far in the way. He was too preoccupied managing his work at the HHDA while its popularity and status climbed back to where it had once been before the devastation and I was on this island to stay. We made up for it by calling each other every week, him calling one week and me calling the next. We were exactly as we had been before I had ever left, except older and far distanced. It wasn't always a perfect connection. Nothing ever was. Sometimes we argued and sometimes we became annoyed by each other, but we never neglected our weekly calls. We exchanged a promise to never let ourselves be driven apart because of a silly altercation as we had before. We were stronger, fixing strains and appreciating our time together for what it was. Our puppyhood dreams of ruling the world together lay long forgotten, given our distance and our peace with it. We didn't have to rule the world together, we just had to be worth it.

Even in the most peaceful, unhurried times, life stopped for nothing and nobody. The months went by and by and we all grew older. I didn't tell Tom how I felt about him and felt more at ease appreciating it quietly and internally. I might have said that we grew closer every day if I wasn't already completely and metaphorically clinging to him. Smiles became a habit for him instead of the weary eyes that I became acquainted with for the first several years of our friendship. I knew that we had done something right the second I caught that first little sparkle of joy in his deep blue eyes.

After falling in love with Tom, my attachment to his twins strengthened into what I considered an especially motherly bond. I took them in as my own, admiring their progress with every passing day. I cherished them and treasured their existence in my life. I had no children of my own and had no plans to have any for quite a long time, but this was far more than enough. I had watched them grow, tracking all of their developments and noticing with my own eyes as they built upon themselves. I had helped raise them, looking after them for countless hours of the day and tending to their needs. Yes, they were my coworkers, but to an extent, they were also my babies.

The story that had led me here may have been pushed into the past by time's cruel pace, but there was some part of me that was still there in the life I lived today. Some days, I encountered an unusual sensation where it seemed I had traveled back in time, that I stood where I once had either during my search for work or all of the travels after. There was so much that the entire journey had brought me. Not only had it brought me the lasting success and even fame that I had yearned for for my entire life, it had brought me myself. For every moment of my story, the good and the bad, the favorable and less so, I thanked the universe for giving them to me.

And sometimes I still thought back to the time when I left home without a second glance, abandoning everything I had ever known with nothing but a backpack, a goal, and the stars above me. As I allowed myself a smile for how far I'd come since I went out into the world with high hopes and a few butterflies in my stomach, there was one thought that wouldn't leave my mind.

I did it.