"It must have been hard for you to smurf your home being desmurfed by your own hands when the other Smurfs made you angry by smurfing that statue of you into an idol," Slouchy said after Empath had finished telling the Smurflings about his worst nightmare. "All that hard smurf of making your house your home for years all smurfed away in minutes."

"This smurf is not very proud of that fact, Slouchy," Empath replied. "It felt like the very heart of this smurf was being torn out of this smurf. For years this smurf wanted to be more like my fellow Smurfs, even with the powers and abilities this smurf possessed and was trained to use by the Psyches. But having heard that this smurf's being in Psychelia was no innocent accident, and the potential possibility that this smurf was being groomed as some sort of messiah figure, weren't things that this smurf could handle without reacting negatively to it all."

"We never smurfed of you until you smurfed home for good, Empath," Nat confessed, "but we never wanted you to be anything more than our friend, even in the short time we smurfed to know you in."

"Those grown-up Smurfs didn't know what they smurfed out on when you weren't with them," Snappy added.

"The good thing is that you're home for good, Empath," Sassette consoled, "so that means you have the rest of your life to smurf the life you couldn't smurf in that place you called Psychelia."

"That, and the fact that Gargamel is no longer in the forest to torture us anymore, are good enough reasons for this smurf to be able to get a good night's sleep," Empath stated.

"You and us all here in the Smurf Village," Nat said, with the other three Smurflings nodding in agreement.

Empath yawned as he settled down to sleeping on his blanket on the floor. "Well, it's time for us to enter the peaceful solitude of sleep," he gently reminded the Smurflings. "Rest well, my friends...this smurf will see you again in the morning."

"Good night, Empath," the Smurflings responded as they pulled their blankets over themselves and closed their eyes.

Empath stayed awake for a bit as he laid on the blanket and listened to the Smurflings drifting off to sleep. His mind reached out to the entire village at this point and took in the sounds of every Smurf, peacefully sleeping wherever they laid their heads, dreaming whatever came into their minds. There was nothing going on that made any of them feel disturbed to the point of making them restless. There were no sounds of the night except the forest surrounding them, which to Empath seemed just as calm and still as the village itself at this time.

And somewhere in Psychelia, Empath knew that his friend Polaris Psyche must be resting peacefully, hearing nothing but the calm sounds of the collective consciousness of the Psyches speaking to him in his sleeping state.

Yet Empath never thought that hearing nothing in his sleeping state would be more peaceful than hearing hundreds of voices. And that seemed to make all the difference to him.

Empath smiled at that thought. "Pleasant dreams, my fellow Smurlfings," he whispered to them as he closed his eyes and allowed himself to settle into the peaceful solitude of sleep, in the place that he now called home.

He had an entire lifetime of freedom to look forward to.