Good idea to start this topic as its own thread, Josephine.
Agreed with what people have said about characters having to follow their hearts. In the cases of Emma and Neal, they don’t appear to have any personal connections to anyone in our world outside SB, so I think if their family wanted to go back, they wouldn’t have anyone tying them to our world to make them wanna stay.
I also think there could be a necessary, practical side to going back as well though, because I just dunno if our world would be a safe place for SB to actually integrate into.
SB has never existed on any maps. The people don’t really exist as far as our world is concerned. With the Curse no longer in effect, what does that mean for SB? If it can no longer self sustain itself indefinitely, it will have to connect with the outside world. As that happens more and more, if people start traveling into and out of town, word will get out about this SB place and people will get curious and eventually everything about SB will be exposed. There is still magic there, and many people in our world would love to use and abuse magic if they had access to it.
If they remain completely closed off from the rest of the world, would that be satisfying for the SBers? Unable to travel outside town still, because the secret must be kept, but now knowing with full consciousness that the whole world is out there just beyond their reach. It’d feel a bit like living trapped in a cage.
If the cloaking spell doesn’t last, and THO come to town, even if the SBers take care of them, they’ll be living under the constant threat of more and more people possibly coming to expose and/or destroy them.
Considering stuff like that, I think they’d probably all be safer back in FTL with the ogres.
If they all do go back, FTL needs to be rebuilt. They would take with them all of the real world knowledge they acquired thanks to the Curse. They now have knowledge of a whole different system of governing, of a whole different social structure that doesn’t consist of royalty and peasants. They have knowledge about medicine and electricity and machinery, including cars. They could take all of that stuff back with them, and use it to rebuild FTL, and the place could end up being the best of both worlds.