I step out of the bush into the clearing, brushing twig and pebble and leaf from my hair and robe, laughing. My robe is blue as midnight with a border of cream, thick and supple and soft to the touch. I love this robe and am glad of it, not inclined to step out of it, but in the Wellspring's gaze I understand that even this is not necessary here. Even this a hindrance. And so I let it go. Let myself be unclothed. The water of light showers down over me. I raise my arms, lift my palms, drink.

When I am full and overflowing, I turn and run with it into the wood. I find the Bear and comb the light through the dense brown fur of him. Turn and breathe light in Deerman's direction, and Flora's. And Audra is there, with her patience and her sword. We move on together, the all of us, through the dappled tangle of the wood until we come to the cliff edge and down below there are cities, the gatherings of people. The day ahead in its fullness.

The light I carry is for giving. I lean into the open air and I am flying, flying out, flying forward, falling into onward, a soaring over, with light silting off of me like fairy dust. I do not land. I pass over and go and go over the landscape until I find that it is the sea beneath me and still I go until I spy a sailing ship riding the dark plain of the water, my pirate ship and her first mate Rachel. I think that here I will land, all the spars and rigging, but I do not. I pass over, flying. Flying now toward the setting sun, that horizon, and into and through that gold into the black beyond, the vast, and I am starlight in that darkness and they in the ships below look up and find me and know.

OOO