Everything was light, and so quiet that it was making my ears ring. Slowly some color faded into my eyes, little swirls in the light resolving into blues, reds, greens, browns, blacks, and other strong single hues. I realized after a few moments I was looking at primary elements as the lights resolved into shapes.

  I didn’t recognize all of them, and they buzzed around me curiously, sometimes at high speed. The whole dance was making me dizzy. After a while, I noticed that some of them were fading. The reds and black lights vanished, leaving blues, greens, and grays. They spun around me before stringing out in front of my eyes, going away from me.

  There was a sudden motion inside me, and I was pulled along behind them. The light began fading, transitioning piece by piece into a colorful world. I suddenly realized I was up in the sky, staring down at a world below me. The view was breathtaking.

  A lush forest with towering cliffs, rivers so blue they hurt to look at, and gorges so profound I couldn’t begin to fathom their true depth appeared below me. A thick mist lay in the lower reaches, looking almost fluffy, like a cloud that was taking a nap on the trees.

  The lights towed me lower and lower, and more of the details entered my eyes. Some of what I had thought to be cliff faces were actually edifices hewn directly into the rock face - they merged with their surroundings to a degree where I could not figure out exactly where the construction stopped and pure nature began. Water poured from nooks and crannies in the architecture, streaming into the air where the wind caressed it into fine droplets that eventually vanished into the swirling mists below.

  It didn’t take a brilliant deduction to tell I was clearly somewhere other than where I’d entered the rift. I couldn’t even fathom our world having this level of natural beauty anywhere in it. Breathing in, I could feel it. It made me feel somehow more alive. I reached out to caress the wind and was startled to discover I could see right through myself. Only the faintest outline of me remained.

  I was pretty sure I wasn’t dead - I felt far too alive for that. However, whatever I was was certainly not normal alive. It was something adjacent. I could feel that much in my center. Something there felt unsettled. It was pulling me along with the lights, which I’m pretty sure were either Motes like the one I had or something very similar. My vision had continued to refine and I could see the water droplet inside the blue one, looking like a twin to the one I’d seen in István’s scale. The gray one had what was unambiguously a stone in it. The green, a leaf; surprising no one, certainly not me.

  I’d used magic eyes and they’d been super effective. Surprisingly, I couldn’t see Motes like my friend-lights anywhere in this world. The trees definitely had the feel of being robust and healthy, but the natural energy I felt from them was diffuse and intangible. I couldn’t really fathom what determined one from the other.

  Our merry little group of luminaires descended into an open space in the trees. A lush grass spread out there, with stones in a complex shape in the center. The feeling of nature was especially strong here, so powerful I could feel the energy in the center of my body pulsing. It released warm waves through me, going all the way out to my fingertips.

  I sat down on the cool grass, closing my eyes. I could visualize the flame. It was flickering and waving in the wind that only it could feel. Dozens of colored lights, of every hue, swirled around it. The scene reminded me of just after I’d fallen into the rift, and a pang of emotions ran through me. Was Alessa okay? How would Mom and the others fare without me there to provide for them?

  The flame in my inner vision trembled in response, dimming significantly at the fear I felt. Clearly all these feelings in my head weren’t good for it. The Motes around it seemed very concerned about this. It felt like they were ‘looking’ at me for guidance, even though they had no eyes that I could see.

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  Taking some deep breaths again, I settled my hands in my lap and tried to drive out all the intrusive thoughts. There wasn’t anything I could do about any of that now, and something told me this flame I was carrying was crucial to escaping my present predicament. I settled my breathing into a slow, steady cadence, and the flickering light in what I was pretty sure was my soul calmed in sync.

  The cloud of Motes was definitely happy about this. Somehow, in my mind’s eye, I could their emotions. They swirled around the candle flame as it settled, getting closer the steadier it got. Eventually, a particularly ballsy red Mote went for it, crashing into the surface and more or less detonating into a cloud of red sparks that were consumed. I jumped at the feeling of heat that rushed across my body, and the flame swayed, grazing other colors, which in turn combusted into their components before disappearing into the central flame.

  Each time this happened I felt a corresponding feeling cross my body - pleasant cooling and calming sensation for the blues, an invigorating wakefulness from the greens. The browns gave me a scent I couldn’t identify, fresh and clean, like I’d just been washed. Gray exerted a steadying influence on everything, making me feel indestructible. Black felt like the oblivion of sleep, like the deepest night, of restful absence. Each time the candle absorbed a color, it’d take on some of the hue, resulting in a fascinating interplay of color that had me engrossed in the whole process.

  The last Mote disappeared and the flame stood, now burning much larger. It sat low enough that the base was almost grazing the featureless “water” that I’d swam through when I dreamed about this soul area of mine. Ripples pulsed out at regular intervals from the flame, making light noises, like a distant glass bell ringing, pure and quiet.

  I could tell, however, that something wasn’t quite right. The flame seemed unsettled, like it was searching for something. The various hues within pulsed and moved, refusing to mix. The edges of the flame became ragged. I was starting to get worried as well, which didn’t help much. I had no idea what was going on in the first place, and no one to help me.

  Before I could completely lose my composure, however, a sudden and total calm came over me. A colorless light flooded the space in my soul, before merging into a single Mote. Too bright to peer at directly, I could only follow it out of the corners of my ‘vision’ as it were. It depended slowly, giving a regal feeling, something almost otherworldly, celestial in nature. As though it came from the stars and everything on this plane was beneath it.

  The motions of the flame had ceased. The water below it was as flat as a mirror. The descending Mote almost seemed to nod: all was as it should be in its presence. It slowed before finally touching the very tip of the flame. It settled on it, as if daring to defy the very nature of the fire, before slipping into it with perfect serenity.

  Its pure colorless nature spread from the tip of the flame downward, coercing the arguing hues into a perfect collaboration. The flame curled in on itself, settling into the water without disturbing the surface. As it fell below the level, it became a flawless sphere of untouched light. Descending yet further, the orb began to consume the water, and a shallow whirlpool formed, quickly strengthening as the flame, this core of my soul, sough to consume everything around it.

  It pulled on the fringes of my sense of self, making me feel as though my consciousness was weak and slipping away. I realized that it needed more to complete whatever transformation it was going through. The memories of my descent, the rich feeling of life in this new world, flooded into my mind.

  I willed myself to open to that feeling, and felt a strong suction form as I consumed the vitality in the air, in the ground, in the world. I was ravenously taking it all. Even as it flooded in, I could feel the beginnings of resistance. Both internal, as it filled me, and external, as though nature itself was resisting this unbound consumption.

  Eventually the forces equalized, and I felt the inflow slow, before finally stopping. I felt sated in a way that was difficult to describe. I had been hungry all my life for something, but had never known it was missing until now.

  Looking inward, soft pulses of light radiated from below the water every few moments like a heartbeat, innervating the vital forces that lay at rest there.

  My eyes flickered open.