Reality exploded open before our eyes. The wall in front of us disintegrated, fracturing into exuberant sunlight. A stretch of flat ground lay ahead, sheathed in soft green and blue grass. A hundred yards ahead the ground ended, and beyond it an ocean of air stretched, with a grassy plain at its bottom. Groups of white stone mesas thrust from it toward the sky, crowned with turquoise trees. We were on top of a plateau.
A root slid under our feet, burrowing deep into the soil. It sped toward the cliff. The ground erupted. Branches spiraled up, high, higher, and higher. Hunter green leaves burst open. White flowers as big as my head opened, showing a whirl of pink stamens topped with a bright yellow clump of carpels.
A colossal magnolia, taller than the tallest redwood, wider than the widest sequoia, spread its giant branches over the plateau. Connected to the inn, and yet separate from it, but vibrant and so much alive. It felt like Magnolia Green. It was more than a tree but less than an inn. It grew from a Gertrude Hunt root, and both were well. Relief washed over me. I slumped forward, and Sean caught me and grinned.
“We can never tell anyone about this,” Tony said.
“Are you speaking as an ad-hal or a friend?” Sean asked him.
“Both. Nobody can know. The Assembly will… I don’t even know what they will do, but we won’t like it.”
“Then they don’t need to know,” Sean said.
A beautiful bird cried out overhead and landed on the magnolia’s mighty branches. I had never seen one like it.
“Where are we?” I wondered.
Tony was looking out past the tree, where twin moons rose, one larger and tinted with purple, and the other small and orange.
“This is…” he said.
“Daesyn,” Sean finished for him. “Home planet of House Krahr.”
The End