She hadn’t expected the dark to be quite so brilliant. Stars uncountable across clouds of rich purples and blues, every image of the heavens she had seen would pale in comparison to the sight before her. She had seen the sky unpolluted by civilization before, and she struggled to recall it at its most brilliant. A time when the two moons hung above them, pale splashes of a milky white river peeking from behind, a stage for all the familiar constellations to play their part. The world had seemed so much bigger, to that small pale kit bathing in moonlight. Yet, even through the brilliance of nostalgia, that could never compare to this.

A world eternal, ever remaining between the past and the present, unable to change. A world without the rising sun, the slowly fading twilight — Still, even in the face of such beauty, her blood sung with a primal melody, a yearning for her home, the beautiful beacon of hope amidst the dark that was Etheirys.

It had come to a surprise to her, however ridiculous it may have been to expect otherwise, to feel the experience change her so fundamentally. That this song would remain etched into her marrow, her body continuing to long for something more, the rhythm of it pushing her every step, promises of discoveries and tomorrows replacing the desperation and devotion that had driven her forward all these years. Perhaps it had been foolish to think that she could remain stagnant in the face of such world-shattering revelations, or that a certain man would allow her to remain still within the rivers of time. She saw his fist outstretched at the edge of creation, and the impact of it against her own had felt like pure levin, its spark reigniting long dormant flesh.

Even as her feet touched Hydaelyn-blessed earth, the triumphant cries of her beloved friends filling the air with music, the yearning remained. Her body thus reanimated, it reverberated with a new calling, one she had been struggling to understand ever since she returned from the First—

Expand your horizons.

This beautiful, insignificant speck in the expanse, the world she had given her all to, scarred her body and soul to protect, carried its will onto the very edge of creation for the chance to see another dawn— Had she ever taken a moment to marvel at its beauty? To taste the luscious fruits of her labors?

Now, halfway across the star, Eithne looks out onto the sea and sees the sun peeking above the boundary between sky and star. She relishes the golden light against her skin, regales the glimmering wave-cradled jewel with the awe of a newborn child. And against the sunset stood a man with arms outstretched, silhouette aglow with sunset’s luminescence, beckoning her to horizons yet unseen, futures yet uncharted.