It had been the most uncanny dream: a limitless forest, a tree hung with feathers, the sure-footed scrape of hooves as his toes brushed the stamped-dirt path. It was hard to hold it all in the mind at once, and frankly the puzzle right in front of his hands was more important. Speaking of...

-

At first it had been just little flashes of light in the corner of his eye, but there had been something powerfully significant about it. So Eberhardt forced himself to relax, to remember the breathing exercises his mama had taught him. He closed his eyes, missing that the tiny circles on his palms and finger-tips had lit with a steady pink glow. But he felt - a warmth, a feeling of openness. Ross slowly opened his eyes.

Ross gasped in delight, turning his hands palm-up and palm-down. He could see it! It was real! Everything was luminous, each person stepping around him in the middle of the road, shady tree, or quaint building lining the road, gull or cat, had a little glimmer resting inside its heart. Everything he could see shone with the light of being-itself, and each shining light was unique: in color, in pattern, in how it pulsed or whirled or spun.

The setting was unfamiliar, (Why would it be unfamiliar? He's always lived on the Blue Coast) but it was, unmistakably, the same vision he'd had in his Naming dream: the light of the heart emergent in everything. The...soul? The...magic? What was he REALLY seeing?

Giddy with possibility, Ross hastily tied his locks back and headed for Cafe Street. Between the salons, the bookshops, and the tourists, he could probably find someone to help him with further experiments. He pushes the door open on a favorite haunt; the brass bells on the door tinkle, and he looks around.

Swooping in to prance at his side, Isabella smiled, "Hello! What are we doing?" Hearing the bell tinkle as she passed, she laughed and shook her hair to jingle back.

Zuki wrote: