Emergence

The light was an assault, a blinding, glorious pain that seared Luna’s eyes even through her tightly squeezed lids. She flinched, a gasp escaping her lips, a sound so alien in its clarity after the perpetual gloom of the Underworld that it startled her. Her body, accustomed to the damp chill and the rough, uneven terrain, felt oddly buoyant, as if the very air was lifting her. Her feet, which had grown so adept at navigating treacherous paths, now met something soft and yielding, something that tickled her bare soles. Grass. Real, living grass.

She dared to open her eyes, just a sliver at first. A dazzling expanse of blue, so vast it made her head spin, stretched above her. Clouds, fluffy and white like the cotton candy she’d only ever seen in pictures, drifted lazily across it. It was too much, too bright, too *much*. She squeezed her eyes shut again, a wave of disorientation washing over her. Had it all been a dream? A particularly vivid nightmare brought on by a fall from a tree?

But then, the scent. It was the sweet, heady perfume of honeysuckle, mingling with the earthy aroma of damp soil and something else… something familiar and comforting. Her garden. She was in her garden.