The terrain softens, grows red… The light within the mist brightens… A new wind, from behind, a growing warmth… The air breaks apart…

Sky of pale lemon… Orange sun rushing toward noon…

A shudder! A thing not of my doing, totally unanticipated… The ground moves beneath us, but there is more to it than that. The new sky, the new sun, the rusty desert I have just now entered — all of them expand and contract, fade and return. There comes a cracking sound, and with each fading I find Star and myself alone, amid a white nothingness — characters without a setting. We tread upon nothing. The light comes from everywhere and illuminates only ourselves. A steady cracking noise, as of the spring thaw come upon a Russian river I had once ridden beside, fills my ears. Star, who has paced many shadows, emits a frightened sound.

I look all about me. Blurred outlines appear, sharpen, grow clear. My environment is restored, though with a somewhat washed-out look to it. A bit of the pigment has been drained from the world.

We wheel to the left, racing for a low hill, mounting it, halting finally at its summit.

The black road. It too seems denatured — but even more so than the rest. It ripples beneath my gaze, almost seems to undulate as I watch. The cracking noise continues, grows louder…

A wind comes out of the north, gentle at first but increasing in force. Looking in that direction, I see a mass of dark clouds building.

I know that I must move as I have never moved before. Ultimates of destruction and creation are occurring at the place I visited — When? No matter. The waves move outward from Amber and this, too, may pass away — and me along with it. If Dad cannot put it all back together again. I shake the reins. We race southward.

A plain… Trees… Some broken buildings… Faster…