Urcea reached to place her hand against the stone, and as she touched it, it gave a bit. A particular root, coming up between stones and moss caught her eye. She tugged at it, rattling what was now clearly a door, either cleverly hidden, or overgrown in the dank shadow of the tree. Spreading her feet a bit and bending her knees, she gave it another good tug. With a groan and whine of rusty iron it gave. Dirt and mossy stones tumbled from it, scattered behind her, knocking on their way into the shaft. Smooth-worn steps, grooved with ages of trickling run-off, descended into utter void. The stonemaiden, like a tiny firebrand, flickered to life in the shadowy door. _Are we meant to be here?_ she asked. Urcea contemplated but a moment, "Had they wanted us elsewhere, wouldn't they have escorted us?" Gemmacestros flickered in a sort of skip down into the tunnel. Casting a weak light as she went. Some time after she had disappeared around a corner, Urcea heard a pop, like a log on the fire, and in her mind, an airy gasp. She step carefully, but purposefully down the steps. The grooves kept the water from slicking each step overmuch. The way wound down, like a spiral staircase. Lamenting once more the soil to her glove, Urcea places her hand lightly on the wall and made her way down. In a little hollow a mere hair's-breadth taller than her hat, Urcea found the stonemaiden. She blazed intensely, for her, at the edge of a little pool of blue liquid, just large enough that a person might find passage, which shone with light from below. Urcea removed her glove and crouched by the pool. Here, the air was chill. She placed her finger to the surface, and the surface of the pool rippled like water but slowly, dreamily. She placed her hand fully into it, causing the fluid to warp and pull as she moved her hand. When she tried to scoop, it turned to prismatic dust which spread slowly into the air about her. Where she had scooped, the watery surface now had a divot which, slowly, almost imperceptibly, began to fill. Her hand was chilled, but un-harmed. In fact, the skin of her hands faily vibrated with a radiant energy, like a fever-- but pleasant. Slowly, she lowered her face toward the surface. Here, each grain of the fluid showed clearly to her, each one a little droplet lying in chain with its neighbor. Where her breath fell upon it, it shrank away like spun sugar. The little bits of crystal twinkled as they bobbed together. Urcea removed her other glove, and unpinned her hat. Her curls drooped somewhat from the sweat and moisture of the road and her audience with Noctylatl. Impulsively, she removed her jacket and skirts, unbuckled her doublet and boots, and placed them in a neat pile. She placed her hands in the pool up to her arms. She watched the disturbed flyaways of crystal trace up her bare arms and shoulders. The excited warmth which burned against the chill took out all the weariness of the road from her. Further and further she leaned, and just when she expected to feel her forehead push against the cool surface, a shock ran through her body. A wave of ferociousness swept from her face to her toes. She opened her eyes to find herself staring up, hanging, seemingly, in a starred expanse. Vertigo overtook her. She struggled to rise, but at first she felt no body. Then the blackness of the void drained away from her and she found herself. The sky was familiar, but clearer, closer, than she had ever seen it. Not a pin of light twinkled. No cloud nor glare of the sun marred the deep rich blackness of it. After a moment she found some familiar constellations, but where she might expect a star or two here and there, instead she saw brilliant clouds of parti-colored light. She, somewhat below her, the light rose as if the dawn came. A comet! And yet not, for this was no errant satellite, no starry wanderer come home to the sun, but a creature of immense size and terrible beauty. At was a great bird, and around it glowed its own air, streaked with clouds, shot through here in the palest pink, here in the golden orange of the twilight rainstorm, there in the ominous green of the gathering cyclone. Each pilot-feather dwarfed a city of men. Of its head and face, she could see nothing but the blinding arrow of its ascent, and it called, a rich and full surrounding, an embrace from within by the depth of it's reverberance, as it passed; at once the clarion call of a thousand trumpet cornicen and the roll of the snare like the promise of war in thunder. Stars and rain fell in the wake of his passage, and this, she knew, was the source of the light which shone like a road to the stars. She swam amidst the stars and turned to follow him, the Rainbird, as he compassed an immense arc in the sky and turned toward her. Her came on, growing and growing, gathering like storm clouds. So quickly, yet impossibly distant. And on and on he came, til he filled her vision and yet was no nearer. Finally, achingly, her heart pounding her chest, the brilliant arrow of his crown reached out toward her, reaching, reaching, til in a rush of heat and life it hurtled past her, a golden train, racing blindingly, seemingly endless, til within the glare before her she saw a shining like the morning sun. And she saw that he looked within her, and the rain fell from his eyes, storm clouds wreathed the lashes, and the folds of his skin were mountains.