When something is seen that is beyond the range of all a person has experienced, the challenge it poses can be insurmountable at first, and then, as the observer becomes used to the phenomenon, gradually overcome, perhaps eventually accepted as a part of nature, as if such a thing always was. But this acquiescence takes time, and first encounters are always the greatest shocks. So, with this in mind, let us join Rusty in beholding the sight that entranced Sonic, when we first met her as she stood at the garden gate and gaped at the sky.

As Rusty stepped out of the doorway, Sonic's grip on his hand tightened, as though she too were steeling herself for the experience.

"What's the big deal?" Rusty asked, and looked up slowly. The sky was blue and cloudless from the horizon upward, but as his eyes followed the blue toward the zenith above them –

He fell to his knees.

The light coming from the sky was not from the Sun. Instead, a brilliantly white beam stretched from one horizon to the other, a river of pure light that cut the sky in two. This line sat in a gaping inverted chasm, the edges of which swirled possibly millions – no, billions – of multi-colored, sparkling orbs that slowly ascended toward the center, toward the whiteness. The sheer magnitude of the phenomenon above Rusty – this was the sky! – took all the air out of his lungs, and he felt like he was falling, falling upward toward that brilliant whiteness, that line of fire, into the chasm, following those stars that swirled and fell (fell?), drawn to the center that was... that was...

He passed out.

Dresden was also looking up at what was called, in the language of the Hep, the Line. He didn't see anything out of the ordinary.

"Is he well?" he asked Sonic, who was kneeling next to the unconscious outsider. "He was like this earlier, when I found him. By the Highest, it is as if neither of you have ever seen the Line before."

Sonic looked up at him. She had the other boy's wrist in her hand, pressing it. "He is well," she said, but thought: Kind of. "And neither of... the boy and I have ever seen the Line before, Dresden. My land... my land have no Line."

"But how is that possible? What about the Dark, do you have the Dark?"

Sonic nodded. "My land have the Dark," she said. Maybe.

"So, without the Line, how do you see?" Dresden asked, genuinely puzzled. "What lights the sky during the daytime?"

"My land have... lights the sky during the daytime," Sonic replied. It was as good an answer as she could manage.

"And how do you travel?" Dresden asked. He glanced up at the Line before continuing. "Here, you can always know where you are by the Line, it's just common sense."

"How do you know where you are by the Line, Dresden?" Sonic asked. She had one hand over the boy's face, and was checking his eyes.

Dresden was well and truly perplexed. Where are these outsiders from? "The Line moves as the day passes," he said, not quite believing that he needed to explain. To him, what he was describing was beyond merely fundamental; it was as if he had to describe breathing, or seeing, or being alive. "We call the direction it moves 'Lineward'. The opposite direction is where the Dark comes from, so that is 'Darkward'. So, if you face 'Lineward' and follow the line left, that is 'left of the Line', and if you go right, 'right of the Line'. Every... every child knows this. It is simple."

"Simple," Sonic repeated, and gazed up once more at the glowing chasm in the sky that stretched out either side as far as her eyes could see. "No. Not simple." She turned her attention back to Rusty. He couldn't wake up looking at the terrifyingly beautiful sight above them, so she rolled him over, placing his left arm over his right to keep him in place.

She stood up. "Our land is simple, Dresden," she said, looking him right in the eye. "The Line is not simple." She took a deep breath to steady herself. Looked up once more at the 'Line', that bewitching beam-cum-chasm above them, at the scintillating dots that fed into the bright center. The 'Line' itself was so bright that she knew it should be burning her retinas into blindness (well... if she were an ordinary human, that was), but no such thing was occurring to her. Even Rusty might be okay to stare directly into this place's equivalent of a Sun.

She realized that whatever physics, whatever phenomena, ruled over this land, they would bear some study, maybe millennia of study or more. Either way, she could not draw on her real 'power' yet, she knew, despite the psychic 'taste' she had given the Custodian. There was something fundamentally – elementally! – different to this place. The Custodian's 'defensive spells' inside the house, for instance... sure enough, Sonic had sensed forces trying to assail her when she went back in to fetch Rusty, unknown forces that emanated from the walls and buffeted her in resounding waves.

Thus, while this place thankfully had familiar things like 'gravity' and 'breathing', she knew her capabilities were too much of a wildcard. Heck, what would happen if she were to synth something simple like a T-shirt for Rusty, and the T-shirt went from matter into whatever passed for energy here? She wouldn't be welcome if her first act in this land was to blow a hole in it the size of Texas (which, as everyone on Earth knew, would be a very big, Texas-shaped hole.)

Rusty began to stir. Sonic thought about dragging him back into the house, but realized the sooner the young Australian got used to this place, the better. It would be his home from now on, whatever that entailed.

As for herself? She didn't belong here any more than Rusty did, but unlike him, she had a literal clock ticking back on Earth. Or rather, back in the Universe that she – and Earth – belonged to. What a head-trip, she thought.

"You okay, Rusty?" she said to the stirring teenager. "I'm still here, amigo. Got an eye on you."

Rusty mumbled something unintelligible.

"That's it, buddy, just keep lying down," Sonic said, glancing once more up at the sky. She couldn't help herself. That feeling of depth as her eyes focused on the line, all those colored orbs and stars that swirled gently upward! They appeared literally out of the blueness of the sky on the periphery of the Line, pulsating, at first growing larger, then smaller as they tumbled ever upward into brightness. It took a considerable portion of her mental fortitude to not feel like she was falling up, falling into the Line. How could the people of this land stand such a thing?

There was a commotion at the garden's entrance. Mohon was there, pawing at the gate, and the creature looked like it was breathing heavily. Dresden went over to the gate, and opened it.

"Mohon, what..." Dresden began. "You were just in the house! Where did you go?"

Mohon gazed up at Dresden with those eerily-glowing eyes. "Father. Coming."

"You went and got Lord Faramay?" Dresden asked, dismayed.

"Yes. Custodian say," Mohon replied, and Sonic noticed the creature almost looked sheepish. Then Mohon glanced over at her, and there was no mistaking the look in its eyes now – jealousy. Sonic laughed. She couldn't help it. Here she was, in an entirely different Universe that likely had different rules and laws and physics (well, some things were the same, but still), and she'd just gone and made an alien dog jealous of its master's attentions on her. At least I know how one part of this place works, she thought.

And heaven help Dresden if he was becoming – what was the term? – 'crushed' on her.

She stood up. "Friend Mohon, I mean no harm," she said. "Lord Faramay, father of Dresden, is coming, and I'm his friend, too. I mean no harm."

Mohon woofed once. She didn't need to speak whatever language that woof was in to know what the creature meant: whatever.

"I'm sorry," Dresden said to her. "I hoped I could teach you more before... before you'd have to meet other people."

"I am outsider, Dresden," Sonic said. "Boy is outsider, too. I am meet other people, I will learn your language as they speak it."

Below her, on the ground, Rusty rolled over and opened his eyes. He looked once more upon the 'Line' above them, pressed a balled fist up to his mouth, then turned his head and vomited onto one of the plants, which promptly uprooted and crawled away from him.

"Sorry," Rusty said to the plant, and he reached out to it with one hand. "Look at that, a walking plant."

"Plenty of things to get used to, hey?" Sonic said. "And look alive, hombre, we're about to have company."

"Huh?"

There was a rumbling coming from along the road, and while the trees and garden obscured what was approaching them, Sonic knew it would be their 'welcoming party'.

She just hoped 'welcoming' was the operative term.