The ground hit harder than I expected.

  Not painfully, but with enough force to convince me we had arrived somewhere real.

  Air flowed back into my lungs. The sounds of this new place followed a heartbeat later: wind moving through leaves, distant water, something like music too far away to be certain.

  I opened my eyes.

  For a moment, my mind refused to understand what it was seeing.

  The grass beneath my hands was a green so deep it almost seemed lit from within. Each blade stood perfect and unblemished, bending but never breaking as I pushed myself upright.

  Ruth gave a short, confused whine beside me, then shook himself and began sniffing enthusiastically at the unfamiliar ground.

  “Are you hurt?” Eithna asked.

  I looked down at myself, turning my hands over as if I expected pieces to be missing.

  “No,” I said slowly. “I’m… fine.”

  She nodded, satisfied.

  “Then stand,” she said gently. “And look.”

  I did.

  And the world unfolded.

  We stood on a gentle rise overlooking a vast valley. Forests rolled away into the distance, broken by silver threads of rivers that caught the light like polished metal. Structures rose among them, towers, bridges and sweeping shapes that looked almost grown rather than built.

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  Nothing jarred. Nothing scarred the land. It was as if city and wilderness had agreed long ago not to be enemies.

  Above it all hung a sky I could not quite name.

  Colour moved within it, deep blues folding into greens, light shifting like currents beneath water. It flowed rather than rested, alive in a way Earth’s sky had never seemed.

  “How…” I began.

  “The light here behaves differently,” Eithna said. “You will learn why, in time.”

  I almost laughed.

  Of course I would.

  The air smelled clean. Not empty, but full in a way I had no words for. Every breath seemed to settle something restless inside my chest.

  “It’s beautiful,” I said.

  “Yes,” she replied.

  There was pride in it. And something else.

  Worry.

  I turned in a slow circle, trying to take it all in, and failed completely.

  “This is Tir Na Nog?” I asked.

  “It is.”

  “And people just… live here?”

  She gave me a faint smile.

  “They do more than live.”

  Ruth barked suddenly, racing a few paces ahead before looking back at us, tail high, delighted with the discovery of an entire new world.

  At least one of us was adapting well.

  I tore my gaze away from the valley.

  “What happens now?” I asked.

  Eithna’s expression shifted, becoming more formal, more guarded.

  “Now,” she said, “you must be presented.”

  “Presented to who?”

  She paused for just a moment, as she glanced across the valley towards the nearest buildings.

  “To those who rule.”

  The wonder from my sudden arrival in this strange and beautiful place didn’t vanish.

  But it made room for nerves.

  She began to walk down the slope.

  After one last look at the impossible horizon, I followed.