Noah stepped through the doorway, and the brightness closed behind him.
He braced for something grand! A vault of Immensity, perhaps. A library of lost Ages. Maybe a throne waiting at the end of a long hall, or some last weapon left by the founder of a Legacy for the one who would inherit it.
Instead, he smelled grass!
He stood at the edge of a farm!
A small one. A low wooden fence ran along a dirt path, its rails grey and soft with weather. Beyond it lay a vegetable garden in neat rows: beans climbing poles, squash sprawled under broad leaves, a line of something leafy and green gone a little wild at the end where no one had weeded it.
A field of wheat swayed gold under a pale blue sky, and past the wheat, an orchard of six apple trees, the fruit red and heavy. A single cloud drifted overhead, unhurried.
Only a mild breeze, and birdsong somewhere off in the hedges, and an absence of snow and cold and Counting so complete it felt like holding his breath.
