The first sunrise Sarya witnessed outside Earth was beautiful in a way that felt, strangely, familiar rather than alien.
She had expected something extravagant — colors no sky on Earth could produce, a light that announced its foreignness the moment it touched her skin. Instead, the light gathering over the Intervale's horizon carried the same soft gold she remembered from countless ordinary mornings, the particular warmth of early sun finding its way through air still cool from the night before.
She understood why, watching it, before anyone explained it to her.
The Intervale did not replace what any of them had known. It reflected it back to them, shaped by whatever home each of them carried inside themselves.
Kael, standing beside her, murmured something about atmospheric scattering that sounded suspiciously like Earth's own sky.
