It was dusk, and he stood on a scorched plain, ringed by distant peaks. The western sun stretched his shadow narrow as a spear, turned his arms to long gnarled branches, his fingers to twigs. Before him lay the late-summer valley, its animal inhabitants beginning to wake. He blinked—and there in the empty valley appeared a beautiful palace made all of glass, its spires and ramparts shining in the last golden rays of the evening.
