Jin was floating.
He didn't know when it had started. One moment there had been cold concrete under his back and voices shouting his name, and the next there was nothing under him at all, and no voices, and no cold. There was only a deep, soft quiet, and a feeling like being held up by warm water.
He opened his eyes, and there were stars.
They were everywhere. They were above him and below him and on every side, more stars than he had ever seen in his life, thicker than the sky over the mountains on the clearest night. Some were white. Some were gold. Some were colors he didn't have words for, deep shimmering blues and soft greens and a pale violet that seemed to pulse slowly, like breathing. Between them drifted great slow clouds of light, pink and silver and amber, so huge and so far away that he couldn't tell where one ended and the next began.
And beneath him, close enough that he could see the shapes of its oceans, turned a world.
