.

My home planet is undone by cataclysm. I am not certain of the root cause, but the planet no longer rotates, leaving it cold/dark on the one side and burned-beyond-life on the other. All of the remaining beings from the world are floating in a small clutch in space about a mile or two above the dark-side of the planet which is no longer a coherent ball, but more like chunks of mountain and valley compressed into an enormous-eroded fist. It looks like an ironstone version of a Lake Taihu stone set against deep space. Where there should be stars, there is only cosmic dust and gas reflecting the errant sun — the word ‘errant’ is spelled out before me in script, sparkler-style. A collective keening has just begun when I am pulled into shifting dimensions by a force that is amplified by a kind of ululating that breaks down the walls of space/time as we go. ‘She’ says, ‘We are late to the party.’

She and I apparate onto a barren plateau in a numinous dimension where a vast army is gathered. She introduces me to one of her lieutenants as ‘one of us.’ The lieutenant is an Aleut, his/her 8 sets of ears are half funnel-eared bat/half human. Without signal, the ‘collective’ begins a screaming/roar — the air shatters as the present disintegrates/burns away.

I am levitating up near the ceiling of an archaic, vaulted library — it appears to be carved out of the side of a mountain — I’m not yet quite sure which book I’ve been sent to retrieve.