The woman lived in a cliffside dwelling on a world that orbited so close to its sun that it actually passed through the corona. Through the tall and graceful windows of her dwelling, she could see great arcs of plasma thrown up from the stars surface, like fountains of fire falling back in on themselves.

Lava flowed beneath a floor fashioned from a single piece of perfectly transparent and flawless diamond, yet she felt no heat through the bare soles of her feet, nor through the windows beyond which lay graceful gardens protected by energy fields.

She had been living here for a century now, and she had long ago forgotten her name. She had lived a thousand lifetimes and more, and an infinity of worlds lay in her past and future.

When a creature appeared before her, its face wreathed in shadows, something about its demeanour struck a chord of fear in her.

It is time for you to return, said the creature. We are now almost at the end-point of our voyage.

I dont know who you are, she protested, or what you

Long-lost memories then flooded back into her mind, and she remembered her name. She remembered the Wanderer, Gabrielle and Tarrant. This world on which she lived, and all the others she had visited over scores of millennia, were nothing more than shades locked in the memory of an ancient starship, like dusty photographs lost somewhere in the back of a drawer.

She sank to the floor as if wounded. None of it was real.

No, she gasped. Im happier now. I can just stay here. You can negotiate with the Wanderer without me

But you must return, said the Librarian. You know that.

She could not deny its words.

Then give me just a little time to get ready, she said haltingly.

She spent the next subjective century visiting worlds she had not seen for millennia. She now remembered that she had set out, long ago, to find whatever secret weapon the Wanderer believed lay hidden in the Magi ships memory. But she had as yet found no trace of it.

As her century-long period of grace thus came to an end, the ship fashioned an actual, physical space within its body for her. It created rooms and corridors that reflected the style and appearance of craft employed throughout the Accord.

Megan finally awoke in her own body in a bed recess located inside a nondescript cabin. Her memories of subjective millennia immediately began to fade, like the half-remembered dreams they actually were.

And, while she had been dreaming the voyage away, the Magi ship had traversed very nearly fifteen thousand light years.