The dove reappeared, streaking past, its sleek form revealed in bright scarlet hues, its feathers lustrous, its color so unimaginably vivid, so incomprehensibly intense, that it left her breathless. She peered around wildly, searching anew for something that would explain what was happening. But no matter where she looked or how long she spent searching, there was no other color to be found.

Frantic now, suddenly frightened of what was happening, she bolted away into the trees, running hard in the direction the dove had taken. It wasn’t difficult to find, its scarlet body standing out clearly, and it did not seem to be trying to escape her. Rather, it flew away and then came back to her, repeating this act over and over until finally she realized it was beckoning her to follow. Why it was doing this and where it was leading her, she couldn’t say. But the dove was a lifeline to the explanation she desperately needed, and so she followed it.

Finally it swooped down and perched on a low-hanging branch above a tiny pool of water, a pond that was little more than a depression in the earth through which a small stream meandered like a lost child. She walked over to the pool and knelt, looking down into its clear depths. There she was, Prue Liss, looking back, her image rippling slightly with the sluggish movement of the stream as it passed through, her features bending…

She peered closer. Something was wrong. She tightened her focus, trying to make certain.

Her eyes. There was something wrong with her eyes!

She bent closer still, almost to a point where she was touching the water with her face, almost to where she was kissing it with her lips, and she saw that her eyes no longer had definition. They didn’t look like her eyes—or the eyes of anyone who could see. They looked like the eyes of a blind person.

Clouded and empty.

She jerked back in shock. What was going on? Her eyes made her look as if she were blind, but she could see! She looked around quickly, making sure. Yes, she could see. There was no mistaking it. What did it mean that her eyes were those of a blind person, but she could still see the world around her, even if it was all gray and colorless …?

Oh, no! Oh, no! She screamed the words in the silence of her mind, unable to trust herself to speak them.