She raised her head from the pillow and looked up at the ceiling. Painted birds soared through a painted sky of clouds and sunlight. She sat up. The window was open, and the wind was blowing warm from outside. She could smell citrus blossom. The trees under the hydro-dome enclosure were in late flower, heavy with scent and pollen and the promise of fruit. She stared around her for a moment, taking in the nightstand, the bookshelves of catula wood and the half-drunk glass of water left on the windowsill.

‘No,’ she said out loud, testing to see if she had a voice. ‘This is a dream.’

The breeze coming through the window slackened, and in the quiet she heard a distant, soft clacking, as though someone were placing pebbles on a sheet of plasteel.

She rose and went to the door. The corridors of the manse opened in front of her as she followed the noise. She did not look around her as she went. She was sure that in this dream every detail would be as perfect as her memory.

At last she stepped from a wide spiral of stairs into the Sunrise Gallery. It was set at the highest point of the manse; from here you could look all the way across the Aska mountain range and see the distant towers of Terra’s equatorial hives. High, peaked windows were open to the air outside, and translucent curtains stirred in a wind that carried the smell of rain drying in the first heat of a new day. She could see the sunlight glinting off the great chrome-and-glass dome that enclosed the gardens beyond. Held back beyond it, the upper strata of Terra’s blanket of pollution tinted the air a vivid mauve. A woman sat on the floor at the centre of the room, her back to Mersadie.

‘Hello,’ said the woman, half turning her head. A rush of fleeting recognition passed through Mersadie, but she could not grasp it. ‘Where is this place, if you don’t mind me asking?’

‘Home…’ said Mersadie, pausing to touch a leather-bound volume sitting on a shelf. ‘My home on Terra, before I left.’ She opened the book. The Edge of Illumination, from the hand of Solomon Voss ran across the title page in hand-brushed script.

‘You have not dreamed of it in a long time, have you?’ said the woman sitting at the centre of the room.

‘It was not a place that made happy memories,’ said Mersadie, and closed the book.

‘You never went back.’

‘No,’ said Mersadie. ‘Home was not somewhere I ever wanted to return to.’

‘So, you followed your talent, and it led you out to the stars and into the company of wolves.’