Sunbeam Lair [m] So if you care to find me, look to the western sky

Small gods —
Tiny grasping things with little cutting claws.
Turn back, they whispered. Turn back back back... and the girl in the reverie trembled. She saw the path ahead now, shrouded, a portrait of a soul fallen into shadow. It was not the dark Reverie feared. It was that she might lose her way, that she might never return home.
Turn back...
Small gods and their small plans and their insignificant demands. Dark and underfoot like a thorn you never see. But you know them by the blood, by the venom in your veins. Little things, ground-dwellers. They could not touch her. Not while she still remembered how to fly.
I do not bow to small gods.

I am the sun,
and you will burn with me.

Pupils dilated; lips pulled tight; limbs stiff; and her body began to ripple and change and blood began to pool and she screamed and burned and burned and burned and —

Look, Reverie, I have a gift for you...