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She's sitting when she wakes, whole once again. Whole in a physical sense, but her mind is as well, thoughts and memories that were simply gone for centuries restored.
A presence she has missed for so long surrounding her. She is safe. She is home.
She turns and looks up toward the porcelain mask, taller than grandfather's statue. Realizing now that she is sitting on the goddess's knee.
There's a lump in her throat as she gets to her feet. "Tell me, was it enough?" she shouts, begging for the answer, not noticing the tears running down her cheeks until they fall from her chin.
The mask vanishes, but the goddess is instantly with her, in front of her, only a few steps away. The same height she was when she was mortal, looking into the eyes of the mask to see stars - constellations she first learned as a child.
A slightly spectral hand takes her own, holding it tight. "You have done so well, Patia, so very well." the goddess says serenely.
Black raven feathers fall around them, brushing tears from Patia's face, and the black void around them takes more shape; echos of architecture from the past surround them.
"There is much for me to show you. Would you wish to see?" she asks, closing the small distance between them. The mask, now changed, showing more details, more like how she once looked.
The mask smiles brightly as she nods.
"Close your eyes," she whispers.
She does, and there is a flash of white light that she can still see through her eyelids.
Two hands, as solid now as they were in life, cup her face gently.
Then the flashes start in her mind, flashes of the near future.
The destruction of Domunas.
Rau'shan and Ka'Mort are flung along the new ley line to their end.
The islands that are left behind in the aftermath.
Flashes of the faces, each person that escaped the continent, so many, going so quickly, hundreds, thousands of faces.
Maya staring at the orb with red-ringed eyes; behind her, Kir in Wrayne's arms, her wings wrapped around them, he still holds an inert sending stone, unconsolable.
Then more flashes, more rapidly now, less real, but the likely path that the world will follow. Vasselheim under siege, Aeor crashing while somehow incomplete, the other floating cities have gone from the sky, the topography of the continents shifting, unfamiliar, changing under the strain of the gods at full force on the surface of the planet.
The likely decision the deities will make.
Then it is over. The war is over. Hundreds of years have passed in a moment.
People continue to live, to build, to dream.
Then the vision ends.
Patia's mind her own. She wraps her arms around the woman in front of her before she opens her eyes, fearful that when she does, she will once again be with the goddess, expressionless and distant.
The embrace is returned as she opens her eyes. The mask, while still in place, is now as thin as parchment and as transparent as glass, and Patia knows this is as mortal as she can be. The eyes she sees now are as they should be, the face as she remembers.
"Would it be possible to wait for them?" she asks, knowing it will only be moments but asking permission anyway.
A laugh comes out as she nods, "Those whose threads will end shortly, you may cross with. It will not be them all. I will bring you all together when everyone has arrived."
"Thank you," she says, watching the joy flash in the woman's green eyes.
"Mother, is it possible to watch it happen with you while I can?" she asks, daring now to call her by at least one of the names she was called in life.
"Of course, Patia," her mother says, hugging her closer, raven wings wrapping around them.