Clara turned, her eyes bright with the light of a thousand suns. "You have more stones to lay, Papa. But now you know where the path leads when the work is done." She blew a breath of mist into his face.
To his left, the mist coalesced into the shape of his mother’s kitchen—the scent of rosemary and scorched flour rising from the vapor. To his right, a dog he had lost twenty years ago jumped through a hoop of fog, silent and joyful. A Walk In The Clouds
Elias tried to speak, but his throat was full of the heavy, cold mist. He reached out a calloused hand, his fingers trembling. As he touched her shoulder, the cloud beneath them began to thin. The weight of the world—the gravity he had lived by for fifty years—started to pull at his boots. "I can't stay, can I?" he managed to whisper. Clara turned, her eyes bright with the light