I awoke in my inner space, sphere awaiting silently below the water. The water's surface was completely flat, resembling a glass floor. Just like a glass floor, I could now walk on it, but tiny ripples spread outwards from my feet whenever they touched the surface.

When the ripples crossed over the sphere, they made the image of it shimmer, as though it was a reflection. Almost as soon as I thought this, the space filled with a radiant light. I looked up, and was shocked to see a moon hanging in the sky, its dim glow a mirror image of the sphere's warm hues. I idly wondered if - should I come in here while I was awake - their roles would be reversed.

When I looked back down, I almost jumped back. Celistar was sitting in a lotus pose just above the reflection of the moon, hovering slightly over the surface. She looked more transparent than normal.

"Welcome," she said, "I've been waiting for you."

"Hello!" I said brightly, "So this is where you went." I paused and looked around. "Shouldn't I be welcoming you though?"

Celistar's signature laugh filled the area - it almost tickled your ears. "I suppose you are right. This is your space, not mine. I also suppose I should apologize for barging in. I didn't really have much time, and explaining the process to you may have made it more difficult to accomplish. You've already got enough power to keep someone out of here if you are actively trying."

"That's good to know. Wouldn't want it to get to be too much of a party in here. I'd be spending my dreams catering food and drinks."

She seemed confused, "I don't require any additional sustenance beyond what your energies provide me. I was originally worried about the strain, but it appears you have enough reserves that I am but a drop in a pond. How did you ever manage to obtain so much?"

"So much what?" I asked, genuinely confused.

"Internal energy," she said, "Your teacher should have explained it to you when they helped you create your Core."

"Oh, I had no teacher," I said, "I accidentally absorbed a feather we pulled out of a rift in my time, then I later fell through another rift that opened in a very weird way. Then I wound up back in the time I met you in. I fell out of the sky, landed, then sucked in a bunch of different colors, created my Core and that weird thing I met you in today, then wandered off and got sucked into a bird."

Celistar's face went through a range of expressions as I narrated my progress, mostly surprise.

"I thought you had something to do with it, or maybe did it directly," I mentioned, "But it seems that was not the case."

"Certainly not," she replied, "I had no idea you were even there until after you had created your Core, as it were. Considering what you've told me, you shouldn't have survived it. Typically, you create a core around one Alignment, or perhaps in a lucky case, two that were similar. The issue is that, for your kind especially, it is very difficult to get the Alignments under control.

"The best and the brightest can get two or maybe three Motes to coalesce together, but usually the discord between them will tear apart your soul before the Core can condense. Motes tend to be highly opinionated, and disagree over minor things."

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"I had many of each Alignment, as near as I could tell," I recalled, remembering the different feelings washing over me, "And they all seemed to get along fairly well, but I remember that once I started condensing my Core, as you said, they seemed to get a little agitated. Luckily, that was when this one super bright one came down and kind of shushed all the others. My core pretty condensed itself after that."

"Hmm," Celistar was deep in thought for a moment. "That is… I have never heard of anything like that before." She bent down to the water, and reached a single, dainty finger towards it. Looking at her posture, I mentally added wings to get the perfect picture of a fairy reaching out. Something about the way she held herself. Her finger glowed, and immediately I saw many colors of Motes appear out of the water and rush forward, like I imagined the fish in the pond I'd first met her at must do whenever someone came to feed them.

She seemed startled by the intensity, and the light around her finger quickly winked out. "Well, that is something. It appears you have nearly every Alignment in here, as far as I can tell. I am not sure how you even found them all."

"They came with me," I said, nodding at the swarming Motes that were slowly fading away. "When I came through the Rift. I didn't realize they were still around until you did that neat trick just now."

"Nothing that you can not also do," she said, gesturing at the space, "All of this is a part of you, after all. The Motes will forever be part of your story, as it were. They are as indelible as your soul is."

"Fair enough," I replied, not even pretending to understand everything she just said. Although something in it jogged my thoughts a little: "So, you said 'your kind'. What are you then?"

"A natural spirit. Specifically speaking, I'm affiliated with celestial objects."

"Makes sense for a moon lady," I said, and the corners of her lips turned up a bit, "Is that where the name comes from?"

"Oddly enough, no." She replied, but didn't elaborate at all. I wasn't about to pry, I had enough concerns of my own to care about the naming habits of spirits.

The silence after this stretched a few moments, feeling almost itchy to me. Eventually, I broke it again.

"So, you live here now? Like the Motes?" I asked, pointing down at the floor.

"In a matter of speaking, yes. If you wished, you could easily eject me, you have enough inner power to extinguish me where I stand, to be honest, it's almost overwhelming. But I couldn't stay in your world, either. It was all I could do just to find my way here. The Will of the World is even weaker than I expected in your time. Had you shown up much later, I'd have already ceased to exist. For now I suggest you consider me a guest at your leisure."

What an awful thought that was, waiting for however long for someone and knowing that if they didn't find you that was it, the end. I couldn't even imagine.

"I'm sorry," I said, "It must have been lonely."

"It could be, at times. The last few hundred years were the toughest, watching everything suddenly fade and die. But it was clear it was worth it now." She started quiet, but got stronger towards the end, which in itself said a lot. There also was something in her words that spoke of a secret. It reminded of me of what István said, how history just kind of ended at a certain point, or rather, got hard to find.

"My, uh, new boss has thoughts on that as well. Like something bad happened about when you mentioned," I said, "And everything went downhill from there."

She didn't respond to that, just sitting quietly. I felt like a bad host.

"Is there anything I can do to help?" I asked, kind of gesturing about the world around us.

"Oh," she seemed to brighten up a bit. "No, it's fine, I'm just still recovering from everything. It'll take a while before you hear from me again. I need to recover my 'self' or I risk getting lost in here - your power is both a boon and bane to me. It's very calm and controlled, but I find myself having to consciously resist it bringing me into the fold. But the same overwhelming flow your power has is what is supporting me now. If it was not for that I'm not sure what would have happened…"

She trailed off and a slight shiver ran through her frame, which seemed even more ghostly than it had been. It worried me. She had said that this world we were in was mine, so I did my best to send warm thoughts her way.

As soon as I did this, she looked around in fear wildly, for a moment, before calming down as a small smile settled on her lips. Her presence grew a little.

"Thank you."

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