Once the intruders had gone, Ran-Del stood for a moment longer contemplating the strangeness of grass and flowers with walls around them. Then he began to explore the sitting room, going over every centimeter of it as carefully as he could. He inspected every piece of furniture—touched it, sniffed it, moved it if he could. He ran his hands over the walls and stood on a chair to touch the ceiling. When he was finished with the sitting room, he moved on and did the same to the bedroom and then the bathroom. Only when he felt that the rooms had no hidden traps did he relax enough to sit down and stare out the window again.
Finally, he sighed, rose, and opened the door to the garden. The lights came on when he stepped on the walkway and stayed on after he moved off of it. He stood on the short, grassy foliage that carpeted the ground and filled his lungs as deeply as he could. The scent of the night air was sharper here than in the forest. He breathed out slowly as he looked up at the sky. The house behind him was huge—four or five times as tall as the houses in his village. A much taller tower rose up out of the middle of it. Somehow the building glowed with an artificial luminescence.
Up in the night sky, three moons were up. Harmony was full, but Grace, and Tranquility were only slender crescents. Repose would come up later, after Harmony had set. Ran-Del knew it would be a half moon. The familiar golden shapes reassured him; in a world gone berserk, they at least, hadn’t changed.
He sighed again, and lay down on his back on the grass. The feathery leaves tickled his arms, and the night breeze blew cool across his face. Ran-Del closed his eyes and began the mantra for the First Discipline, repeating it over and over until samad state deepened. When he reached the point of control, he went through the mantra for each Discipline in turn, not invoking it but merely feeling the comforting presence of his own psy ability coalescing in his mind. He let his thoughts float free from his body as if he were watching himself lie on the grass. After a while, he drifted gently into a deep, profound sleep and dreamed that he was home.