My dear Nuala,

As we traveled on this black ship, and time wore on, I became aware of a progressive lightening and exultation of heart. A nightmare, long engendered in the modern mind by the mythology that follows in the wake of science, was falling off me. I had read of “Space”: at the back of my thinking for years had lurked the dismal fancy of the black, cold vacuity, the utter deadness, which was supposed to separate the worlds.

I had not known how much it affected me till now – now that the very name “Space” seemed a blasphemous libel for this empyrean ocean of radiance in which we swam. I could not call it “dead”; I felt life pouring into me from it every moment. How indeed should it be otherwise, since out of this ocean all the worlds and all their life had come? I had thought it barren: I now saw that it was the womb of worlds, whose blazing and innumerable offspring looked down nightly even upon the earth with so many eyes – and here, with how many more! No: “Space” was the wrong name.

I may yet find my way back to the womb of earth, to mother Geae, indeed even perhaps to witness her end of days and the grand apocalypse, but I shall do so with clarity of mind and enlightenment of soul. That singular thing even the gods themselves and these ignominious heathens cannot take from me.

I hope to see your empyrean face again very soon, my sweet sister.

Earnestly, Nuada