Light

 It's a warm summer evening. The sky is painted a vivid orange, as if someone had splashed a great can of paint across the horizon. The air is thick with the scent of jasmine and honeysuckle, and crickets chirp from the shrubs lining the sidewalk. A young woman, her long black hair pulled back into a messy ponytail, is sitting cross-legged on the front step of an old, ramshackle house. She's wearing a pair of faded jeans and a tank top, and she's idly twirling a strand of her hair around her finger as she watches the world go by.

Her name is Lily, and she's been living here with her grandmother for as long as she can remember. She's always known that her grandmother was different from other people; she had a sixth sense, a connection to the spirit world that most people simply couldn't understand. As a child, Lily would often visit her grandmother's old séance room, where they would hold hands and try to contact the dead. She'd never really believed in any of it, not until tonight.

Something feels different tonight. The air is charged with energy, like the world is about to change in some profound and unimaginable way. Lily can't shake the feeling that her grandmother is about to teach her something important, something that will change her life forever. She looks up at the old woman, who is sitting in a rocking chair on the porch, her wrinkled hands folded neatly in her lap, and wonders what secret she's about to reveal.

The sky turns a deeper shade of orange, and Lily's heart begins to race. She can feel the tension building in her chest, a mix of anticipation and fear. The world around her seems to fade away, and all she can focus on is her grandmother's face, etched with wrinkles and stories of a life well lived. The old woman looks up at her, her eyes twinkling in the dim light, and slowly raises a gnarled finger into the air.

"Do you see it, child?" she asks, her voice barely above a whisper. "Do you feel it?"

Lily nods, her throat tightening. "I see it, Grandmother," she says, her voice trembling. "I feel it too."

The old woman smiles, her lips curling into a knowing grin. "Good," she says. "Then you are ready."

With those words, a blinding flash of light fills the sky, and the world around them changes in an instant. The house, the porch, the crickets, the stars - everything seems to fade away, replaced by a swirling vortex of colors and shapes. Lily feels herself being pulled into the vortex, spinning faster and faster, until she can no longer tell up from down, left from right. And then, just as suddenly as it began, the spinning stops, and she finds herself standing in a place she's never seen before.

The air is cool and crisp, and the sky above her head is a deep, indigo blue, speckled with twinkling stars. She's no longer on the front step of her grandmother's house. She's somewhere else entirely. Somewhere magical. Somewhere real.