Reading

The light exploded, and Penny Rose dared to peek through her lashes, her eyes blinded for a moment by the brightness. Then the light subsided slightly, materializing into the concrete forms of letters, written in light, across the dark of the sky. They flew and burnt, twirling and cascading across Lucif's back, its marled fur gilded under each flying cipher. They whirled around the straining nose, the mirrored eyes, the bright, otherworldly blue of the marsh lights paling and fading by comparison. Penny Rose watched in wonder as they wrapped themselves in running gold around Lucif's muzzle, freeing the great eyes from their slavish gaze, the marsh lights receding imperceptibly until they had nigh disappeared, small, unseen glows at the base of the grasses.
And then Penny Rose realized she could make out words. Hope and love and freedom, she saw them running through the other letters, the letters of a million alphabets, she saw the words that she could read, and as she read, she could read more, and more. Freedom comes with the price of love, she read, and there is hope where minds still live on, and then, deeper, she read, the layers of letters revealing more and more words, more stories, stories she could sense, stories that made her mind sing, and the greatest songs of history. She stood, transfixed, her mind traveling through the letters, which now were casting themselves in waves in front of her eyes, and Lucif, awakened from its stupor, who had leapt back onto the safety of the marsh grass tufts, was watching as Penny Rose read.
The golden light lit her face as beautifully as nothing could have, and she suddenly looked much older. Or was it an older self that Lucif saw? A future Penny Rose, another Penny Rose, the one to come? Her hair waved and blew from around her face, cast back by the power of the words, and it, too, glowed from within as if it had caught afire from the magic around it. And then Lucif saw - the gold in the center of Penny Rose's eyes, the gold that was not reflection, but source. And it was, at that moment, that Lucif snatched the whirling box from where it hovered, wide and glowing, and immediately, the letters disappeared, the box shuttered itself, a rectangle with no opening once more, glowing but lightly, almost as if in reflection of something else. Slowly, Penny Rose came back to herself. Lucif watched as the gold faded slowly from her eyes, her hair coming to rest upon her shoulders once more, her hands drifting down to her sides.
Lucif bowed to her, and offered her the box. "Welcome to Madrin, Reader," it said, and bowed its huge head at her feet.