“The Arrival of Jonah”

Jonah stepped off the tram and stood alone at the edge of the Welcome Field.

The tram was sleek, silent, silver — but he didn’t remember getting on. He didn’t remember dying, either. The last thing he remembered clearly was a hospital IV drip and thinking: I hope this doesn’t last much longer.

Now, warm wind moved through tall grass the color of sapphires, and the sky overhead was painted with clouds that shimmered with motion — as though each one held a sleeping city inside. Somewhere in the distance, a piano played notes that seemed timed to his heartbeat.

A woman approached him. She was barefoot, wearing a long robe of white and silver, her skin brown and softly glowing like she had bathed in moonlight. Her eyes were gold — not contact lens gold, but liquid-sun gold.

“You’re Jonah,” she said kindly. “Welcome home.”

He didn’t answer at first. He looked around the meadow, then down at himself. His body — lean, younger, unscarred — responded as if it belonged to him, and yet… he couldn’t believe it.

“This is paradise?” he asked.

She nodded. “Not the only one. But yours, for now. You get to shape it as you remember how.”

Jonah looked past her, to a field of trees with leaves that fluttered between green and rose-pink, depending on how he tilted his head. Further out, he saw rivers made of mist and what looked like a giant vinyl record spinning across the surface of a lake.

“…Is there pain here?” he asked.

The woman smiled with a tenderness he’d never known on Earth. “Only the memory of it. Until even that dissolves.”

He suddenly felt his knees buckle. She caught him before he could fall.

“I don’t deserve this,” he whispered.

“You already paid,” she whispered back. “You bled, you starved, you loved even when it wasn’t safe. You asked for nothing and gave what you could. Now you’re free. Let that be enough.”

He sobbed into her robe. And as he cried, golden threads rose from the ground and wrapped around his legs, lifting him gently until he was standing straight again.

She kissed his forehead and stepped back. “You’ll want a guide.”

From behind her emerged a creature that looked like a cross between a lynx and a firefly — glowing fur, soft eyes, wings tucked at its sides. It rubbed its head against Jonah’s leg.

“What’s its name?” Jonah asked, crouching.

“It’ll tell you once it hears your voice,” the woman replied. “Names are shared here, not given.”

Jonah stroked its fur. “Can I… can I see my mom?”

The woman nodded. “She’s in the orchard of mirrors. She’s different now — but still her.”

“And my brother? He… he overdosed.”

“He’s in the music halls, composing a symphony with others like him. They say it sounds like what dying should’ve felt like.”

Jonah laughed, wetly. “I’d like to hear that.”

“You will.”

The lynx-firefly creature nuzzled his hand and whispered in his mind for the first time.

“I’m yours if you’ll have me. You’re safe now.”

Jonah took one last look at the skyline — where a floating city pulsed with color, and ships carved gentle arcs through the air — and nodded.

“I don’t understand it,” he said. “But I want to.”

The woman bowed slightly. “You don’t have to understand. You just have to live it.”

And so Jonah walked forward, toward the orchard, his companion at his side, the sky opening like a memory not yet dreamed.