Foyer Here it is, he thought, here it is, the place I have come to, and why-- There the thought stopped, because he didn't have a why, and he didn't have a name for the place either, even as he stood up very tall, oh, very tall indeed, and stretched everything about him as high as it could go toward the vast painted ceiling. It all ached so strangely, and in a minute's eternity he would remember why it felt so old and new at the same time. There was much of him, several lengths of pale man and several more of wings, classical and bold in their trite beauty, though there was more to him than either man or spirit.
The foyer glittered from all angles, and though he had been in light far more intense, the candles' yellowed guttering hurt like new sunburn, hot car metal to the touch as the sun glared from the chandeliers. He blinked soot lashes that left wet trail as his eyelids helped nothing for shade. The feathers did better, thick, interlocked, held overhead like so many soft shields, and he held them up against the light, though the white made them glare. Yet he needed to see and he stared into the light through them, blinded but at least seeing through the blindness.
There was something else, something else under the strangeness of this place, something of purpose, something that was a heat unlike anything that could be made here. It was under his skin where it couldn't be seen. It hurt not like the light or the noise. It hurt like something else, something that was not gravity, that could not be shared or seen.