And presently there was brightness about them. It was a greater brightness than the tribesfolk had ever known. They knew daylight as a grayness in which one could see. Here was a brightness that shone. They were not accustomed to brightness.
They were not accustomed to silence, either. The noises of the valley were like all the noises of the lowlands. They had been in the ears of every one of the human beings since they could hear at all. They had gradually diminished as the valley dropped behind them. Now, in the radiant white mist which was the cloud-layer, there were no sounds at all, and the fact was suddenly startling.
They blinked in the brightness. When they spoke to each other, they spoke in whispers. The stone underfoot was not even lichen-covered, here. It was bare and bright and glistened with wetness. The light they experienced took on a golden tint. All of these things were utterly unparalleled, but the stillness was a hush instead of a menacing silence. The golden light could not possibly be associated with fear. The people of the forgotten planet felt, most likely, the sort of promise in this shining tranquility which before they had known only in dreams. But this was no dream.
They came up through the surface of a sea of mist, and they saw before them a shore of sunshine. They saw blue and sky and sunlight for the first time. The light smote their shins and brilliantly colored furry garments. It glittered in changing, ever-more-colorful flashes upon cloaks made of butterfly wings. It sparkled on the great lance carried by Burl in the lead, and the quite preposterous weapons borne by his followers.
The little party of twenty humans waded ashore through the last of the thinning white stuff which was cloud. They gazed about them with wondering, astonished eyes. The sky was blue. There was green grass. And again there was sound. It was the sound of wind blowing among trees, and of things living in the sunshine.
They heard insects, but they did not know what they heard. The shrill small musical whirrings; the high-pitched small cries which made an elfin melody everywhere,--these were totally strange. All things were new to their eyes, and an enormous exultation filled them. From deep-buried ancestral memories they somehow knew that what they saw was right, was normal, was appropriate and proper, and that this was the kind of world in which humans belonged, rather than the seething horror of the lowlands. They breathed clean air for the first time in many generations.