I stand at the base of a great tree, or something that looks like a tree. It is huge, larger than the largest skyscraper I have ever seen. Its trunk is the deepest black, darker than the night sky. It is the pure negative black of a black hole, absorbing all light. And yet there are lights there. The grain of the trunk seems made up of thin filaments of light, microscopic, glowing strands forming patterns, whorls, and knots in the vast surface of the giant. Those random patterns contain images and symbols that shift and change as I look at them, like the runes of ancient lore. A huge spread of branches blots out the whole sky, covered with leaves holding a scattering of stars in their depths. Each and every vein of each of a million leaves glows and shimmers with light and motion. The ground is covered with the tree’s many roots, spreading out as far as the eye can see in every direction. The tree is the whole of the landscape, the only thing in this place other than me. The center of this whole universe.