Percy stepped out of the train and into a place more beautiful than he thought any god could create, even if they had eons.
The gravel underneath his feet crunched with a brittleness akin only to walking on compacted snow. Spruce and pine trees covered in a soft glaze of frost enveloped the little station where the train had stopped, and Percy smiled as he saw a Hyperborean giant atop a nearby hill peacefully humming, playing with two moose he had plucked from the ground.
He continued outside the station and followed a quiet dirt road that wound up valleys mountains as far as the eye could see.
The sun warmed his back as he walked along the road, gently melting away the soft morning frost. It was silent with a stillness only found in the absence of man.
The trees moved with a lulling and melodic sound, as the animals within them lazily stirred in wake of the new day. The biting air tasted like a mix between mint and nutmeg, and it cooled Percy's lungs with a freshness he hadn't ever felt before.
He understood with a painful nostalgia why this was the land beyond the gods.
Everything here was rough and untamed; the snow-capped peaks looming in the distance and glaciers on the horizon of the sea – the raw power that radiated from the Earth was unbound and dared anyone to try to harness its essence.
He was free from a life of hardships and angst, unaffected by the presence of higher powers in this melancholic land, where he could forge his own future. That was something few people would dare even dream.
But he had made it – he was in Alaska, and for what it was worth, he was home.