The third time she wakes it's a slow, gradual process. She feels so weak, so tired, the effort required just to open her eyes is almost more than she can muster. But she knows something is different this time, because she can tell that she's lying on her back, and there is light above her, and voices around her. The first two times she awoke she was upright in the narrow cabinet, and everything around her was silent and dark.

The first thing to really register is a voice, clear and piercing and self-important, and so wonderfully familiar. She's tired and wants to go back to sleep, but that unmistakable voice has always demanded to be answered. She knows it won't stop and let her rest until she acknowledges it, so she pries her eyes open. It takes a few moments for her eyes to clear, and the voice natters on, leading her weak gaze to a blurry shape. Something moves fleetingly across her limited field of vision and she finally manages to focus.

She's not sure she can trust that these familiar faces are real, but a growing light draws her dark-adjusted eyes. It's a window, through which she can see part of the alien city – and beyond it, the calm surface of a vast ocean, and on the horizon a bright sun rising in glorious, radiant colors.

Atlantis has risen. It hasn't drowned in the cold water hundreds of feet below the air and light, and the fondly remembered faces around her now are real. They are alive and breathing.

"It worked," she thinks, not realizing she's spoken out loud.

It feels like the entire ten thousand years she's been asleep has all been lifted from her at once. It's exhilarating and exhausting, and it's too much effort to keep her eyes open in the face of so much happiness, so she lets them shut. She can finally let go, and the sleep that takes her is deep and dreamless.

But I have promises to keep,

And miles to go before I sleep,

And miles to go before I sleep.

From 'Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening' by Robert Frost

Fin