Once upon an orbit of planet Fait, a playful young girl and her flustered yet resourceful single father must endure sickness, encounter exotic creatures, escape a predatory government, and outwit a wicked wizard to survive just one more day. Having...
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Clutching his daughter to his chest, Rene Naza ran fast, as never before. "Stay with me, my strong girl. I know, I know it hurts. It's going to be okay. It's all going to be okay. Daddy's with you. Daddy's got you."
His own pain was nothing. He could not see or think about anything except to keep his daughter pressed close to his pounding heart, assuring her with his calm, even voice that everything was under control, even though Rene himself was afflicted with the same sickness.
"Where's Mommy?" Nariah cried into her father's chest. In this moment she had lost track of time, and how many orbits it had been since her mother was around, was available to console.
"She's not here right now, strong girl. It's okay. I've got you. Your daddy's got you. I'm taking you to the medicine man. He's going to make you all better. You'll see."
If he could just keep his eyes on the darkness, the curves of the city. "Now hold on extra-tight. Whee!" He jumped to the crystalline transveyor track and skated with his feet down the long winding spiral. He leapt off and onto the next track over. He hopped them down from the South Tower to the East, through the very air. He went, "Whee!", he went, "Woo!" with each perilous leap, assuring her everything was okay.
Finally, he jumped off to a large mushroom cap. In the lower regions of Tetrapolis, enormous mushrooms grow on the inward-facing sides of the four supertowers, since it is so deep that not even sunlight can reach. Tetrapolitans call their "downtown" the Neath-as in, "be-Neath everything and everyone else." His daughter in his arms, Rene vaulted from cap to cap, lower and lower, into rising white fog.
"Medicine man?"
Rene kept his tone light and conversational, like he was not terrified at all. He intended it to comfort her, to distract her.
"Oh, yes, he's great. When Daddy was sick, your grandma and grandpa would"-another jump-"take him, too"-another giant mushroom-"When I was little. Before the towers. He's a very"-jump and fly, and fly, and land-"good man, a very nice"-jump and land- "medicine man, you'll see. I miss him. I wonder how he is. Do you think he'll remember me? Ria? Do you think?"
"D-Daddy always. My daddy."
"That's right, my girl. You know it, my girl." At moments like these he thought about his life before Nariah was born as if that was someone else's life, as if the world before his daughter was no real world at all, but just a short dream from which he happily woke when he saw her face for the first time. Such pure joy to meet her. Only then did his life truly begin, and life had meaning beyond and greater than himself, at last.
Finally, heaving for breath, sweat pouring down his face, Rene peered with his blurring eyes through the fog and saw the dome of stone perching there-same as he remembered from when he was a boy. Candlelight from within pulsed gently from between the ancient, First World stacked stones. No, that was not a chimney sticking out the top, it was a tree trunk. This was a place of healing, of peace. Where everything could be all right.
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The front door opened on its own as Rene staggered forward the last few steps. He coughed and something dripped from his mouth. Once inside the Sylva Dome, Rene plunged to his knees, and held out the trembling Nariah in his arms.
A large black shadow quickly unfolded and reached with its cooling feathers of darkness out toward the kneeling Rene and the small sick girl held out in her father's arms. Rene begged, "Ophiuchus, shinseon, please. She's all I have, all I love. Help."
