Limiridi's fur was a bright, shining red, darker than copper and more approximating the gleam of blood, but to her, it was the red of sunset across water, of scarlet chromafiber, and of her mother. Limiridi was a squirrel, and her tail flicked from side to side while she lay on the floor, staring up at the ceiling of her home, surrounded by knick-knacks and blocks and an infinity of old toys, of sketch pads half-filled and musical instruments and plates with crumbs, glasses emptied of milk, and somewhere in the mess, her communication device was hiding. And so likely was her other one, the old one, and the one before that. They tended to get lost every few months in the mess of the play room, and while it wasn't difficult to get a new one, her father would have yet more to say about how she needed to get focused and to think about being responsible, because someday, she'd rule the Ziggurat and it'd be his turn to play in the play room of their house while he waited out his old age, and there was no helping a Sio who couldn't even keep their communicators on them.

  But that was a long time off.

  Limiridi was barely an adult, at least, according to the cultural rules, but to her, she still felt very much like a child and didn't feel like getting out of the playroom anytime soon. But boredom was a powerful force. She sat up, tail twiching to a relentless youthful rhythm in her head and her paws stretching and little claws reaching sky high up toward the ceiling of their house, with the sunlight coming through gentle and white and clear. She yawned. Smelled the vanilla that was fed, metered, into their air. Felt the cool breeze coming from the air conditioners. Detected far off trundling steps from the various droids that pattered through the house, dusting floors and rubbing away scuffs and making sure the entirety of the home (excepting the play room) was spotless and pristine and would be worthy of her mother.

  Her tail stopped twitching.

  Then after a short sigh, Limiridi got up. She scampered on all fours, watching the walls glimmer as the chromafiber she wore reflected the beams of the sun into a constellation of blue sparkles that lit up the walls, all the way up to the glass parts of the ceiling, and then she summoned her speed and with a grin, shot through, past the observation rooms, past cleaner droids, past framed images of her and her father and her mother and her grandparents, all four, and a collected assortment of others captured in perfect photographic portraiture, all of them sitting quite regally with their wet noses in the air, and their tails held to a rigid curl that was supposed to symbolize control or some other thing. The halls were not exposed to the sun--the sun would fade the portraits, so the lights that focused on the portraits caught only the edge of Limiridi's sleeve as she shot past, sending the sparks of blue-green up, and then disappearing just as fast. And then at the end of the portrait hall, there was a stairwell which she leaped onto and swung on the bannister, scrabbling as she slipped but clinging and then descended in a swirl, tail balancing her, until she leaped off and into one of the many living rooms of their home, and without stopping, sprinted past shelves and shelves and shelves of books and trinkets and more photos and some paintings, over fine woven rugs that stretched for dozens of feet, over floors of real wood, past sofas and tables and more droids that worked endlessly to filter every single last little drop of condensation and micron of dust out, to be deposited in the waste chute, which was rather far off.

  She made it to the edge of their home. The sliding glass doors reached high, high up, and she touched the door handle and watched the mechanisms go, and she went out, onto the covered porch, squinting from the light outside since her eyes had adjusted to the interior.

  She saw grass.

  A full field of it, dotted with flowers, yellow dandelions that she could hold in both paws, bluebells she used to wear on her head for a laugh, crysanthemums that shaded the grass in patches, fruit shrubs, but above all; grass, full, thick, heady grass that was vibrantly green, glowing gold from within, cool to the touch, and waving in the manufactured breeze.

  And beyond it, there was the composite plated glass walls of their dome, rising in sheets, framed with tungsten steel, climbing, climbing, the squares rising and shrinking as they went, making a faceted dome of clear glass inlaid with the skeleton of tungsten that rose up and similarly thinned to her perspective like a massive spider's web.

  All the way up.

  To the top.

  Where the glass all met in an infinitely tiny little circle and she knew that that last piece was perfectly flat up there, leveled with a bubble, just a bit of the trivia her father told her when the Ziggurat was built. She was so acutely aware that that little circle of glass was a clear, flat plane, with only the clouds and sky beyond it. The tallest, possible point of their home.

  She sat on her hind paws at the very edge of the porch, and looked. Her father would be out, tending to the shrubs, maybe fussing over his tree. Sio Levid had a single plum tree, one being all that was needed to make him happy. To him, it was a hobby plant, and to her, it was a miracle. It was the sort of tree that had several additional species of plum grafted in, so while the main trunk was a Damson, there were Stanleys wedged in, little sour green Gages, rich purple Satsumas that seemed to explode with juice when they were cut into, and her favorite--Elephant Heart, which were massive, three or four times the size as the others, and a dozen times the size as the Gages. They tasted like Pomegranate sometimes, or like wine, which she didn't particularly like but she liked to reference as a flavor when she ate it.

  And sure enough, Limiridi could see her father toward the end of the field, a bent-over form with his own bushy reddish-brown tail high in the air as he fidgeted over the roots of his tree, which shaded him and left him as a dark silhouette against the light from the sky ahead.

  Limiridi felt her heart patter fast and she started to smile, and she leaped off the porch, onto the grass, and bounded as fast as she could, feeling fronds of that cool, sweet grass whipping by her face and the manufactured wind blowing through her fur and seeing the tree, looming taller and taller and more and more lovely as she could see the varieties growing off the trunk in different patterns of leaves, with different forms of blossoms shining on them in colors from white to gold to pink. She swiped at a dandelion flower as she shot past, and giggled to herself thinking about how that flower would quickly go from gold to shriveled to a sealed up bud that would then be full of soft cottony fluff, and with nutty little slivers like infinitely miniature almonds, and it'd open up and make a glorious little ball of white fluff not unlike the shape of their dome. She'd gather them in an armful and let it all loose in their house and watch the droids go after it all helplessly, sensing and beeping and coughing on them as they sucked them up. It'd cure her boredom then.

  But that was weeks and weeks and weeks off.

  Her father straightened quickly once he heard her sprinting through the grass. He was wearing a broad-rimmed sun hat even as he hunched in the shade of the plum tree, and his own chromafiber only made a subtle emerald green sparkle around him, but his hands were covered in dirt and his back paws were bare, as were Limiridi's, since it was their right, their home, their soil, their tree, and their rules, and while most animals wore shoes, it was a neat luxury to be able to walk on grass. These little bent rules were mostly Sio Levid's rules, but they'd become Limiridi's eventually, and she'd have her own quirks to put upon them.

  "Hello, Poppy," Limiridi addressed her father briskly as she bounded up and then scrattled up the trunk. She giggled as she climbed, reaching for branches and then soaring off of them, almost floating down to the ground, and then climbing, over and over. Her father wiped his forehead, sighing with a smile. His nose twitched and his eyes were narrow and bent down on the outer edges. He looked a little tired, but since Limiridi's mother died, he had always looked a little tired. At least he smiled this day.

  "My dear, my dear," he said kindly. "Don't go scratching the tree, now." When she leaped off and landed right next to him, he twitched back to dodge her tail as it swept down where his face was just a second ago, and then distractedly went back to the roots. He bent low and put his face to the ground and stared through a magnifying glass at a spot that he had dug out.

  "I'm so antsy, Poppy," Limiridi expelled. She ran up the tree again and then straight back down the trunk, her tail whipping behind her. "I'm bored. Bored bored bored bored bored--"

  Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on the original website.

  "Have you done your schooling?"

  "Yes!"

  "Have you practiced your harp?"

  "Yes, yes!"

  "Have you written letters to your friends at all recently?"

  "Yes, yes yes yes, and they like to wait for a week to write back. To be polite. I don't know why I'm writing. It gets scanned and digitally mailed anyway, so why can't I just type it? We already chat all the time on the communicators but I lost mine again--"

  Sio Levid made a huff and then straightened. "My dear--"

  "I know!" Limiridi huffed playfully right back and then finally settle down next to her father. "I'll get another one. What are you doing anyway, Poppy? I know you like to dig but the hole's rather small, isn't it?"

  "It's not a digging matter," Sio Levid said. His voice sounded only a little nervous but mostly exasperated that his daughter for the life of her couldn't keep a communicator in her pocket. These were basic life skills! "It's just that there's something. Something different about the roots, here, and it's making me nervous for some reason."

  "Call the gardener," Limiridi said eagerly. "I'll go get her. You want me to go get her?" She reared up and prepared to run off, again bouncing with an endless font of energy.

  Sio Levid shook his head and started to laugh. "No, no my dear."

  "What's wrong with them?"

  He put his paw over the side of his mouth and gave his whiskers a subtle, genteel scratch, in one direction, so as not to look like an uncouth animal. "Oh. Just discoloration. It's nothing. The tree seems healthy but... ah. Nevermind. Now, are you sure about your schooling? If you're bored you could always learn ahead--"

  "Oh, Poppy, I don't want to do that!" Limiridi suddenly bounced up the tree, and climbed it, all the way to the top, her bushy tail disappearing as she made it past layer after layer of branches. Sio Levid looked up and squinted, trying to see his daughter through the mess of limbs. Then she came right back down without even looking, and Sio Levid could see that the top branches up there were now making a gentle sway after Limiridi had made it all the way to the thinnest tip of the tree.

  "You'll need to," Sio Levid warned her as she hit the earth and giggled, still moving, still a blur of red fur and sparkling chromafiber. "The world is changing again. Those who know will be those who survive."

  "Oh, survive, like we need that," Limiridi said. "We own the Ziggurat, don't we? We have the solar farms and the mines and our manufactory and Rarity's awfully good at his job--"

  "Rarity is a security expert, not a general," Sio Levid said quietly. "And I feel that the world will soon require generals. A great many."

  Limiridi slowed finally. She panted in squeaks and her smile faded. Her eyebrows furrowed, only in the naive way that young animals furrow them when they start to realize that not all is well and boredom is not the only curse. Her brows furrowed to match her father's. "What... what do you mean, Poppy?"

  Sio Levid held still. He tried not to look worried. Then he looked down at the tree roots and thought for a moment and fretted internally about how much he needed his daughter to know. He looked back up at her and saw her growing more worried. But at the same time, she drew up to her full height, her face growing serious, and that expression, the same as her mother's, the one that drew a thin, grim determination that made difficult choices. She was her mother's child.

  And with that, Sio Levid decided he would tell her.

  "My dear," he said slowly, and then guided her to come sit with him at the edge of the shadow of the tree. They sat and looked out to the field, out to their home, a veritable mansion on an artificial hill, and with the landscaped plain all around them forming the green of their ecosystem, the dome overhead, and the sun and the sky and the clouds out there. "My dear, my dear. You... you know about the glass on this dome, don't you?"

  Limiridi nodded.

  "You know how it... it doesn't let the full spectrum of light into here, you see?"

  Limiridi nodded again.

  "The light that comes through is only a portion of the actual light that comes from the sun. The color out there, my dear... You know it is different. You see it when we go down into the Ziggurat and look outside. You see it when we go on our travels. The sun, here, is gentle enough for us to stand in the full light that comes through but only because the glass... changes it. Out there, the skies are colored. Some days, they are a dense orange, devolving into red at the time of sundown. Some days, they are almost green, silvery, and everything is washed out into a sickly color. And when there is no cloud cover at all, no polluted clouds or thick, inpenetrable storms, the full light of the sun, out there, is enough to bleach plastic, to burn animal skin, to blind, if the appropriate protective measures are not taken. This world is different, the light is different than it used to be, and this glass makes sure the only light that comes through is--enough."

  Sio Levid took a deep breath. "It used to be that this land had what were called seasons. This was long, long ago. There was a wet one, a warm one, a cooling one, a cold one that sometimes had snow or hail, and then it'd go back to wet, with gentle rains. Not ones that swept away the land, but instead slowly filled it with water so that grass was everywhere. But what we have now that most closely approximates it are the storm cycles, and the heat cycles. That was a change. The world was different, and now it is this way, and that's why we have the ziggurats, and why animals no longer live in burrows or houses anymore."

  Limiridi could see where her father was going. "And it's going to change again?"

  "Yes." Sio Levid nervously groomed his whiskers. One direction. He lifted his chin and tried to look dignified, but knew that his nervousness was getting through. "This time, I fear that the changes will not be in the weather, but in the animals." He patted his daughter on the paw. "We are safer, here. At the top. We have our Ziggurat below, and yes, we have Rarity, who is a master of security and defense, and we know that he is honorable and that his family's debt to us is the whole purpose and quest of his life. But the world is changing. There are rumors. Many of them. And while I never condone making decisions based off rumors, right now there is a flurry of them, all pointed in the same direction. You didn't know about these, did you?"

  Limirido solemnly shook her head.

  "No, of course, because I have kept you... from them." Sio Levid's eyes shut tight. He breathed fast for a moment. Limiridi could see how her father was thinking, thinking hard. Eventually his breathing slowed and he looked up and let his tail twitch freely. He spoke to his daughter without looking at her. "This glass... it should remind us that what we experience is not the same as the other animals. We do not see what they see. We are shielded from the truth, my dear. We are shielded from the full light of reality, and it allows us to enjoy our boredom. But if the glass were to break, we would have a very different life here. For one, our grass would likely be unable to grow. But now you are old enough." He turned to his daughter. He smiled at her. "We are at the top of this Ziggurat, and that makes us safe. Yes. But at the same time, we have to think. We have to be smart, like our ancestors. We built this ziggurat so animals could be safe within it, and so that the world could continue, and if we're to keep doing that, we have to make smart decisions. For one, I will be asking Rarity to deliver me a report on how we can establish a militia of sorts within the Ziggurat from our citizens. And for some weapons and, perhaps, some upgrades to the outer gates."

  Limiridi nodded, but her gaze was fixated on a pair of binoculars close to the hole that her father had dug. "Poppy," she said, "what are those?"

  "Ah," he reached over and handed them to her. "Look through that end. See--you can see farther."

  Limiridi looked through, and her jaw dropped. She gasped. "My!" She spun, and pointed them toward their mansion. "My! Poppy! You didn't tell me we had these!"

  "Well, I must have accidentaly held on to them when I came out here," Sio Levid said, similarly distracted. "I think I was trying to look at the tree from afar, but then wanted to come out here, and--"

  But Limiridi was already gone.

  She took off, toward the edge of the dome, running until the field of grass had a solid end, where a concrete shelf marked the final edge of their field and the grass stopped and turned to flat gray with the glass butted straight up against it, and she stood on that gray, on the tips of her claws, and peered out, through the glass of the dome, out to the ravaged world beyond, where the soil had eroded to clay, where the mountains were chipped, where only the lifted magrails that led from the Ziggurat out to the rest of the world made tracks through the earth. She could see clearly, see the gleam of the rails and the movement of trade cars that hovered and slid along, swapping in and out and carrying the occasional goods. She could see faded roads, underneath, hardly in use anymore. She could see the mountains ahead, capped with a little bit of frost, and below it--

  "What?" Limiridi asked nobody. "My, my," she turned, and yelled out across the field full of flowers and toward the blossoming plum tree where her father watched her quietly and proudly in its shade, "Poppy! There's mice! Headed straight for us!"

  She turned back and studied them. "Oh. Oh, dear," she said, quietly now. "Those poor mice. They look awfully tired." Then she saw one of them slip and fall and slide a little down the hill. "Oh!"

  Her heart broke.

  She turned toward her father, who was walking calmly now, in full control of himself, with a stately gait that betrayed the fact that he was not, in fact, an uncouth animal, but a Sio, as she would someday soon be. "Poppy!" She yelled, "I'm going to go help them!"

  "Talk to Rarity first, my dear!" Her father called back. "I want you to make a habit of it from now on!"

  Limiridi, without answering, ran off, leaving the binoculars on the edge of the concrete. Sio Levid maintained his walk and then picked them up, brushing them off, and then peered through to look for the mice his daughter had noticed. Not seeing them, he turned right around, and walked toward the plum tree again, thinking of the discoloration in the roots, absentmindedly dropping the binoculars in the grass. He started to hum to himself, dreaming now of Limia, his love, his sparkling ruby, his only Limia, who was taken by a mysterious infection, just ten years ago.