"So he left," Lysandra told Zephyr the next morning. "I can't believe everyone just accepted that he was gone so easily. Yesterday while I was sitting in my room at night, I kept thinking that I would hear him knock and announce that he was there."

"It'll take some time to get used to it," Zephyr said, reaching up and plucking a lone half-wire tree leaf from a branch above her head. The hybrid trees had begun to lose their leaves and scatter their bio-mechanical waste around the ...