A short story in three parts

Part Two: Maen

As we know, on the planet Orilen, there were no fossil fuels.

Not because the Orileni were wise – at least, not at first – but because their world left no remnants of the past buried deep enough to rot into fire. No coal seams. No oil fields. No gas pockets. The dead returned to the living in days, not eons.

They learned to live by the rhythms of their world: wind that pulsed, sun that danced, rivers that hummed. They shaped tools from light, built cities with air, and stored energy in coiled stone and magnetic webs.

In the seaside city of Naren-Kai, a ten-cycle-old child named Maen wandered through the spirals of her learning pod.

She was small and sharp-eyed, obsessed with broken things. While others her age sketched star-birds and coded wind poems, Maen pried open old wave turbines and rewired defunct gliders. She had questions, always questions.

One day, she found something forbidden.