“Robbers! Get the quantafruit!”

  “We aren’t robbers!” Luneth’s voice said.

  “Why’re you see through!?”

  “I’m a moonfolk from the Moonsea. I mean no harm. My friend’s from…somewhere no one knows, but he’s nice too.”

  Once I stopped spasming I crawled up, my nice ocean robes that once been Reed’s burned and steaming. There were three little svarks, pointy-eared and blonde-to-blue hair, standing around us. Each of them wasn’t much taller than two feet.

  “We’re not robbers,” I agreed.

  “Why’d you steal the quantafruit then, huh friend robber?”

  Several static arrows appeared pointing to my hand that held the crackling apple as well as question marks. “I thought this was just like a forest. I didn’t know I wasn’t supposed to take it…you can have it back.”

  “It’s no good not on the tree! Ahh! Bad news, friends Teribeth, Thundrew.”

  The one called Thundrew had fully azure hair jagged like lightning. “What should we do with them Flara?”

  The one he had called Flara had a long shining golden braid. She sighed.

  “I suppose we call them visitors, Thundrew.”

  The short-haired one that I supposed must be Teribeth said, “I will go tell Mama Sun!”

  She sped off on a ball of lightning before the others could object. Which they did. Then they turned to us and guiltily introduced themselves.

  “Flara Sun, pleasure. Welcome to the Orchard of Suns!”

  “Thundrew Sun, pleasure. Welcome to the Orchard of Suns!”

  I shook both of their hands eagerly. I wanted to tell them about my old friend Tamiro, who I missed, and leave out the parts about the Dream Lobster.

  “Come join us for tea!” Flara said.

  “Thanks but we’ve got like a whole crew…”

  “Pleeasssse!” Flara and Thundrew begged with the air storming around them. “We do not often get visitors!”

  “Look let me tell my crew what’s going on. Can we each bring a date or something?”

  The svarks nodded, and withdrew gliding over the still stellar orchard. In the distance I could see a lighted structure like glass infused with light. Knowing the svarks it was an electric field or something.

  I exchanged a glance with Luneth. “Well that’s…an interesting turn. It’s probably best if we at least go to tea so we don’t offend them.”

  Luneth, being a moonfolk and transparent, apparently also had other disadvantages. He tried to carry Wilia, but failed. Before she went back belowdeck, I gave her the quantafruit to study.

  So it was that Val and I, and Luneth, flew back for tea. When we landed on the static grass I deployed Lancie and explained to her what was going on.

  “So…I’ll have to drink the weird plant water, even if I do not like it?”

  “Especially if you don’t like it,” Val said.

  “Fine. I’ll remember this, Daniel.”

  I winced. We walked through the silent orchard where little black holes swelled like fruits. And quantafruits twinkled on the vine. Several times I was tempted to pick another, but I refrained since the Suns had been so upset earlier.

  We wandered an electric path that led us coursing with energy to a ranch-style structure built of what looked like glass. It looked like a greenhouse but it was filled with fluxxing light. The door opened and Thundrew waved.

  “Welcome! Come on, Mama Sun started tea in the meantime so it’s nearly ready!”

  You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.

  I thanked Thundrew and went in. These walls were made of glistering electricity, so fine they were nearly transparent, like magnetic fields. Luneth examined them closely. Together he and the wall made an almost solid pair.

  “Very fine electritecture,” he complimented Thundrew and Flara who both waited at a wide low table.

  We knelt there as the chairs were actually tiny and hazardous. “Sorry,” Flara squeaked in apology as she channeled to move the electrical emanations with [Move Lightningform].

  “It’s really fine,” I insisted. “I brought my friend Valietta, Val this is Thundrew Sun and Flara Sun…”

  As they began to introduce themselves to Val, bright light shone into the chamber from a farther corridor.

  “Mama Sun!” Thundrew and Flara squeaked. “We have visitors!!”

  “I see that.”

  Mama Sun conjured two crackling butterfly wings of lightning and rode them to pose calmly before us. She was small and wrinkled, and her hair white but absolutely radiant with light that shone from within it. Even her eyes were gold and ebullient.

  “Hello visitor friends! I’m Mama Sun, but if that’s too much call me Dawn.” She beamed, then looked around seriously. “Customarily we distill some fine spirits here, not sure if you folks knew that or what…”

  “I thought it was like an orchard,” I ventured.

  “Oh, it is. The Orchard of Suns. That’s us and here! We do stuff other than watch trees grow, however, friend…”

  “Daniel,” I supplied.

  “Friend Daniel. We are not just a simple orchard here. We have been frequented by many explorers and legends over the aeons! We are a vineyard of potential. Why, every queen of Melpompne has drank here--”

  “Balira drank here?” Val interrupted. “The new queen, I mean?”

  “Friend Val, that new queen’s ass has barely touched the throne, if you pardon my language. Give her a couple decades to make the time!!”

  Val scoffed. Mama Sun waved her hand and a [Lightningform Conjuration] of three goblets appeared before us bristling.

  “What I intend to serve you is no simple beverage. Make no mistake. It is quantized, which means there is a certain level of I-don’t-know-what-happens-next.”

  Mama Sun smiled, which seemed to quell my concerns. Her children poured the quantea. It had a dark iridescent quality. If I looked closely it had deep rippling lights. Val clinked her glass to Luneth, then me.

  “Cheers,” she said.

  Luneth raised his glass. “Clorandine, though I know not where you are, please proceed with grace.”

  Essence cascaded from him. He drank from the goblet as his [Grace Prophecy] rippled and silver threads wrapped from his body and downward deeper into Weywyrd. Wherever his apparently-alive fiance Clorandine was.

  “To the Fool’s Errand,” I said and drank.

  Almost at once I was back in the prime space, the space between, with viridian quantum pillars and rooms drifting. Except now everything crackled with the low electricity like the Sun house. The purple pigeon fluttered up and apparated into several wings that folded revealing the purple angel Maea.

  “Daniel! We keep running into each other!”

  “Are you going to tell me I made an interesting choice now? Since what happened to Brufo? Are you happy about that?”

  She frowned, her brow glitching. “NO!! Of course not! How could you think that Daniel?”

  “How long do I have to stay here anyway?”

  “Actually, at least an hour.”

  “An hour!?!”

  “You all drank a dram of purified quantea. What did you think would happen?”

  “Normally when a svark brewer gives you a cup like that you drink it slowly. Although I am an angel, I can’t explain every nuance, Daniel.”

  “Wait, is Val here?”

  “That red-haired girl? Why, no. She…can’t really come here like you. She has her own correlations, and her own nightmares. She has places you can’t go, even if you want to.”

  “So where’s here?” I demanded.

  Maea laughed mockingly. “What do you want to call it? Heaven?”

  “How about Neverwyrd?”

  “Good. Neverwyrd, then. Come, we have a bit of time…”

  I walked through the dark boulevards with her. The void giving birth to shadows of a city. Bushes, streetlamps calling dark light blooming about us as we ambled on. At one place I called forth some figments by flinging my hand out. A laboratory, such as was on the Fool’s Errand, and a boba shop.

  “This is the kind of stuff that’s on the Fool’s Errand. But why is there a lab, Maea? Do you have a plan for this? No one aboard is a scientist!”

  “Oh you poor thing.” Maea brushed my cheeks as though I had tears. “There is no plan. Just hope. Hope and recursion. It is all we’ve ever been able to do.”

  So I found myself sitting at tea with her, at a corner cafe served by quantized figments of a waiter. The waiter’s face was a fuzz of static as he poured a cup of steaming blue-green tea for me and Maea. Better than a lobster face anyway.

  “If I drink this am I going to pass out and be trapped somewhere else for an hour?”

  “No, haha. Didn’t you read the sign? This is the Realitea House. I wouldn’t give you double quantea. Is…Neverwyrd feeling fuzzy at all yet?”

  “Maybe a little.” I took another sip of the realitea.

  I saw Val in my grainy vision, coming back overtop this never-dream, over me, meaning she was back there, and my heart jumped with hope.

  “That’s cute,” Maea said, “that you feel that way about Val. Say your goodbyes to the girl though. Something is coming for you.”

  “Now!?” I asked but it was suddenly like talking to a shell void.