The five teenagers found themselves on their second official outing to a Chewlete "village."
Zack still thought it was the weirdest thing to call it that. "Village" implied tiny huts, dusty streets, and maybe a goat or two. But that place? That place looked like someone took the idea of a utopia and then overclocked it.
There, homes weren't built—they were grown. Towering trees had been shaped into multi-tiered dwellings, their branches braided and woven to form balconies, bridges, and winding staircases that shimmered with bioluminescent veins.
Floating crystal gardens drifted lazily in the air, their blossoms glowing faintly like captured moons. Entire observatories and terraces rotated gently in orbit around the main trunk of a home, held aloft by unseen forces. In the central square, massive faceted towers—grown from translucent minerals—rose like living monuments, refracting light in shifting rainbows.
And the air… it smelled faintly sweet, like cold fruit in summer.
