1. Rima: The Mole People

                                    

                                              
                  
                          
I wake the instant my skin sizzles. I want to cry out, but not from the pain. The dream from which I've been wrenched was so dazzling I'm sure I've seen the real Skyworld.

                          
I lie in the underground dark and cradle my hand, nursing the fingers that accidentally brushed the tip of the electrode, the harsh energy source that still snaps and frizzes at me in angry violation. I wish I could put some cool water on the burn, some of the drips that streak the rough walls of the winding tunnel deeps, or bathe it in the icy water of the lake. We are forbidden from leaving our cavehomes before the lights hum with day spark, and the deeps are forbidden in any case, but the rules are not what hold me on my pallet. 

                          
I should sleep, should rest, to be ready for what's coming.
                          
My quick smile at this thought turns to a grimace as the pain sears, a piercing throb. 
                          
I'll cure this in the usual way. "Nan," I whisper, soft.
                          
Nan hums and spins to life by my left ear.
                          
"My hand, Nan," I breathe, and reach toward the noise, the comforting sweet noise, toward Nan.
                          
Nan's touch isn't cool like the drips, but it is, after the initial sharp stab, fast and painless. I feel the healing nanites as they go to work, see in my mind's eye the healing take place as the nanites swarm through my bloodstream, can picture how my skin would seem to rise and fall in waves, can sense how the billions of impossibly small nanites work on the cells of my skin, repairing, replacing. I can feel how my skin now softens and smooths and the burn is cured and I can fall back asleep, and maybe back into that dream.
                          
Nan returns to its place beside my left ear and morphs to my favorite globe-like shape, whirring down to a slow, low hum. Such power in such a small thing. Where would we be without Nan?
                          
In the Underworld, here in the underground, we are all part of Nan, the one made of many.
                          
The pain is gone. But now, I toss and turn. Sleep and the dream elude me. I sigh and press my fingers to my eyes. "Time?" I whisper, turning my head to the left. 
                          
As Nan forms an assemblage of microscopic green dots that form a number, I know already that it isn't time to meet Ari. It's too early. My heart begins to pound like the drum call as I think of him, and I toss, restless, longing for his touch. And then I think about what else will come soon after, with the day spark, and my heart pounds all the harder.
                          
To calm my heart and since I can't return to it through sleep, I give my mind over to reliving the dream because the memory of it is so sweet.
                          
I've seen that kind of blue only once - in a vid, when we were all watching together and the Mothers forgot to edit. Most of the people pretended not to see it, fearful; but I held onto it in my mind, that overarching, incandescent blue, and I wanted more.
                          
I want it now. In the black hollow of my underground cavehome, I want that blue. This is not my first dream of blue, but it feels more powerful this time. Something has shifted for me. It may be a portent of the change that is coming, for now I'm sure it's the blue of Skyworld.
                          
Skyworld. My dreams of the world above reinforces what I already know. I'm not like the others. I'm a freak. Different. No normal person in the Underworld dreams. No normal person wants to go above.
                          
And then there is my gift, the one I shared with Mama: in my mind, I talk to the plants that I tend in the greenhouse. Since I was little I've watched the fingers of those around me touch foreheads to ward off evil, even sensed in Nell lately some hesitation. The shunning has gathered force now that I'm of age at seventeen and especially since Mama's disappearance.