Beautiful chapter, Corinna!

You know, when I read your description of New Krypton and its people, I keep thinking of "fearal children", those that have been abandoned not only by their proper but by their entire society and by everything that is typical of their species, and they grow into sad shadows of what they should have been.

New Krypton is a place of dearth. There is a lack of everything: water, food, heat and proper sunlight. And perhaps worse, there is a lack of human warmth, of smiles and laughter, of tears, of dreams and imagination, of stories. I think it was HappyGirl who said that all humans everywhere smile and laugh, and surely all people everywhere tell stories, too. Surely everyone does? Who has ever heard of a people without a shred of mythology, of stories about the past and about the world beyond?

And then there is the physical touching. Well, customs vary, and the popularity of touching may vary, too. But for all of that - it was heartbreaking to read about Kal's absolute lack of familiarity with a simple hug, and it was heartbreaking and heartwarming at the same time to see how he reacted to it like a seed in the desert reacts to the first rain that has fallen there for years and years - as if this was the most wonderful thing ever, something this seed has always dreamt about without knowing it, and now that it has experienced it, nothing will ever be the same again. The seed can't help but bloom, putting out splendid flowers.

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Kal's lack of understanding of what a story is, what a joke is and what a hug is, and Lois's way of showing him this these magical things - well, it was wonderfully told by you.

In a way, this story reminds me in its theme about Dante's Divine Comedy, except it is like the other way around. In Divine Comedy, Dante himself is the visitor who is guided through Hell by Hell's noble but heathen resident, the Roman poet Virgil.

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But in your story, Lois is the visitor who is gently guiding Kal, "the noble heathen", "out of Hell", showing him a possible, so much brighter future.

Or maybe Lois is Kal's Beatrice, the woman who guided Dante through Heaven. Admittedly New Krypton is so far from anybody's Heaven, but when Kal is enveloped in Lois's arms, "draped" in all of her body, then surely heaven is not far away.

Ann