Story Seed - The Spine

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"Why do the towers protect us?" the child asked looking up at the great spires that marched off into the horizon in either direction. Beams of energy exited the top of each tower, creating a shield of sorts for miles to either side all along the length of the Spine.

The child's father looked down at his daughter and mused that sometimes the wisest questions came from the most innocent of sources. "They were left there by those that came before. They do what they do because that it what they were made to do."

"Jahan said his dad told him that the towers protect us 'cause we're special, an' the Gods want to protect us." The little girl was gazing upward at her father, eyes seeming overlarge and full of wonder.

"Jahan's father is a mystic and believes many things which are not supported by facts. Does that make him wrong? I do not know, but I know that what I believe is that which I can verify with facts and evidence." He picked his child up and set her on his shoulders. Pointing with one hand he said, "You see that tower far away there? That tower does not emit the energy that the other towers do, and the field that brings our mild weather and shields us from storms ends near there."

"Is it broken?"

"Yes, I believe it is."

"Can you fix it daddy?"

He was silent for a moment. He knew that the tower was the third to have failed. That the Spine has stretched for three more towers and a thirty miles more in his father's day. "I don't know," he finally admitted, "but I hope so."