Earth ended how it began—with a bang.

Those who survived The Great Implosion would remember their once marbled planet as a smoldering speck in their red-rimmed eyes as space crafts that had been built for intergalactic travel but never known it ferried them out of the radioactive smog and into the Milky Way. Jetting through the atmosphere as test subjects in an experimental escape to save humanity was a risk passengers who could pay the right price were willing to take—one many thought they wouldn't survive until they woke up on the G-type star Niccoran's third world.

The displaced Earthlings crash landed on a continent that had looked like a sleeping mountain goat from outer space. It was there they settled and called their new home Helithica. The fuel from the airships that hadn't broken apart pushing through the atmosphere went to stone and timber cutters to cultivate the landscape. All but a few of the tip-top airships were cannibalized, and the colonists took up work as farmers, breeders, fishermen and timber miners.

The flora and fauna was so akin to their home planet that some speculated they hadn't leapt through space but time and were back on an infant Earth, the only blip in this theory a colossal forest with gargantuan trees no arbor enthusiast recognized. The tree line stretched further than any eye could see, that any boot was willing to tread. Curiously, the trees could not be chopped down nor razed, their thick hides dulled every blade. Herbalists recognized nothing of great quantity or importance that grew there, though it was difficult to tell; the limbs grew closely together, the boughs were dense and the canopies so thick and entangled, it was a wonder anything flourished on the forest floor at all. It was dank, dark and the undergrowth too dense for big game, and yet, those dumb or brave enough to venture in complained of feeling watched, hearing growls, snaps and howls, and swore that if you ventured in far enough for the birdsong to stop, voices you weren't sure were inside your head or out would start clamoring for your attention. It was even rumored a few venturers were never seen again, though when questioned, not a single someone could put a name to a decidedly missing face. It reminded most of the enchanted forests that pepper fairy tales—the ones that swallow up princesses and spit out monsters, where witches live comfortably, awaiting weary travelers to persuade to part with their souls in exchange for black wishes. It became a source of mystery Helithicans avoided, serving as little more than a backdrop in parents' stories about the horrors that befall children who misbehave.

That is, until the incident.

The legend goes that a couple of kids gave their caretaker the slip and took up a game of daring each other to approach the dreaded woods, round-robin style. During the antics, a small someone not of their ranks peeked out from behind a tree. Naturally curious in the way that children always are, they invited the stranger out into the open to play a new game they would never begin, for upon closer inspection, they discovered she wasn't quite like them—her eyes were too big, her limbs too long, her ears too pointy, and her clothes strange.

The screams could be heard all the way in town.

No one's sure what happened next; the children were hysterical in their recollections. But they all agreed: her face had slipped to make way for another, bone-white and not the least bit human.

A delegation returned to the spot to investigate but found no one. There was nothing odd but the trees, as quiet and conspicuous as they had always been.

It would take many more orbits around Niccoran for anyone to believe that what the children had seen was anything more than a fantasy.

With every new generation, Earth receded from Helithican history until tales of the Gone World degenerated into myths tweaked by scribes and embellished by orators.

For many orbits, the shared sophistication and commonality it takes to rebuild civilization generated little more than good intentions—until they didn't.

As their ancestors' mistakes and triumphs faded into obscurity, small minds thought to create their own, their crimes catalyzed by the curse that Helithicans were aging faster than they could reproduce. It was a plague with unknown causes they'd known on the Gone World, though it had been largely speculated starting over on a planet that had never known a carbon footprint might reverse the dry spell. It didn't. And some weren't willing to wait.

The women who had proven themselves able to conceive were fought over, their abductors the first to leave for new frontiers. On the cusp of this malevolence, the remaining fuel stores were depleted, stoking tensions. What loose laws were in place disintegrated, elected leaders dethroned, and communities fractured and split as humankind suffered the same intellectual pitfalls that had cost its forebears a world.

Unknown to them, they had an audience.

An entire orbit afflicted by skirmishes, bloodshed and chaos passed before creatures not human broke from the treeline of that otherworldly forest to make themselves known.

All had eyes that were too big, limbs that were too long, ears that were too pointy, and wore bone-white masks—a precaution, they explained, for to the colonists' surprise, the visitors spoke a stunted version of their language.

The creatures had been watching, learning their language and ways, researching how best to approach and introduce themselves—faeries, indigenous to this world, never mined, felled trees or hunted game but only took what the earth freely gave; they ate roots, seeds, fruits, and lived in the Holóspiritus, their word for that fantastical forest.

Having observed and listened to the humans lament their gone world, ripped asunder by unchecked industrial power and consumption, the faeries thought they had the perfect solution to prevent another implosion and had come bearing gifts: seeds that grew into resilient, plant-based organisms that were responsive to touch and basic telepathic thoughts. Much like a pet, familiarizing a young seedling with a single someone's touch would make it responsive to that human once it matured. The organisms could be instructed to grow projections that could serve as walls, ceilings, furniture, and even grow food that could taste like anything from bananas to venison. Should a resident want a chair or a decadent mushroom, all they had to do was touch where they wanted it to grow and wish it so. The plants emitted heat when cold and cool air when hot, so those inside would never fall victim to severe chill or sunstroke. Whenever a dweller wanted in or out, all they had to do was place a hand on a wall and imagine a mortal-sized hole.

It sounded too good to be true—the stuff of fantasy, though hadn't intergalactic travel and faeries once been the stuff of fiction? Those of a desperate and liberal mind speculated that asking their peers to base their revitalization on magical seeds given by supernatural beings would only serve to further divide the fabric of what fragile democracy remained, yet took a chance—reasoning that such a sharp change could prevent the carnage depicted in the records of left by first-generation Helithicans.

As expected, skeptics speculated horrors: that the plants weren't made up of living organelles but magic the faeries would whisk away if challenged; that with no locks, anyone could get in; that the houses were carnivorous and would slurp them up like bugs; and what did they want in exchange, anyway?

Nothing, the faeries claimed, but to live as they always had: sustainably, peaceably.

As a show of good faith, the faeries invited the colonists to see for themselves; their homes were grown from the same seeds.

Any worries about the impenetrability of the forest were quickly quelled; boughs parted and branches rose in the faeries' wake. It was enough to make hearts hiccup and heads spin, yet the most curious among them went and found the faeries indeed lived sustainably and knew a comfort no human on Helithica ever had.

It was enough for the mortals to desire a treaty, a written agreement, they had to explain to the faeries that had no written language of their own. The humans would plant the seeds, adhere to a sustainable lifestyle, taking only what the earth freely gave. In exchange, the faeries were to not intervene in their politics. And in fine print: No interbreeding.

It was agreed.

And so, faeries and mortals lived peaceably but apart. The mortals planted the seeds, and those with an unwavering mistrust of the native species left. Those who stayed, knew tranquility.

For awhile.

The faeries showed them how to optimize their natural resources, what medicinal herbs native to the planet could be grown in their responsive dwellings that grew exactly as the faeries said they would, and how the flesh of the constructs had their own healing agents.

It quickly became as it had been when they first arrived, when all hearts were dewy and the people shared a common purpose. The change instilled the humans with a sense of respect for their magical neighbors, despite their peculiarities: their odd looks that didn't seem to age; their bone faces that crept over their fleshy countenances whenever they felt threatened; their witchy ways; and their amicable relations with big creatures that plodded about wherever they went, that the faeries confusingly swore were not pets but companions, not wolves—though they looked the part—but solthus who were rumored to have peculiar powers of their own.

But peace and tranquility did not extend beyond the last self-sustainable home.

It became evident to the resistors on the outside looking in that they were going without in a big way. That primitive nature that has plagued humankind since time immemorial stirred them to pillage the sustainable settlements, set fire to the dwellings and steal stores of those magical seeds. But with no idea how to nurse them into inhabitable gardens, the organisms grew wild and wilted. Failures bred more rage, resulting in bloodier attacks.

Those who suffered assault after assault turned to the faeries; their neighbors had saved them once before. Surely, they could do it again.

No, we will not. In this we hold no sway.

They had no wisdom in the ways of war. Besides, the treaty the mortals had demanded, whose own people had drafted and notarized, forbade faeries from intervening in affairs between mortals.

So, the violence ensued, largely unchecked. While those who accepted the faeries' hospitality had been busy grooming their homes, those in the resistor villages had been honing their weapons for bigger game. Those too brave to run or hide were slaughtered like sheep. Those who survived grew embittered by the faeries' absence.

It became clear to those few that while a physical barrier did not separate their worlds, the faeries were hiding things—an epiphany they sought to use as a bargaining chip.

The pious and impassioned spurned distrust among their peers. Tales of the faeries' early hospitality fell into disrepute as all that separated them nestled in the forefront of the humans' collective memory: the faeries' unmeasured capacity for magic; their propensity for secrecy; their unexplained telepathic abilities and peculiar companionship with these werelings; and the sheer number of their progenies.

Previously all but ignored and hidden as embarrassments on the fringes of society, children born of faery and mortal often developed powers of their own. Once the onslaught started, they were casted as fruits of the faeries' scheme to replace humanity with a superior race.

All they had to do was wait and watch while the remaining mortals wiped each out, and hadn't they known peace before the faeries arrived?

The civil war was all but forgotten. Humankind reunited with its sights set on a new enemy.