Veronica looked out the window, daydreaming with her elbow on the door and her head in her hand. Maddy fiddled with the iPad, unaware of the towering city rolling into view just ahead of her.

Veronica’s eyes rose above the clouds. “Daddy, does it really touch the sky?” she asked. The clouds hiding the city’s peak parted—answering her—with an emphatic yes.

Babeltown, a once-proud city of thousands, looked more like a brightly colored painting in which all the colors had run together. Some of the houses were narrow, others wide, together covering the mountain in a twisted freeform pile stretching to the heavens. Thousands of windows looked out in every direction like so many eyes peering down upon the valley below.

“I thought for sure this place would have burned,” Veronica’s dad marveled. He parked the car next to a walking path and switched off the ignition. “Okay,” he said, “everyone … out! The old house, if it’s still there, should be right up that hill. And if there’s time,” he added, with a wink to the Captain, “maybe we’ll even stop by that grave.”

Maddy stepped out of the car first, directly into six inches of ash. “Ugh! This stuff is everywhere,” she whined. She removed her shoes and banged them together, shaking out the ash. She slipped them back on, bending down to retie the laces. As she did, she noticed a white field pansy flecked with grey. She picked the flower, blew off the ash, and handed it to Veronica.

“Dad?” Veronica asked, as she sniffed the pansy. “Why did you leave? This place looks nice.”

“This place was nice, Veronica. The nicest. But things got bad—” He froze, his boot jerking to a stop just above the most perfect white blossom. “And you see that!” he said. “Another flower! More signs of life! Someday, even this town will recover.”

Maddy watched a scavenging bird exit the broken windowpane of another empty house. “Well it looks like a ghost town to me,” she said, without noticing that Veronica’s dad had stopped. She bumped into him, and he stumbled forward, trampling the wildflower under his boot.

“So much for your recovery,” the Captain said.

Up-close, the brightly colored, crooked cottages revealed the tragedy of the town’s final moments. Every third house or so was nothing more than a colorful shell, hollowed out by fire. The exterior walls had withstood the flames, but the inside was burnt to a crisp.