Far far away, the last man of the Sidhe wandered the green hills where he had walked alone for centuries. The bag that made apples from dirt and sunlight still worked, though patched and faded. Sometimes he would feed the wolves, or become one and join them for a season. The dreams of fire and failing medicines never left him.
A wind washed over the hills one morning, and he stretched his arms and wished he were light enough to fly as a bird. He considered building another glider to keep his hands busy. He basked in the sun.
On a hilltop something flashed like red gold, with a thunderclap. He stood astonished, and his heart leapt at the mad hope that someone else had survived all these years. He bounded across the grassland shouting that he was coming, that whoever it was should wait for him. His breath came fast as he charged uphill to find the source of the flash.
A boy stood there in foreign clothes, asking something.
The last Sidhe had almost forgotten how to speak. He cleared his throat and said, "Tuath' de Daanan?" But all of Daanan country was empty; he'd searched all the ruins.
The boy stuck one hand in the pocket of his rugged blue pants and murmured, then spoke again in a broad, twanging imitation of real language. "I'm Jon. You're a doctor, aren't you?"
The inferno had reached the hospital while he was tending patients. His friend had said, We've got to get everyone out! Leave everyone you can't carry! And he'd answered, No. But how had he survived?
"I... used to be," he said. Looking himself over, he didn't seem like one: broad-shouldered, tanned with long white hair and beard, wrapped in tattered cloak and backpack. He looked more like a druid! At the thought, he collapsed to his knees and gave a long, howling laugh.
Jon backed up a step. "It's okay," he said. "I can go somewhere else. But I'd heard you were the greatest healer there is."
He reached up and grabbed Jon's shirt in one big fist. "Don't go! It's been so long. Everyone's dead, everyone. Take me away from this place and I'll do anything for you! Are you sick? Are you mortal?"
Jon cocked his head, eying him. "Let me go and you can come along. Thanks. What's your name?"
"Nodens. How did you survive the plague and the war?" The boy was young, as though he'd been born afterwards. Then there might be others, maybe a lost city on some island he'd overlooked!
"I'm actually from another world..." Jon told him he'd gained the power to create certain things, and that he'd built a hospital in a lost world. The boy hoped to bring people there from across all worlds for healing.
Nodens listened to the mad story and tried not to laugh. All of it was impossible, but so was this boy's survival. Nodens wondered what the source of the boy's power was, if he really had the ability to pass between worlds. "Let me help you," Nodens said. "I can heal anything." Almost anything, a memory told him.
"Then let's go." Jon murmured again and the world vanished. For a moment they floated in a sea of stars, cold and silent. Then water crashed over them.
Nodens sputtered and kicked for the surface of the bright, rippling water. Energy flowed through him like electricity, lending a strength and vitality he hadn't felt in decades. On the surface he stared at the hairy brown creature Jon had become. Maybe he was a Sidhe as well, if he could change on a whim like that...
Jon scratched his grinning whiskered head with a brown paw. "Sorry, I should've been more specific. I wish we were in the hospital of Glora."
A sensation of falling up. Nodens gasped and stood on a steel catwalk inside a huge glass dome covering the water. A shimmering building formed a curved stripe around the dome, anchoring it to an island on either side. The many walkways led to elevators and an empty open-air cafe. Nodens had lost his backpack while in the water, but paid it no attention. He had seen nothing but ruins for entire mortal lifetimes, and now this city, this empty dream-castle! But where were its people?
Jon grinned and shook water off of his brown fur before shifting back to human -- or almost human, as he seemed not to notice he'd kept the whiskers. "Like it? We call it Glora, and those are Jon's Island and Karyn Island. After my friends. Glora should be around someplace," he said, looking around, "and Karyn must've taken the transport device and wandered off to recruit someone else. Anyway, welcome, Dr. Nodens!"
"Doctor..." Nodens said. There were memories to wipe away, to forgive himself for. The best way was to put his hands to work again, and heal others. He said, "It's been a long time. What can I do first?"
