Medina would never forget that afternoon when she was six, beneath an orange sky.
A line of travelers draped in red outer robes emerged from the dark green horizon in the distance. Each had an unfamiliar face, and they came, weary with travel, to beg her people for help.
Those travelers brought out many novel things Medina had never seen before: a box that spat fire when pressed, a lens that could magnify an ant to the size of a beetle, and stones that could cling to iron.
Medina was the cleverest child, favored even by the gods, and she was amazed and curious about everything new.
Whenever she encountered something she could not understand, she would ask the travelers for it and study it closely, yet she still could not grasp how it worked.
She asked the god her tribe worshiped, but the god gave no answer. The travelers told her it was "science," the opposite of theology.
She did not understand, but she vaguely felt that it was a power even more wondrous than witchcraft, destined to unleash tremendous might one day.
So, when those travelers bid farewell to the ancient tribe, Medina secretly followed their party, boarded their ship, left the land behind, and traveled to a country across the sea that she had never heard of and never seen.
The god of that country had only just been driven from the center of all things, and Medina saw many things there that astonished her.
Tall houses built of stone and glass, strange machines that could spin yarn and weave cloth automatically—every one of them left her puzzled and fascinated.
She felt she could spend her entire life studying them.
When Medina was fifty, the king recruited an expedition from across the nation, with her homeland as