You are listening to a Clarksworld magazine podcast. I'm your host and narrator, Kate Baker.

Welcome to the second story for August 2025, issue 227. We can't bring you these stories without your ongoing support. So thank you for being here, taking the time out of your day.

I would also encourage you to go to patreon.com forward slash Clark's world. It's literally a cup of coffee worth.

If you just want to send us a couple of bucks, we need every bit we can get. Or alternatively,

you can buy a subscription or you can go to clark's world citizens.com. And if you already are

supporting the magazine in any of these ways, I thank you from the bottom of my heart. You let

me do something I absolutely love to do, as well as I'm sure all the authors and the editors

and the artists that we work with love to do as well. So thank you from the bottom of my heart.

So our story brought to you by you is titled And the Planet Loved Him.

It is by El Chan.

Now, El Chan hails from Singapore.

He spends most of his time wrangling a team of two dogs, Mr. Luca, and Mr. Telly.

His work has appeared in places like Clark's World, Transluner Travelers Lounge, Podcastle and The Dark.

He was a finalist for the 2020 U.G. Foster Memorial Award.

And if you like what you hear, you can go back to Stranger Seas than These, Reunion,

the death haiku of the Azure 5, and a house is not a home.

So, my dear listener, I hope that you can sit back, relax, and let me tell you a story.

I've been here a few weeks, and the sunsets never get old. The blue sun scintillates off the spore miasma, glittering into fractal

rainbows. The worst part is the waiting. We're so far off the grid that by the time the

distress signal relays back to someone that could authorize the fund's requisition for a rescue,

there's a good chance that I'd already run out of air or food or both.

We still see the light of the stars long gone supernova in the sky.

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