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Hello, and welcome to Escape Pod, your weekly science fiction podcast. I'm Valerie Valdes,

your host for this episode. Our story this week is like stars daring to shine by Somto

A Hisway. It was first published by fireside magazine in July 2022. Somto A Hisway is a

Nigerian eggbo editor and writer. His works have appeared in Tor.com, fireside, podcast

muscle, cosmas and finities, and elsewhere. Somto likes white-sled shoes and heavy rainfall.

Now, get ready to find unexpected lights in dark places, because it's story time.

Like stars daring to shine by Somto A Hisway.

When the boy opens his housing unit still door, and the incandescent lights pour into

his face, he does not blink away. Little Suns, this is what everyone calls them. The massive

two discs hover in the atmosphere, spilling streams of radiant lights to the ground. The boy

stares into the trees, mere meters from the door, and the forest and cave in the units stares

back. A breeze finds him, whistling through the trees and into his dungaries.

Treadbare, with a Batman logo printed on them, the overalls belonged to his mother when

she was a child. Peeling his hand of the latch, the boy steals into the bright nights. He

hurries into the bushes, steering clay of the stone paved forest pathways, each step sending

emerald grasshoppers, sharpening off the shrubs. In the forest, its canopy, a roof of green,

darkness collects in patches, but the lights find a way they always do. Two holes in the dense

cover of leaves, they pierce the dark, crates in lines of shimmering mist. The trees

...