As the 32,000th Season drew to a close, the sunflower finally bloomed. Its petals weren't perfect; they were slightly asymmetrical, battered by the artificial winds of the sky-cities.

It was a simple sunflower seed, dormant for nearly thirty thousand years.

In the year 32,000, humanity had long since abandoned the concept of individual years. Time was measured in , and the era of the 32,000th Season —roughly 8,000 years after the Great Rebirth—was known as the Season of the Glass Tide . The World of the Glass Tide

: Human dwellings, called Aureoles , drifted like dandelion seeds in the stratosphere. They were held aloft by "gravitic anchors" that tethered them to the core of the planet, drawing power from the Earth's very heartbeat.