Humanity has become a tool used by higher beings to cultivate the universe.  Xander Floros doesn't know if the last fifteen years of his life have been a sick joke, some artist's vanity project, or an actual colonization by the Hibernarii. Sometimes it feels like all three because life on the remote desert planet Erimia has never been easy.  The Floros family and a handful of other human families struggle daily to survive in their oasis valley. Xander's sick of it. Sick of the heat. Sick of the work. Sick of his neighbors. And really sick of the giant spiders. But he doesn't have much of a choice, because the only way off of Erimia is by the grace of the Hibernarii, whose trail of ashes shows how they treat failure. Based in the far future, Brunning Divide, is almost a space western, if it wasn't for those damn spiders. Sensitive content: * Violence * References to rape, incest, and bestiality (but only brief references, no details)