In a cosmopolitan city in a Silk Road empire in the first half of the 1700s, three sister watch their world fall apart due to society's divergent intuitions about the right way to deal with a cascade of ecological disasters and 21st Century controversies; and use courage, determination, and ingenuity to cope with their own idiosyncratic concerns. The story explores themes of unity and diversity, individual and society, independence and accomodation, confidence and skepticism, and what is knowable; and probes the boundaries of identity, normality, and free-will.