Lonely and Precocious

Book 1 in Erika Hammerschmidt's "If the World Ended" series. People grow on trees. Diplomats from another planet negotiate through sculpture. An angel screws up, and a sixteen-year-old mutant runs away. Mingling science fiction and fantasy, these short stories explore the inner worlds of idiosyncratic outcasts and misfits, as rich as the outer worlds that reject them. (Adapted from the 2013 short story collection "If the World Ended, Would I Notice?")