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This flashback occurs a bit later in the original order of the comic strips, right before a scene transition, but I had moved it up here because it does a better job of establishing Zahra’s state of mind. A bit of world building that I didn’t get a good chance to do was explain this dynamic here, with Zahra and her “Dad” being relatively close in age. They aren’t blood related, Zahra is more like his ward, or an adopted daughter.
So, in a case of reality being stranger than fiction, More than Dust is set in a world where the population is beset by an airborne highly contagious disease that embeds itself into the lungs and slowly suffocates its victims. This outbreak is largely ignored by older, richer generations and wipes out the poorer, younger population, causing society to collapse. Children in this world are raised by other children, because most people do not make it past 30’s, and are already debilitated into their 20’s. So that’s the situation with Zahra and her father, and the central theme of the project, being a good parent to another generation.