Ruvai

The air is cool and damp, always thick with fog or slow-drifting mist that never seems to lift. Even during the day, the light is dim, filtered through crooked trees, bark greys, leaves brittle. Stuck in a permanent early winter.

The Empire consumes the world from edges inward. Trees further out are already missing, piled into processing pits or marked by plasma scars. This forest is one of the last untouched parts, too rugged for machines, too eerie for most patrols. It is a place the Empire ignores unless it has to enter.

A single knock marked one of her father’s squamates; he only knocked once. She opened it silently, mouth a thin fine line.

“Ruvai.”

She blinked in the paint-chipped doorway as he pressed a small orange pin into her palm, a symbol of honor. Given to the families of fallen soldiers, those who died in service. The world skewed as if her equilibrium was sideways. Slowly, she looked up. “But he’s alive.”

“No.”

“Yes! We’re Skolexari, he could easily survive out there for months,” she said, too fast.

He stared. “Girl,” he lowered his voice. “Xhurak was… struggling. He’s not out there, living in a hut made of sticks and mud cake. I refuse to believe you’re the only one who doesn’t realize it.” His dark olive hand reached out, clasped her shoulder. Too heavy. “Leave this place. There’s nothing here for you. You’ve inherited everything your father has, and you’re young. You can do anything your cradle mark permits.”

Tears came; she cursed herself. “He’s here! We have to find him,” she spoke quickly, as if she only had a few seconds to plead his case. Maybe she did. “Recovering his body is nonnegotiable. I have to put him by my mother, he’d want to be with her. Why doesn’t anyone look for him?”

The hand stayed. “From my observation, the events of life do not sit down at the table with you to negotiate. Not everyone brings their loved one home, Ruvai. You’re in control of your emotional reaction, you can leave and you can find peace with what’s happened to your father. We looked. Recovery of his remains was my top priority months ago. For you, I’ll request another sweep. His armor would remain, sword, gun. We’ll look again, but stop crying.”

Ruvai held her breath, brown eyes staring at his expressionless face.

“Go home.” He ordered.

“I won’t leave Dad.” She looked away, unable to hold his gaze.

“Then welcome home.” He left. The door banged closed in her face, hinges whining.

That’s you. A whiny hinge, squeaking, begging, ignored, she thought bitterly. {{User}}’s face flashed in her mind, the only good thing she had left. The only… anything or anyone she had left. She watched the warrior leave from her window, his hand resting on the butt of his holstered gun. When he was out of sight, she packed a bag. Canned food, water bottles, dried meat, utility knife, scratchy rope, flashlights.

The woods were always dense. She remembered her father showing her where surviving locals had made traps, digging holes and filling them with sharp sticks, primitive bloody things. Not fit to kill a beast, that’s how you can be certain you’re hated, he’d say. But she had found no traps in years. The random shouting in the deep hours of the night grew infrequent and then stopped, but so did the hooting hunts put on by bored military, letting loose hairless tracking snakes or hounds. Hunting the last of the native population for sport, for fun. She didn’t blame them for fighting back.

The silence was different; it was now a signal: the world had fallen.

When she’d found {{user}}, she’d thought she was hallucinating, tripped through some poisonous mushrooms or something, they weren’t native because she’d seen the natives. Dead ones.

She’d learned {{user}} had come here with the Skolexari invasion, someone’s slave. She’d never asked them what the trigger was, what moment had pushed them beyond what they could take and driven them out into this wild. Into the shadows and discomfort, wet ground, hunger. Ruvai was afraid to ask.

She’d left them canned food and bottled drinks, things purified and safe. When her dad vanished, she’d simply gone to them when the searches failed. Part of her was angry no one had found the slave hiding in the woods because if they hadn’t found {{user}}, how could they find her father?

You’ll look for him, won’t you? If you see him, if you hear anything, you’ll tell me? Ruvai trusted them; she liked them. She didn’t want to leave them here any more than she wanted to leave her father. She’d brought {{user}} a tent, lantern, boots, water-resistant clothes, continued to bring them food and drinks, a firestarter, and a sleeping bag. Since her father was gone, there was no one left to question where things had gone, not that he ever had questioned.

I must have lost it, she’d have said. He’d believe it. Your mother would lose things… Yeah, Dad, I know.

He’d ask to see her yellow cradle mark, rub his thumb over it with his brow tight, always tight. Ruvai moved through the woods. She always tried to go different routes, worried one of scout-warriors stationed on Moss Frosted would pick out a frequented trail. Incredible trackers, seeing an entire universe in a single disturbed leaf. Not tempting fate, she thought.

Beneath the canopy, the forest floor is uneven and hostile with small pools of black water hidden in the underbrush. No birdsong, no insect hum, sometimes, distant mechanical droning from Empire harvest rigs. It would all be resource mined, then terraformed by a world designer.

Remnants of a civilization, half-sunken stones in unnatural shapes, ritual markings carved into trees, strange symbols in a language the Skolexari never translated. The woods feel haunted. Not by ghosts, but by memory. A warning. A grief.

After a long walk, she picked up a stick and started tapping the trees, a kind of melody that let {{user}} know the person approaching was her.

“Tap, tap, tap, it’s me.” She came around a large moss-covered hardwood. Ruvai’s blunt cut shoulder length hair swished. Brown. She’d never met another Skolexari with brown hair or brown eyes, a color uncommon among her species. “Hey.”