Jenova ran down the corridor, her breath loud inside her helmet. Red lights flashed and klaxons blared.

The crew were supposed to seal themselves inside the escape pod thirty second after the alarms started, but they wouldn't have. She swore to the void as she ran. The fools would still be holding the door open for her, even though protocol demanded they close it, and she told them to keep themselves safe first and foremost, she always told them-

The ship rocked and threw her against a bulkhead, bashing her head. Stars exploded behind her eyes. She pushed herself back up and kept going. None of the others were around, hopefully she was the last. She was going to yell at them so much for keeping the door open. Later. After they survived.

The gravity systems failed when that comet hit and threw them off course, but her boots were magnetised to the hull, making each step slow and heavy. She could feel the pull of the nearest planet's gravity growing as the ship spiralled. The weight of the space suit fell and pulled against her in different directions, slowing her even more.

The lights cut out: the last of the ship's power re-routed to the escape pod. The metal hull groaned under the crushing pressure of re-entry. She hoped they were safe. Dear Cosmos, all the powers that be, let them be safe, and not standing like idiots by an open door.

She rounded the last corner in the dark.

The door was shut.

She stopped running.

Light shone out through the tiny reinforced window, uninterrupted by regretful faces. They would all be buckled into their seats, as protocol dictated. They would survive. They didn't wait for her.

Good. Good.

The hull shrieked.

She felt numb.

The hull tore open and the ship exploded.

Wind roared and she was falling. Pinwheeling. Burning wreckage rained down around her and pierced her suit like shrapnel. Oxygen vented and her suit beeped frantically. She couldn't breathe. Higher up the escape pod streaked against a sky dotted with stars.

Her vision darkened, just as a yellow sun crested the horizon. It's rays arced over a grey ocean and a wide green landmass.

What a beautiful place to die.

She opened her eyes to golden light.

It drifted down through translucent leaves and motes of pollen dancing on the air, weightless and soft.

It made the dried blood and jagged broken glass of her helmet look oddly enrapturing. Like abstract art, black and red edged in gold. She gazed at it for a moment, not registering what she was looking at. The light was warm and soothing. Perhaps she was dead. It felt like she was floating in warm water, and she had no desire to move.

"It's a beautiful day, isn't it?" a voice called.

She jolted and pain shot through her torso. She coughed and heaved herself up and then doubled over with a hiss. She was sitting on the broken remains of a tree. She couldn't feel her legs.

"Woah, hey, don't be afraid." A man crouched down next to her. "Here." He reached out and touched her booted foot. A wave of something passed over her. Feeling returned to her legs, stinging and vicious like the pain in the rest of her. She tried to drag herself away, but then all the pain faded away. A thick lump in her chest dissipated and her breathing grew easier.

She stopped moving and stared at him. He winked.

He was a tall biped with a broad build, rich brown skin, and thick braids of white hair. Two eyes, a nose, and a mouth, same as her.

He took a couple steps back to give her space. She looked down at her legs, partially visible through the tears in her suit. The ache from a decades old knee injury was gone.

From looks alone he could have been any species from a Renja to a human, but she knew of no species that could do what he had just done.

"So," he said, picking up a long carved stick that was leaning against a log and twirling it idly in his hands. "There I was, sitting on a rock before sunrise, mediating on the majesty of the Planet like a good boy, when a falling star interrupts the night and streaks across the sky like bird droppings on a temple wall. And not an hour later a lady falls out of the sky and destroys my favourite tree."

She blinked, completely out of her depth. She had taken first contact training years ago but couldn't remember any of it.

"I'm… sorry about your tree," she offered.

"Don't be, it saved your life," he said with a wonky smile. He bowed deeply to the stump she was crushing. "A worthy sacrifice, my friend, may you find peace as all life returns to the Planet."

"What planet is this?"

"We just call it the planet, on account of it being the only one we've got." He sat on a rock opposite her and leaned his chin on the back of his knuckles. "What planet are you from?"

She shook her head. "No planet. You saw my ship enter the atmosphere, did you see where it landed? I have to find the others. My crew. My family." Cosmos, her crew. Her heart clenched at the thought. Their chance of survival was higher than hers, they had the escape pod. They should have survived. They must have. She just had to find them.

"It went north. A long way north." He studied her with a frown. "Who are you? What are you doing here?"

She pulled her broken helmet off and struggled to her feet.

"I'm Jenova, acting Captain of the Providence. We were charting new star lanes and got knocked off course, we weren't intending to land here. Or anywhere." He had bowed to the tree, so she figured that was the custom and bowed deeply to him.

He nodded but otherwise didn't react.

She cleared her throat. "…I mean you no harm."

He raised his eyebrows. "That's good."

She huffed, frustrated. "Why are you staring at me?"

"Well, first, I've never met an alien before," he said, taking up his stick and rising to his feet. "And second, because I've forgotten all of my manners and am being a terrible host." He placed a fist over his heart and bowed his head. "I am Ngani, of the Wandering Albatross clan. Be welcome in our lands, Jenova of the Providence."

He thudded his stick on the ground and another wave of something rolled over her, different than the healing one.

"I- Thank you," she offered, hoping that was the correct response.

He snorted a laugh and gestured at a winding pathway between the trees.

"I have food at my camp. Please, be my guest."

She followed him. She had no idea what else she could do and he was friendlier than she could have hoped from someone who didn't know that life from other worlds existed five minutes ago.

She catalogued her resources as they walked. Everything was broken. Her radio, her suit, her computer: al were either destroyed in the ships explosion or during impact. Her gun was gone entirely and so was her tool kit and all the little bits and pieces she kept with her. Maybe Ngani took them. His friendliness didn't seem false but that didn't mean anything.

The reality of the situation kept bubbling up in her throat, choking her, but she forced it down and found a bedrock of calm deep within herself. If she made the right choices and took all the right precautions, everything would be fine. The others would follow protocol and they would all find a way home. It was straightforward really.

Ngani walked with a swing in his step and vigilant eyes always wandering around the treetops. He was dressed in loose brown clothes made of a fabric she couldn't identify. It left his arms bare. From behind she could see curling black tattoos all around his right shoulder.

If he was concerned at having an off-worlder at his back he did not show it.

They arrived at his camp and he offered her his only chair and the first serving of his food. She tried to politely decline but didn't want to offend him and accepted what he offered.

All she could remember from her old space safety courses said not to risk the genetic impact of eating from an unknown ecological system, but there was nothing else. She would simply have to endure the fallout. Ngani offered her smoked seafood and a spongy bread. It was lightyears better than any of the nutri-paste she stocked the Providence with.

Ngani ate opposite her, with what looked to be a decorative fake plant between them. She couldn't comprehend why when they were outside in the middle of a forest, but couldn't figure out how to ask either.

There were a number of things she couldn't figure out how to ask. Highest priority was one of species. He didn't know her for what she was, but few could spot them on sight.

"I mean no offence, but, um…" she trailed away.

"All my favourite arguments started with 'no offence.'" He tossed the last bite of his food into his mouth. "Go on. You're my guest, you're allowed to insult me if you want."

She cleared her throat. "What are you?"

"I'm a Cetra."

"Oh."

"What are you?"

"I'm a Renja."

He nodded slowly then laughed. "Glad we got that sorted." He dusted his hands off and began to fuss around with some of his equipment around the campsite.

"Cetra are the Children of the Planet," he said over his shoulder. "This planet. I suppose whatever planet your people come from had its own children. Perhaps our planets are sisters. Would that make us cousins?"

She shook her head. "We are not the children of our planet."

"No?"

"We're nomads. There are some settlements on rocks and moons and space stations, but I don't think anyone knows where we came from in the beginning."

He worked quietly for a moment, pouring a doughy mixture into a box, then plugging that box into the fake plant. It took her a moment to realise it was an oven and the plant a photosynthesising generator.

"And you're not… slowly suffocating up there?" he asked, looking thoughtful. "All alone in the heavens?"

She shook her head. "There's air inside the ships."

"But where do you go when you die? Where do your young come from?"

She tilted her head, not sure what he was getting at. "Renja sexually reproduce. Where do your children come from?"

"Oh. Um. The same. That's not what I…" He cleared his throat and dropped his eyes from hers, looking at the empty plates instead. "Fish, huh?"

"Crustaceans, actually," she said. A smile tugged at her face. "Who also reproduce se-"

"Mother have mercy. You know what I meant."

"I'm afraid I don't. We give birth to live young, if that's what you're asking?"

He switched the generator on and it began to hum happily in the afternoon sun.

"Do you have magic?" he asked.

"What you did to me before? No."

He tugged on his earlobe. It was studded full of bone piercings all the way up the shell. "You look like a Cetra. Other than the grey skin."

"Thank you. You look like a Renja," she replied, dryly. It was an insult to someone's trustworthiness on any other planet.

"Do I?" his eyes shone with delight. "Maybe I fell from the stars too."

"Maybe I only look like this to fool you into trusting me," she said, not meeting his eyes. "Maybe you should be afraid of me."

He studied her in silence for a time.

"Na." He leaned back on his hands. "I'm a nomad too, I know what predators look like. And I'm a good judge of character."

He got up and tossed the heavy bundle of his braids over his shoulder. "I'm going to go meditate, you're welcome here as long as you like. Eat some more, or use the bed roll if your kind need to sleep." He tapped his chest with his hand again and gave her a nod, then turned and headed off into the woods.

Ngani wandered through the woods off to find his favourite meditating rock.

Laumae was going to yell at him. The Blessed Matriarch was probably going to yell at him too: he felt it in his soul. After many years of experience he knew the feeling well. In fact, he wouldn't be surprised if the whole clan got together to yell at him. It was likely overdue.

But Jenova seemed nice. Overwhelmed and confused, but nice. That was something. The afternoon sun was catching the leaves and flowers beautifully. That was something too.

He reached the end of the forest and stepped out onto a shoreline of giant red rocks. The sea was choppy with white caps, and the wind brought him the smell of a dead seagull rotting in a tide pool. He leapt from boulder to boulder until he stood upon the highest, some four meters above the water. He sat on the very edge. He could see white frothy waves crashing and swirling below him. There was a blowhole to his right that when the waves rushed in just right would blast water high above his head.

He crossed his legs and breathed in deeply. The water crashed, the wind sighed, and the sun sat nice and warm on his skin. He closed his eyes. A fine mist of seawater drifted over him. There was life in the nearby tide pools. He could feel it, oysters clinging to rock, crabs scuttling, and little tufts of seaweed swaying with the trickling water. Their spirits were small and quiet, but no less part of the planet. He breathed out and fell further into the mediation.

Jenova's presence was confusing through his spirit's eyes. She was sitting on his chair still, possibly sleeping, he couldn't tell. From this angle she felt like a Cetra and one powerful in the Planet's gifts. If he didn't know better he would think her one of the Blessed, the spiritual leaders of the people. But she didn't have any magic, didn't even know what it was. It was very strange.

He looked past her, reaching for a familiar spark of energy.

Laumae's spirit lit up when he brushed past it. Their friendship was old and strong enough that no matter the physical distance between them and their low power levels, they could still always reach Unity together.

Their spirits clicked into place, and it was like Laumae was speaking through his mouth, using his brain.

"Ngani! Where've you been?" the other Cetra man in his mind exclaimed. "Did you see the meteor shower?"

"I did," he replied with an implied nod.

"Did you hear what Matriarch Coerla is saying?"

"I did not."

"She doesn't think it was a meteor. She thinks it's a sign."

"A sign of what?"

"She didn't say, but it can't be anything good. She said she sensed life about it." Laumae felt sceptical but he was always hesitant to disagree with a higher authority.

"Did she?" Ngani asked, indulgent.

"It's what she said. I wouldn't question her senses."

"Of course not."

Ngani waited.

"It just that it's impossible."

"Of course," he agreed with a grin.

"Life from outside of the Planet, it can't happen. But Coerla's the Blessed, she knows what she's on about. I'll take her word for it."

"Right."

Laumae went silent. "You're being very agreeable."

"Am I?"

"What have you done?"

He grinned and was pretty sure it would transfer over.

"Talk to me, Ngani, there's nothing scarier than your agreeable silences."

"Matriarch Coerla…" Ngani paused, enjoying the tension radiating off of Laumae's spirit, "…wasn't wrong. There was life in the meteor shower."

With their minds connected as they were, he showed him his memories of everything that had happened.

"And you invited her over for lunch?!" Was the last furious thing he heard before the connection grew too agitated and they fell out of Unity. He reached out again and was rejected, except for a single frustrated, "Stay where you are, I'm coming to yell at you in person."

And so he did.

Jenova sat in the chair and listened to the two men yell. Given the content of the argument, they must have assumed she had very poor hearing.

She had intended to repair her gear or even sleep when Ngani left, but every other second some little insect buzzed in her ear or a stinging plant caught at her foot. It wasn't a comfortable planet.

Then the sound of the other Cetra storming through the forest caught her ear. He confronted Ngani with what sounded like an argument halfway done, and blatantly about her.

Which meant Ngani had already gotten word out. Her heartrate picked up at that. She didn't see any radios around, but would she know one is she saw it? Maybe he sent a messenger bird, or some magical signal? Who else knew?

"What else was I going to do, Laumae?" She heard Ngani ask, his voice muffled by the crashing of waves and swaying of leaves. "She was lost, hurt, next to my camp, and in need of help. Do you know what my mother – Planet rest her soul—"

"—Planet rest her soul—"

"—would say if I did nothing? She would be ashamed of me. We're not animals," he said with passion. "And you know what?" His voice calmed. "She was quite nice."

"Of course she's nice, she needs you." Laumae replied. "Did you check if she's armed?"

Her hand moved to her empty holster.

"No, but she wasn't, she landed with nothing." If it was a performance put on for her benefit, it was a convincing one.

"Nothing that you recognised. What if she actually does have magic and was just lying to you? You don't even know what she eats, it could be anything. It could be Cetra!"

Her lips thinned. It was the sort of thing people said about Renja all over the galaxy. Amazing how quickly they picked it up.

Ngani scoffed. "It doesn't matter. Guest Right."

"Doesn't apply here, we don't extent it to humans, why make an exception for someone we know even less about? And now she has your whole camp to herself."

"I let you into my camp, how bad can she be?"

"Damn it, Ngani, she's not a Child of the Planet!"

"But she's someone's child!"

"Everyone is someone's child, that doesn't make them good."

There was silence for a moment. She strained to hear.

"They still deserve to be treated kindly," Ngani said, with the kind of quiet conviction that didn't care it was unwise. It reminded her of her mother. She hugged herself.

"Not if they're planning to hurt you," Laumae shot back.

"You don't know that."

"Neither do you!"

The argument went around in circles a few more times. She pulled herself up and wove through the trees towards them.

Both leapt with surprise when she stepped out of the treeline. She hadn't been making any effort to walk quietly, they had been so engrossed in their argument.

Laumae was a short and stocky Cetra, who managed to look small next to Ngani even when the other was sitting down. He squinted at her in suspicion and his fingers tapped along a staff taller than he was.

She thanked them for their hospitality and then tried to say goodbye.

"I have to find my downed ship."

Laumae shook his head, pursing his lips. "You won't get past the Closed Forest on you own. And going around takes half a year."

"I'll find a way." She squared her shoulders. Her crew, her family, were waiting for her. It didn't matter what was in the way.

"It might be easier if you have someone who knows the land with you," Ngani offered lightly. "Someone who can negotiate their way through other territories."

"I couldn't ask that of you," she replied quietly. He had implied it was a long way. They didn't owe her anything.

Ngani inclined his head. "But we are offering." There weren't many genuinely kind people in the Cosmos. He smiled like it was easy. She decided to trust him.

"Thank you." She looked to his friend. "But why?"

Laumae expression turned pinched. Ngani nudged his leg and finally he grunted. "You are our guest, here upon the Mother." He inclined his head stiffly. "It is our duty to see you go back to wherever you came from. As soon as possible."

She nodded. That she understood: making sure she left.

"I don't have much time," she started. If the crew were injured or in inclement weather she couldn't afford to dawdle. They would have limited rations and no guarantee of meeting such welcoming locals.

Ngani rolled back then leapt to his feet. "We better leave tonight then."

They kept their word and set off before the sun had begun to dip in the sky. The two Cetra travelled light and packed up both of their camps quickly and met back up on the trail. She had nothing to pack, she was already wearing everything she owned.

Laumae loaned her a thick poncho and some soft shoes that wrapped around her calves to replace her torn and bloodied suit. For all his blatant distrust, he offered it freely and without judgement. He was very careful not to touch her while handing it over though. Feeling a little snide, she patted him on the shoulder as she thanked him.

The new gear felt much better. The texture was a strange knit, nothing like the mass produced synthetic materials she normally wore. It kept the stinging nettles off her skin, for which she would worship any planet they asked of her. It was astounding how the little crawling plants had managed to scratch and tear at every gap in her suit. The shoes were too small but she could adapt.

The two men joked and squabbled as they walked. It was slightly awkward how they talked around her and she didn't understand half of what they were saying, but the good natured ribbing put her in mind of pleasant afternoons with her mother and brother, back in the old days. It put her in a strange mood, anxious to find the others in the escape pod, and like she never wanted to find anyone ever again.

As the forest grew darker, she picked up that they were actually from different clans, both named after local birds.

"Do you keep a flocks of these 'albatross'?" she asked, looking back at Ngani after a lull in the conversation. Laumae was leading the way and looking back at them every so often.

"No! Nobody 'keeps' them, not even if they want to," he laughed, springing lightly over rocks and tree roots. The path rolled over hills and valleys as it snaked north. "They're migratory birds, albatrosses, they fly out over the ocean for miles and miles and only come back to the cliffside for nesting once a year. That's actually when our new year starts, when we meet up with the flock again."

"That's amazing." She couldn't remember the last time she'd seen a bird. They usually only refuelled on space stations or outposts with minimal wildlife. "Does the shearwater clan do the same?" she asked Laumae.

He shook his head, not looking back. "We're not migratory, shearwater gulls live yearlong all up and down the coastline. We only move around to avoid over harvesting any one area."

"Oh, you eat them?"

"Of course." He gave her a critical look over his shoulder. "Your people don't have any natural influences, do they?"

"No, we're unnatural," she replied before she could stop herself.

"Laumae!" Ngani exclaimed.

He stopped walking, several steps up a hill from her, bringing a halt to the little procession. "You don't even know how to forage. If we weren't here you would have starved to death."

"So would you, if you were on my birth planet where the only edible plants grow in ocean trenches and there are no birds." The incline put him at eye height with her and she refused to look away. "Life is life no matter which rock it calls home."

"Rock?" he repeated, outraged.

"Blessed rock," Ngani interjected, "like the obelisks of Mideel."

"Don't patronise our guest, I'm sure she can speak for herself."

She clenched her jaw. She didn't know why she was lashing out, they didn't know, they didn't care, they just saw something foreign and distrusted it. She should have kept her head down and let them think whatever they wanted. Instead she let out a thin breath and took another step up the hill, putting her higher than him.

"I haven't seen my birth world in years, and I never will again. I made a new life for myself and my family in the cosmos, charting star paths. I don't care that it's not planet bound, It's a good, honest life. If that's not good enough or natural enough for you… then…" she shook her head, a thick lump in her throat at exposing herself to these strangers. "…I don't have anything else to offer."

"I…" He looked away and scratched the back of his neck. "I shouldn't have insulted you. You are our guest, you don't have to explain yourself to us."

She nodded stiffly and pushed passed him.

"Why can't you go home?" Ngani asked quietly after an hour of quiet walking.

"My home is the cosmos and I will go back as soon as I find my family."

He didn't ask again.

The sun had dropped behind a mountain range by the time they set down their packs for the night. Nobody had spoken for some time and the decision was reached in silence.

She stopped, mid-way through helping set up the campsite in the gloom. There was a humming sound on the wind.

She stood, and looked around. The surrounding trees had thin grey trunks and sheets of dry peeling bark hung from their branches, shifting and twisting in the wind. She couldn't see anything. Neither of the wilderness experts looked alarmed.

"Is something coming?" she asked.

The two looked up at her blankly.

A flying creature slammed into her. She fell and rolled with it. Pincers scrabbled at her, catching in her thick clothes and scratching her arms. It chittered and stinging saliva drippled on her. She yelled and threw it off. A blast of power blew it open. The hairs on her arms stood on end at the magic.

A cluster of the monsters swarmed into the clearing, insects half the size of a person, and a single giant one twice the size. Laumae and Ngani moved with sudden smoothness and synchronicity, like they'd choreographed and practiced it together a thousand times. They stood back to back and deflected the monsters attacks, shooting out burning flares from their staffs.

"They're vulnerable to fire," came a call from both of their mouths in perfect unison. It didn't sound like either of them.

A monster charged her. She grabbed a smouldering branch from the fire and swung. It smacked against thick chitin and splintered, the fire going out. The thing recoiled but the embers scattered. The monster launched at her again. She swept up branch from the forest floor and stabbed it through the head.

Two more jumped her. She barred her teeth in frustration and gave up using trees branches. She kicked one off and stomped through its carapace. The other grabbed at her head, pincers snapping and tearing. She pulled a pincer off with a burst of goo and then swung her fist. Its head caved in.

The air smelled of burning insects. Ngani hit one with his staff but it bounced off the chitin. Laumae had been thrown sideways and was casting weaker and weaker spells. The big one flew at Ngani's back. She ran at it before it could hit and tackled it to the ground. It screeched and chittered and tried to bite her. Pincers sliced through her arm and its saliva burned her. She rolled in the dirt with it, grappling for something to break or crush. She held it down and smacked her fists against its armour.

Ngani yelled. She looked up. He was on his back, the last insect goring his chest open. Laumae pulled at it desperately, ineffectually.

She grit her teeth and sprouted an extra limb from her back. A long sharp arm with hardened bone like a spear tip, it gutted up out of her spine. She stabbed it clean through the head of the monster on top of Ngani.

The one under her was still chittering and fighting. She made a noise of frustration and transformed one of her hands into a similar spear shape, merging her fingers together and turning them into bone. She stabbed it through the abdomen. It squealed, and she dragged her arm up its body until it stopped moving. The texture inside was awful, like it was full of soft and greasy ball bearings. She gagged at the sensation and pulled all her arms back out. She rolled off the thing.

All the insects were dead and a crackling fire in the shell of one was the only noise. She staggered to her feet, retaking her usual body shape. Filth dripped off her hand and left a damp patch on the tear in the back of her poncho.

The two Cetra stared at her.

A/N: Thanks for reading! Reviews are all welcome.

Next Time: The Forgotten Capital