Jīvitaya Rai Naji is just an average human girl. Orphaned, but nothing stranger than that.
She was one of the few witnesses to the first alien invasion on Earth. One day, many years later, she catches sight of one of them following her. She wonders...
Jīvitaya wakes up to her tablet beeping, and fumbles for it. She squints at the bright screen and waits for her eyes to adjust. When they do, they widen in alarm at what she sees. It's another Saieat alert, with only a minute left of the countdown. She scrambles out of the bed, ruching for the levik. Her fingers slice through empty air, and she realizes that the levik is across the room. Adrenaline flashes through her, fueled by fear. She takes a breath and swings her legs over the side of the bed, before pushing herself up onto them. She cries out at the pain, tears already streaming down her face. She is clutching the healing stone so tightly that her knuckles are white.
Her whole body burns as she stumbles across the room. The tablet beeps one final time, and she rises into the air as the Saieat begins. She sways back and forth, turning onto her side. Then she falls back to the ground, smashing into the floor hard on her hip. She cries out again and tries to move, moaning. Her body doesn't respond to her, instead flaring up with even more pain. She tries to move again and again, until she eventually passes out from the pain.
~~~
She comes to a while later, back in her bed with Kysanden sitting in a chair across from her.
"Jīa, are you okay?"
She tried to move and winces. She can move, but it is incredibly painful. She tries to find the healing stone to wrap her fingers around it, but she can't find it. Kysanden wordlessly hands it to her.
"It was lying on the floor. Please tell me Jīa, are you alright?"
She shakes her head. "No, I feel horrible. It hurts to move, and before I couldn't move no matter how hard I tried. It only made the pain flare up astronomically."
"May I check?"
She nods, and he pulls out his tablet. He holds it in front of him, and a flattened beam of light emanates from it, reaching out to both sides of her body. Starting at her head, he lowers it along the length of her body until it reaches her feet. Then the light winks out, and he waits for whatever he just did to process. His tablet chimes at last, and he looks down at it before he looks back up at her in alarm.
"Jīvitaya, what did you do?"
Her heart sinks at his use of her full name instead of the nickname he gave her, as well as his tone, a mix of anger and panic.
"What's wrong?"
He gives out a short bark of amazed laughter before words start streaming out of his mouth, his voice raised. "What's wrong? Everything! Not only have you made your symptoms from the Ehthtiur venom much, much worse, you've also backtracked your healing progress almost to the point of you having just been bitten!"
She snaps at him. "How is it my fault that my progress has reverted?!"
"Because you clearly decided you wanted to start walking again earlier then you should have, there's no other reason that you would have been in the middle of the floor."
"Really? How about the fact that there was another Saieat!"
"You've been anchoring the levik to the floor every time! Why would now be any different?"
"Maybe because I was asleep and the levik was across the room!"
He huffs and runs his hand down his face. "You're going to have to be stuck on bed rest for a while now, until your healing progress can reach the levels it was at before."
Jīvitaya groans. "Great."
"I know, I know. But you'll heal faster if you don't strain yourself. On a different note, I have all the supplies we needed, so we'll head out soon, and you won't have to be exposed to any more Saieats."
"We're not going to stay until they have the floating villages set up?"
"No, Rebexi has assured me that they will be fine without us. She wishes you luck on finding where you belong and has asked that I give you this." He hands her a small booklet, which she opens up to find pages and pages of writing. She looks closer at it.
"It's the recipes!"
"Yes, and she's added a couple more as well. The supplies have the ingredients for most of them, too, since I needed to stock up on food. So you'll have good food to comfort you on your bed rest. She's also asked me to tell you that you are free to return here whenever you like."
She beams, and then he hands her a bowl. "What is this?"
"Breakfast, now eat while I go take off."
He leaves the room, and she pokes at the contents of the bowl with her spoon, her nose crinkling at it.
She shouts after him. "Kys, what is this goop, and why does it look like bloody oatmeal?!"
His strained reply arrives a moment later. "Just eat it, it's not as bad as it looks! I promise, I eat it all the time!"
She mumbles to herself. "How is that meant to be encouraging?"
Nevertheless, she takes a bite of the goop and happily discovers that it does not in fact, taste like oatmeal that has been mixed with blood, but more like a nutty porridge. There is a shudder as the ship takes off, but it quickly levels off, rising smoothly through Mior's atmospheric layers.
———————————————————————————————- Rebexi's so nice, isn't she?
And now, if you've been waiting for it as much as I have, here is your chapterly Jīvitaya drawing!
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