Nondescript yelling dragged Lisŗa from sleep at the crack of dawn. Her vision was blurry, her eyes sluggish from the usual morning crust. She was slow to pick up the noise did not come from an enthused sergeant. The yelling came with the attitude of warning, danger, panic. A hand reached into her veil and around her wrist, pulling her up. It belonged to Chessie, her yesterday acquaintance.

“Get up!” She hissed. “And don’t look afraid.”

“What, why?” Lisŗa was fully awake now.

The other girls were already partially dressed. Lisŗa hurried to have some semblance of presentability.

“Someone’s been murdered,” Chessie said.

Another girl leaned over, saying, “Watch yourself.”

The gears clicked. How many citizens of Aldren descent were in this cohort? How many of what remained of her kind would join the military that defeated her people? And it just so happened that someone died before training officially began while she was there.

“I’ll owe you another favor if you confirm my alibi,” Lisŗa said. “We’re neighbors and you woke before me.”

Chessie scoffed. “Don’t be so eager to prove your innocence. Not a good look.”

The other girl laughed. “This is already a lot more fun than my brother promised.”

Lisŗa eyed her with distaste. The girl pulled lithe arms through sleeves as smoothly as light butter and donned tight pants up to the waist. So lean as to be mistaken as thin, if it were possible to miss the dancer’s physique even her idle movements seemed to insinuate.

“Dolores LeCheur,” she introduced, hand offered.

Lisŗa shook it to satisfy etiquette, if nothing else. Dolores appeared pleased.

“Let’s take care of each other,” she said, “Aldrenite.”

“It’s Lisŗa. Ciroqe, not Aldrenite or Aldrenborn.”

“Of course,” Dolores said most sincerely.

The tent’s flaps burst open, and in entered an excitable member of their cohort. She waved them beckoningly.

“Come on! Come on!”

They exchanged glances and rushed to follow. Just outside the columns of tents were the encampment’s necessities. Training grounds, lavatories, warehouses, cookeries. Uninteresting, brown buildings. A splash of red tied the place together, snaring the attention of a thousand recruits. There, high above the ground a hoisting pole jutted from the side of a stable. A body hung, tied by rope.

Lacerations covered the body. Deep gashes rich with passion, parted the skin into valleys revealing the measure of all men: meat, sinew, and bone. The ground beneath the victim was stained dark red, but not pooled; enough time had passed for the blood to seep fully into the dirt. It had been a violent death. She barely recognized it was a man. Her stomach churned, threatening to relieve its contents. Murmurs were traveling. Imaginative voices speculated what had happened.

Lisŗa heard many things. The victim’s name was Nathen Laplace. A young heir from one of the Northern provinces. His family had been feuding with another for the past century. An investigation by word of mouth revealed that, indeed, a member of that feuding family was a recruit here as well. The discussion seemed to derail from there.

“Alright everybody scatter!” A uniformed man shouted. He had an entourage behind him whose presence quickly established a space between the recruits and the body. Cleaners and caretakers and some other military personnel. Lisŗa recognized their ranks. The man shouting was a sergeant. There was a captain as well, who remained silent, observing.

Many of the recruits were eager to leave. They had only stayed because of some morbid curiosity. Some had to be helped back to the tents, knees weakened by the sight. Lisŗa turned to leave as well. She was abruptly stopped by a hand on her shoulder. She looked up to see a stern man bearing over her. It was the captain. The tail of his long coat had lifted from his movement, settling down as he came to a stop within arm’s reach of her. A single, soundless step that crossed over twenty feet of distance. Lisŗa felt chills on her shoulder.

“You’re the one,” he said quietly.

“I beg your pardon, sir?” Lisŗa just managed to keep her voice steady.

“The one who was recommended in. No familial weight. No blood history. Interesting.” He let go and walked away.

Lisŗa could breathe again. She didn’t know what that was about, but as she looked around, she realized the attention that had just drawn towards her. The other recruits were looking straight into her eyes, those green gems to which Licelle once professed envy. The scrutiny that fell upon her now had nothing to do with envy. Lisŗa hurried away, heart skipping.

--

Jorge didn’t realize up until then how boring survival really was. Those shows he used to absentmindedly watch edited out all the parts were all one could do was wait. He had cleaned and dried the skins and the bladder. Now came the task of determining what kind of sealant was durable and indelible. The flora in this forest were constantly dripping in waxes, nectars, and excretions. He slathered samples of them on the skins and waited for them to dry. There were a lot of steps in making a waterskin. He remembered only a small handful off the top of his head. That had to be good enough.

Meanwhile he dealt with his building hunger as best he could, sitting cross legged inside his shelter taking slow and deep breaths. People could survive quite a while on just water. Especially people his size. No one said it would be pleasant for anyone to fast like this. He went from eating enough for a small family to barely anything at all. And he was sure he was on the verge of insanity.

He could have sworn there was a strange heat running through his veins. Last night he found himself oddly soothed by the moon. He also had an easier time navigating the woods, and his stamina did not run out nearly as quickly. Jorge checked the tick marks he made on the bark of a tree. He had been there a few days over a month. Far too little time for his physiology to change overmuch.

When he had finished resting, he went off to forage for berries and mushrooms. He shouldn’t waste energy doing anything else for now. He had wandered the woods so much he no longer felt estranged from it. Being here dusted off ancestral instincts he didn’t know he had.

Eventually he found himself facing the wall of vines again. Before, it had put a complete halt on his exploration. Too dense to cut, too strong to move aside. But when he tested his strength on it now, it budged. Centimeter by centimeter it relented until he could open a child-sized hole in the wall.

The sound of an impact made him jolt. A spear wobbled in place inches away, anchored several inches deep into the vines. The tip was made of metal, beautifully carved with flowing glyphs and securely fastened into place on the end of a bronze pole. No, it was wood, polished so well it shone like metal. He whipped around and saw man in leathers perched on a branch, eyeing him from behind a layer of face paint.

Jorge set down his hatchet and gingerly raised his hands. The man jumped down. His landing was silent, and he did not seem to mind the sticks and rocks on the ground despite being barefoot. He picked up Jorge’s hatchet and felt the black stone with a finger. His lips pursed, making a curved expression, the universal sign for ‘not bad’. He retrieved his spear and tossed the hatchet back. Jorge caught it and pinned it back to his belt. The tribal looking man waved for him to come.

“I-I guess,” Jorge said.

Jorge followed the man over increasingly treacherous terrain, further and further from the river. Soon he couldn’t remember how to get back, and there was yet more distance to go.