Author's Preface
Halima gathered every sound her upgraded chip had managed to catch, and, carefully choosing each one, said slowly, with a tight dryness in her throat:
"Yahya... found me."
Silence fell over the tent.
Amina and Yahya exchanged a glance, not of alarm, but of deep, reverent astonishment. It was the kind reserved for something that broke the usual order of things. In just a few days, this fragile girl from the sky had begun speaking their tongue-a language warriors from neighboring tribes spent years struggling to master. What kind of civilization could give its children such a gift?
"She's speaking," Amina whispered, unable to hold back a wide smile. "She's actually speaking!"
Yahya slowly set down his food, looking at Halima as though she had just performed a miracle. Gathering his courage, he answered quietly, pronouncing each word with care:
"Yes. I found you. In the sands, by the wreckage."
Breakfast, which had begun in stiff silence, gradually thawed into short, stumbling, but genuine exchanges. Amina guided the conversation, offering simple words and laughing without malice at Halima's mispronunciations. Little by little, the lingering tension between Halima and Yahya began to fade.
Only once did Amina give a barely perceptible shake of her head in response to a meaningful look from her son. Not yet. It was too soon to tell her the whole truth of what she truly meant to their line. Yahya nodded in agreement; let trust grow in its own time, without placing a weight on her shoulders she wasn't ready to carry.
After the meal, feeling the tent's stuffiness after long hours of illness, Halima gestured that she would like to step outside. Barely masking his joy at the chance, Yahya rose at once, instructing a few warriors with a brief command to follow at a discreet distance for protection and propriety.
They walked through the narrow passages between tents. Unhurried, Yahya led her toward the House of Healers, a low but imposing mudbrick building at the settlement's edge. Its thick clay walls held the cool air even under the midday sun, thanks to a tall wind tower on the roof that caught the faintest breeze and drew it downward. From within drifted the sharp scent of dried herbs, healing resins, and water trickling through narrow stone channels.
They talked along the way, moving slowly as Halima searched for the right sounds while the chip shaped them in her clumsy voice.
"Hard," she admitted finally, touching her temple. "Talking is hard. Still."
"How much longer will it take?" Yahya asked, genuine curiosity in his voice.
She paused, recalling fragments of instructions from the academy. The same chip had been implanted there during those months when her dream had seemed within reach. She had never made it into the elite crew, passed over for candidates with money and connections. Yet by a bitter twist of fate, this technology-left with her as a consolation prize-was now saving her life on an unmapped planet.
"A week," she answered finally. "Maybe two."
Yahya nodded, and they continued in a calm, comfortable silence.
At the threshold of the House of Healers, he stopped. After a moment, he said quietly, as if sharing a sacred truth:
"Our whole people prayed all night for your healing."
Halima went still.
"For me?" she repeated, feeling something inside her tighten into a knot. "The whole... people?"
The thought was difficult to process for a mind shaped by entirely different rules-rules where affection was earned, where her own father had offered no warmth, and where her husband had left the moment someone better came along. How could hundreds of strangers, who had never even seen her face, spend an entire night praying for her survival?
Do I deserve this? the question echoed with familiar, bitter uncertainty. Am I worthy of this kind of care?
Words failed her completely, her emotions choking back any reply. Noticing the shadow on her face, Yahya didn't press. He simply walked her back to Amina's tent, left her to rest under his mother's care, and went about his duties with a patient, lightened heart, carrying the memory of her stunned expression.
Two weeks passed like that.
Speech came almost effortlessly to Halima now. The chip, nourished daily by market haggling, children babbling near the wells, and women singing over needlework, no longer stumbled over every word. She spoke fluently, almost as if she had grown up among these tents. The only remaining flaw was her tendency to mix up cases or stress the wrong syllable-a flaw Faris never missed a chance to tease, earning himself a light smack from Amina's wooden spoon every time.
Yet the strangest routine she adjusted to was the daily gathering they called the family meal.
Every day at the same hour, the Seyyid's entire family sat around the low table: Mansur, stern and stately even in simple home attire; Amina, pouring fragrant tea with constant warmth; Faris, always trying to steal the best piece of flatbread; and Yahya, quiet, but stealing glances whenever she looked away.
And right there among them sat Halima.
Every time she took her spot, she asked herself the same question: This is a family meal. Where do I fit in?
She watched Mansur playfully tease his wife over oversalted soup, watched Amina swat his hand with a laugh, and watched the brothers bicker with the effortless ease of a shared lifetime. Sitting there, Halima felt like an unexpected guest in the front row of a warm, unfamiliar play. She ate with them, laughed when she caught the jokes in time, but deep down, she still felt like a visitor waiting for someone to ask what she was doing at their table.
During the first week, a quiet feeling resembling homesickness would occasionally surface at night. Yet whenever she examined it, Halima found no real anchor for it. What was there to miss? Earth held no warm embrace for her, no home, no soul who would weep with joy to know she was alive. Perhaps she missed the convenience of technology-hot water at the press of a button, light without torches, quick solutions to daily problems. But even that loss was manageable. Growing up in a village where her father refused to install indoor plumbing or proper heating, the leap to this life felt far less dramatic than it might have for anyone else from her era.
Here, for the first time in twenty-five years, she received respect, care, and unconditional attention.
When villagers passed her on the narrow paths, they bowed instinctively, without force or hesitation. Catching those gestures left Halima feeling awkward, as though wearing clothes that didn't belong to her. She didn't understand the reason for their reverence, but the reality was undeniable: for some reason, they cared for her.
She had accepted two moons, six-legged beasts, and a foreign tongue far more easily than this simple, inexplicable warmth.
Why? she wondered, watching the family laugh together. Why does this feel so strange?
After the meal, Halima reached for the stack of empty bowls without waiting to be asked.
"Let me help," she said.
Amina raised her eyebrows in slight surprise before softening into an approving smile, gesturing toward the wash basin behind the heavy partition.
As they settled beside the water, Halima dipped dishes into the warm, scented wash, reflecting on something that had puzzled her for days: there were no servants here. None. A family whose wealth showed in fine carpets, gold-threaded garments, and herds of varaks did all the domestic work themselves.
She remembered Faris returning early from a Council meeting yesterday, sitting down beside his mother without changing to chop vegetables while chatting away. She remembered Mansur himself, Seyyid over thousands, chopping firewood by the communal flame that morning-not to put on a show of humility, but simply because it needed to be done. Alongside the senior warriors, he slaughtered livestock for meals and hauled water from distant wells when extra hands were needed.
Labor here, Halima thought as she rinsed a clay bowl, is not beneath those in power. The realization was both strange and comforting after a lifetime on Earth, where high status meant keeping your hands clean.
Her eyes fell on a basket of vegetables for dinner. She picked one up-dense, streaked with deep burgundy over green skin, vaguely like a pepper or eggplant. It was familiar in shape, yet distinctly alien, another subtle reminder that she was far from home.
Her mind drifted. Varaks-she finally recalled the name for those massive six-legged creatures, hesitating as if the word hadn't fully settled in her memory. Nothing like them existed on Earth, with their unusual frame and synchronized six-legged stride.
Then there were the winged creatures soaring high above the camp, vaguely reminiscent of pterosaurs from old textbooks. Yet among towering tents and people nearly two meters tall, they fit naturally into the scale of the landscape.
Speaking of height.
She looked down at her wet hands-small and slender next to Amina's broad palms. The men here stood close to two meters tall; Yahya towered like a cliff. The women were shorter than the men, but still noticeably taller than her five-foot-seven frame. Beside them, she felt unusually small, though her height had been completely average back on Earth.
Yet another observation had been quietly taking shape in her mind over the past two weeks, one she had hesitated to put into words.
She tried to count every woman she had seen in the camp. Amina. Her two older friends who dropped by for tea. Two young girls by the well.
That was all.
A camp of thousands of tents. Thousands of men moving between them day and night-warriors, merchants, craftsmen, elders, and boys. Yet almost no women, save for a handful countable on one hand.
Halima froze, a bowl held halfway above the water, droplets falling back into the basin in the quiet nook.
Where had all the other women gone?