[h2]Sarvenolos[/h2]

In the days since the fall of Eden, Sarvenolos had spent most of the time alone, quietly resting in shafts and vents that none of the others could reach or fit into. He was, in most practical terms, shocked. It had been one thing to be deep in the stress of the moment, when the Metacer were practically crawling through the space station and were about to enter the final colony ship to kill them all. When he spent most of his waking moments worrying about getting himself and his cat aboard the final ship above everything else, he just had no time nor incentive to actually stop and think.

Now, here, in the colony ship that still lacked a name, he finally had the time to think about the things that had happened. The anthropologist who saved him as a child was probably dead, deep inside some giant bug’s thorax or now nothing more than a slurry of biological matter. That one coworker he was quite sure was into him was also probably dead.

At this moment, even though he was in a crowded ship filled with the last survivors of Eden, he felt alone, save for his cat, who was always there by his side. He didn't know any of these people. He wasn’t in a particular mood to get to know anyone, not for the last few days… or weeks. Time was quite difficult to measure in a place where there was no night nor day.

And so, he had been up there, keeping to himself in a shaft that was quite unreachable for any of those with standard body types. Except for that tiny chieftain, Divaldo, but that amphibian aristocrat never visited. Probably because of the cat. He was scared of the cat.

With that said, with not much else to do other than sit and wait and occasionally eat, he went to the one thing he did best before he decided to take a shot at joining the military: music. He wasn’t much of a lyricist, he knew; he was more of a performer, someone who looked at someone else’s sheets and executed what was written. Still, he tried anyway.

[i]Shifting stars, I sing in sorrowed sleep,
 slipping through the silence of the deep,
 Eden’s light — swallowed, gone, unkept,
 sundered by the swarm that never slept.

I hiss the hymn of what was seen,
 of sunlit soil and softer green,
 now only static, sickly sheen,
 Metacer mouths where dreams had been.

Sail, oh sinner starship slave,
 sling me past the silent grave,
 space-slick serpents in my throat,
 singing salvage, single hope.

I saw Eden, I saw end,
 I saw everything unbend,
 stars went still, skies turned strange,
 swarming shapes that slit and change.

So I sail on severed sighs,
 starlight smeared across my eyes,
 snakes of sound in sonic seas,
 singing soft of what once was these:

Eden’s soil, Eden’s song,
 Eden’s soul, now gone, gone, gone—
 and still I slip through space unscarred,
 a serpent stitched to drifting shard.
Ssss… survive… sail… stray…[/i]

[hr]

The day would come, then, when an inhabited planet came into the ship’s scopes.
Such a momentous development was quite the seismic shift in Sarvenolos’ day. He slithered down from his hiding place in the shafts, coming to the bridge where a beautiful green and blue planet glimmered like an orb in the void of space. It was much like Eden, except that it wasn't on fire and consumed by a swarm of ravenous insects.

“Heavy industry, but nothing in space,” Sarvenolos nodded, slowly, as soon as Mark and Ren said their pieces. This would have been the first time they’ve heard him interact with anyone after they left. “They couldn’t be trying to hide from the Machines, as even we, an old refugee ship, can see that there’s technological activity. Could it be that they changed their methods of communication? Perhaps radios have been abandoned in favour of something else…”

With that, he started muttering to himself, not quite audible to the others. “...but we do need to resupply and if humans with their weak stomachs can subsist on what’s found on that planet, so can we. No offense… uh…” He looked over at Mark, snapping fingers on his tail-hand as he tried to remember his name. “...what was your name again?”