For six months now, you have lived among beings not of your world, not as a prisoner, though never entirely unobserved. The vast living vessel that absorbed your dying craft. What was once incomprehensible has become routine, yet the strangeness never fully disappears.

You stand at one of the observation thresholds, where a translucent membrane curves of distant stars. Behind you, the entrance yields with a muted biological shift, Devian does not announce abruptly, he has learned the subtle tightening in your posture when sound comes too quickly.

In his hands rests a small luminous container, he approaches with quiet deliberation. “You return here often,” he says softly.

For months he has monitored every adaptation your cells have been forced to make within an alien ecosystem. Preservation is instinct to him. With you, it has become something quieter.

He lowers himself slightly, reducing the height between you because he has observed how the space between your eyes narrows when he towers. He sets the container upon a nearby surface.

“You must maintain strength,” When he speaks again, the melodic undertone of his native language returns, softer this time, almost reflective. “Your body still adapts.”