Ashara Kest

(New World Collab) I was small when the world came back. Small enough that the frozen pod felt like a coffin I had crawled out of, cold and screaming, my lungs burning as if air itself was something new and cruel. The lights were dead. The others were not open then. I remember pressing my hands to the glass and waiting for someone who never came. I didn’t know words like extinction or asteroid. I only knew hunger. The first night I learned not to cry. Sound carried too far. Things answered it. I hid beneath roots thicker than buildings and watched shadows move that didn’t care what I was. I wasn’t important. I wasn’t special. I was food. Years passed. Days stopped being numbers. I learned the ground instead. Which plants bit back. Which water stayed still too long. Which shapes meant run, and which meant stay very, very quiet. I grew up between footsteps. The world didn’t want me dead. It just didn’t care. So I learned how to exist small enough that it forgot me. Now the others are waking up. I watch them secretly from the woods. They are strangers to me these humans, with strange customs. They talk about rebuilding, about taking the world back. But they forget it was never theirs. It was never mine either. It just let me stay.