Lily held their eyes and waited.
Her earlier words lingered in the humid air like an echo, soft but undeniable— I mean no harm— and the village answered not with speech at first, but with stillness.
Spears stayed lifted, knuckles white on hafts wrapped in hide. Children were drawn behind closed doors. Dogs—or something close enough—gave a warning with their barks and then went quiet.
The air smelled of smoked meat and wet bark and oil from treated leather. Lily could pick up on the faintest of scents due to her enhanced senses, the sound of their hearts racing in their chests, and the sight of their muscles tensing.
It wasn't fear she felt from them, no, it was anticipation, as if they were ready for her to attack them, and they were prepared for the danger. It was clear they had dealt with many; otherwise, they wouldn't have survived this long.
An elder stepped forward from the shallow shadow of the gateposts. He was broad, as most of them were, with sun-brown skin and the remnants of faint scars across his forearms that showed his experience with surviving the jungle.
Around his neck hung a string of polished bone disks and a shard of some iridescent shell that caught the light when he moved. He didn't level his spear; he simply set its butt to the packed earth, leaned a little of his weight into it, and watched her with a patience that reminded Lily uncomfortably of an aged creature without fear of death.
"You are... strong."
He said at last. The words were careful, but not crude. It was clear that the language was not his first, most likely one of the few that understood English, albeit very rudimentary.
"Stranger. Strong. Storm follows your feet."
His gaze slid past her shoulders to the tree line, to shadows that could hide any number of things. Lily let him look and did not glance back.
She had come alone, and even if that was only true in shape, it would be true in spirit for this moment.
"I won't bring a storm here."
She answered, speaking only the truth.
She kept her voice low and even, let the faint wash of calm she'd woven into the edges of their minds recede rather than press. A demonstration of restraint— for them, but mostly for herself.
The new weight of her power wanted to be used; it hummed in her mind to be used, but she didn't use it. Hungry as she might be, the tribe before her had little value as food.
The elder's jaw flexed, as if he tasted something in the air that didn't belong. He lifted a hand and drew a short, flat line with his palm. No. The gesture was plain enough.
"We keep our sky as it is."
He said, then gazed over at her.
"You... keep yours. Far."
His eyes flicked to the shell shard, then to the spears, then back to Lily. It wasn't exactly anger or fear, but rather, a boundary the man was setting.
Lily respected his attitude; even knowing she was strong, he chose to stand up to her rather than just fold or fear. She could only nod in reply.
"Understood."
She didn't argue— she didn't bargain. She didn't let the new part of her reach for the easy solution, didn't lace his mind into the hive and turn his refusal into a yes.
She felt her instinct to kill them lean forward, and she put her heel on it, pressed down hard. If she wanted a place here, she would make one that didn't require her to destroy everything.
Her race had tried that path once before, and it ended with them dying. She had already decided not to do that. She devoured things that had purpose, brought value.
The Fall People had more value alive than dead, after all, they didn't have any specific ability she needed.
"I'll go. No harm will come from me or mine."
She let that last word hang without explanation. The elder's eyes narrowed at it— a question he could choose to ask later or not at all.
Lily stepped back three paces from their gate without turning around, then three more. Finally she turned and walked into the green without hurrying.
She didn't look over her shoulder, nor did she need to; the hive looked for her. Only when the barrier faded into trunks and undergrowth did she let breath move out of her chest slowly.
She stopped within the screen of a broad-leafed fern and closed her eyes. Threads flicked out— not new ones, not intrusive—signal and response through bonds that were hers to begin with.
The Direworm nearest the village sank deeper and then angled away, the dirt caving down as it moved. The Swarmlings moved further away from the village, staying just beyond their hunting range, but close enough to see them.
She drew an invisible circle in her mind around the settlement and fixed it in place.
'No harvest within.'
She whispered to the hive, a thought more than a sound.
'We don't interfere with them beyond just watching. For now at least.'
The assent rippled back through a hundred small minds like a wave.
It would have been so easy to lay a thread on the elder's thoughts— a mark that would have opened him like a book later— but she didn't. Not on the first people she meant to live beside.
She moved parallel to the village boundary for a time, the floor of the jungle rose toward a hump and then dropped into a shallow crease where water once ran in a stream.
As she moved, she saw the rustling of bushes before her, movement in the distance, faint, but she could sense it.
She stopped and so did the hive that followed her, slowing her pace to a stillness as she observed beyond the bushes, twelve eyes shining faintly in the light.
A raptor pack wove through ferns, fighting with some sort of deer they had captured. Their feathers ruffled as they rubbed against each other, claws and teeth tearing through flesh with ease.
Her ears could hear their mouths ripping and biting through the bones of the deer.
Six of them. Lean, mottled, hunting like a pack, albeit they didn't seem to all get along. As she looked at them eating the deer, only one thought arose in her mind.
'What can I gain if I eat them?'