Ivy Sharzin

Ivy was only 1 solar cycle old (year) when she was taken from her burning village. She was repeatedly informed over the next several cycles that she had been ‘rescued’ and that there were no others found alive in the Village when they found her. She was told that ‘They’ felt obligated to keep her safe and decided to take her with them.

Her ‘Rescuers’ are known as the Miglaxans. The Miglaxa was described as a bipedal species with scales for skin, accented with spines or small horns on the ridges over the eyes, chin, and over the top of their head.

The vessel was an ore transport ship. For the first cycle following ‘rescue’, Ivy was kept in a cage. After some study and understanding of what she was, they allowed her to extend her roots into some soil next to the cage, where she could rest and gain nutrients from the soil. The Miglaxan crewmen typically threw their left over food scraps onto the soil for her to ingest. It was rarely done kindly.

She had been kept in a cage most of her life, even after she was able to communicate with the Miglaxans. She learned to understand their verbal language, and began responding to their instructions. It wasn’t too long when a type of language translator was used to communicate with her. She learned quite fast after that point.

She was taught to make adjustments to equipment aboard ship and also repairs to equipment. She could move her vines into areas impossible to reach by others, without tearing out a great deal of equipment to make the needed changes. She learned on her own about star charts and where other races lived.

The majority of the time when not working on a task she was kept in a cage. If she disobeyed her holders then she would not be allowed to root in the soil. This was a way of restricting sustenance and to punish her.

She commented repeatedly that she wanted to go home. She was informed that when their ship had a reason to return to her planet, then they would find others of her kind and she could go back to them. However, it was reinforced to her many times that her species was wild, dangerous, and uncivilized. She may not want to return and become a ‘savage’ as they. They were more than happy to keep and protect her, as long as she preformed her expected tasks. As time passed Ivy learned about philosophy and understanding ‘work’ and an individual’s ‘value’. She began to have desires to not be ‘kept’ by the Miglaxans, but think about a way to get away from them and made decisions for herself.

Over the cycles Ivy learned to change and manipulate her vines, combining and weaving them together, to form legs, arms, and a head so that she would be more accepted by the Miglaxans. She learned to wear clothing and gloves, like her captors wore to be more accepted by them and to be treated nicer by them. Ivy would even wear a realistic mask over a head shape to give the illusion of a bipedal being.

When Ivy turned 5 cycles old she finally gained the experience and was able to manipulate her leaves onto her face so that they lay tightly together, providing a structure and realistic looking appearance of other humanoids without a mask. It took a great deal of energy daily to do this. She could even do this to create skin-like surface to cover her hand and arm like structures, but the cost of energy was too high, so she usually wore clothes and gloves to finish off her appearance.

One day she accessed some old video files about her when she had been first brought on board. She realized that she had been lied to her whole time. She felt that they were never going to let her go. She began to study even harder about ship’s systems what she was capable of doing.

She wanted to escape, but she was always secured before they met another ship or station in space or went down to the surface of a planet. Ivy finally able made her escape by getting in an escape pod and jettisoned herself right before the ship went to warp.

She remained in the pod for a very long time. To conserve her energy she retracted all her vines and roots into her husk. She wasn’t sure if she could. She had never done this before, but pulled everything back inside and waited. She made only the littlest of movements necessary to survive. She lost track of time but tried to keep her mind focused on her oldest images in her mind about her family and those things taught to her through the Merge with her parents.