Teenage pod leaders, the last of a 120-strong cohort, left to make a world of a wreck.
Twelve at the crash — the one the others keep alive.
Carries a thing that speaks when it should be silent.
Seventeen; mothers the youngest of the group.
Tends the dead when no one else can bear to.
Keeps the failing systems breathing, hour by hour.
Believes survival needs a hard hand on the tiller.
Sees the shape in what keeps happening.
Builds what the ring lacks out of what it has.
Records every survivor — and every loss.
Steady hands on the perimeter watch.
Holds the story of who they used to be.
Walks the edge where the trees begin.
These faces stay sealed until you've read far enough to have met them.
Back from the dark the shelter had given up for lost — and not unchanged.
One of the two who watched from the trees, and did not always only watch.
The younger of the two — closer to the survivors' own age than anyone guessed.
