Where we left Red … and found Zophia …
We left Red sitting with questions about pods, Section Twelve, and green flashes. Zophia was decks below … facing reflections.
EchoHub remained lifeless. The silence had stretched long enough for Red to feel its weight pressing against her ribs.
The green flash—it had happened, hadn’t it? Or had she imagined it?
Her fingers hovered above the device, willing it back to life. Waiting for the glow to return. Needing it to be real.
Nothing.
Time hadn’t stopped while she was lost in thought. The automated voice from before had long faded, swallowed by the ship’s hum. The soft click of the ventilation system rattled, a timid reminder that life aboard Ti Tayme continued—whether she found her voice among the stars or not.
She gritted her teeth, kicking the beanbag chair away as she shot up to her feet.
No. She wouldn’t let this slip away.
If the green flash was real, it meant something. It had to.
She needed tools. Now.
Grabbing EchoHub, Red bolted toward the kitchen pod, her mind already running through her options. Poppy would know what to do. Poppy always knew. If she could get to him, maybe—Her stomach clenched.
Do Not Disturb.
The words felt heavier than usual.
Her fists tightened around EchoHub. Fine. She’d do it herself.
In the kitchen, she spread out her scavenged tools. The butter knife, the skewer, the long tweezers. The same ones she had used last time, and the time before that. Not perfect, but they would have to do.
Red pried the access panel open. A small nudge. A deep breath. A steadying hand. Her fingers trembled as she guided the magnetic bead toward the misaligned crystal.
Click. A pulse of light flickered through the circuits.
Yellow. Blue.
Come on, Echo.
Green.
Green!
She gasped—then the light died.
The kitchen dimmed for half a second. Red stiffened. Had the ship flickered? Or was it Echo pulling from the grid?
No, that wasn’t possible. Was it?
She swallowed hard.
She hadn’t imagined this—something had answered.
And she had three days to prove it.
High above, in Ti Tayme’s neural archives, algorithms hummed. Tracking anomalies. Echoes. Signals.
GAP already knew. They had been watching before Jayla Finn was even born.
And beyond the veil of encrypted firewalls—something watched back.
A quiet transmission flickered through restricted channels.
“Another event on the Finn frequency. Should we flag it?”
Silence. A beat. Then— “No. Archive it.” Pause.
“She’s a child.”
The module entrance whooshed open, and a moment later, whooshed again. The first was a sibling, the second unmistakably Mum—pointed steps announced her signature gait.
But Red was lost in a deep ponder, gripping what she had thought may be imaginary but now fully seemed real. Truly real. Echo could neither confirm nor deny this in the shared silence between them. Its faint blue and yellow lights managed to hang on—barely—like an uncertain breath.
The cleared throat caught Red off guard as Zophia’s frame, silhouetted by the sterile light, emerged from the entrance of the gathering pod.
Her thoughts splintered as she scrambled to hide EchoHub.
“Still at it.” The words landed like a closing door, final, absolute.
Not a question. A verdict.
Zophia’s gaze trained immediately on the faltering device, as if pulled to it. She repressed what stirred in her as her hand hovered over EchoHub for a fraction too long. A reflection in Red’s eyes caught her as she turned to measure her daughter’s naiveté against her own ironclad reality.
Zophia straightened her turtleneck and summoned a sharp breath to return her rigid composure. “You're wasting your time … chasing what you cannot understand.”
Red opened her mouth, closed it, then studied her mother’s face. A look she hadn’t seen before. Vulnerability? Then forced back her usual ‘Yes, Mum’ and instead parried with, “You don’t get to tell me what I cannot understand.” She held firm on the outside but trembled fiercely inside. “You don’t get to tell me what to believe.”
Zophia’s fingers reached back to her turtleneck, scrunching the no longer neat fold. She collected herself by smoothing away imaginary lint from her shoulder. Don’t tell me what to believe. She fought the memory, then turned to go. “Dinner at six. Be there.”
But she paused at the doorway, fingers twitching—as if they itched for her to turn back around.
Then her fingers curled into a fist. And she was gone.
Red sat there, pinned to the bubble view of space, biting the inside of her cheek until the sound of her mother’s footsteps faded away. Only then did she allow herself to sink further into the artificial embrace of the beanbag chair. Any embrace that would help the tremble of defiance subside.
She cradled EchoHub with a mother’s tenderness. “Please,” almost as if speaking to herself rather than the device, “don’t give up on me.” Then she pressed her cheek to Echo and closed her eyes. “One day, I'll make you really shine.” Poppy’s not the only brilliant one around here.
Then—
A flicker. Tiny.
A pinprick of green.
Her breath hitched.
Her fingers hovered over the screen, afraid to touch it. Afraid to break it.
It was real. Wasn’t it?
She blinked hard, heart pounding in her throat. But when she looked again—black.
A cruel trick of the failing circuits? A desperate child’s wishful thinking?
Red struggled for air. She jiggled EchoHub tentatively. Then more vigorously. Then tapped an insistent finger on the screen. “I saw that! Don’t you play games with me, Echo. If there’s something out there, show me.”
Red leaped to her feet. “Poppy!” she called, but the family module answered with its usual silence.
A final sputter—then nothing.
Echo was gone.
The weight of the universe pressed down, heavy, suffocating. Red let it settle. Let it crush her ribs, squeeze the hope from her lungs. Let it threaten to make her small.
Then—she pushed back.
She squared her shoulders, fingers still trembling but steady. “Now I know.”
Her words misted the glass, curling into ghostly shapes before vanishing.
She pressed a trembling finger to the cold surface, tracing the letters:
S p e a k t o M e
When she lifted her hand, her reflection stared back—wide-eyed, defiant, small … but not silent.
Not alone.
She wiped the mist away with her sleeve, clearing space for something stronger.
A new vow.
I w i l l f i n d y o u.
Speak to me.
Next: Episode 3— Swipe and Run
Bonus Content
Curious about the world of Starwoven? Keep yourself busy between episodes with bonus content. Browse the Starwoven Section INDEX for lore notes, character cards, and companion content. Content associated with Episode 2 includes:
EchoHub’s Silent Signal CharacTarot (For more information about CharacTarot, check out → The Quantagled Quore.)
Content that didn’t make the cut—Red’s Star Maps and EchoHub’s background
Great tension. Every word is spot on.
Loving the tension here. We're definitely building to something, and I'm excited to learn what!