Ne͡ivat'va was captured by the Nayabaru while she was still Valcen and had her claws and teeth blunted during that phase as well. She only became aware of herself as a new individual once Valcen tore away from her (an event that from outside appearances must have been incredibly painful in itself, but she has only dim recollection of). It was immediately apparent to her that she should not have survived, though she at first did not understand why.

It was in a roundabout way through Degen's prompting that she adopted her moniker (Ne͡ivat'va). To him, she explained that it meant “She who was forgotten”¹⁾.

Unlike Gazhil or Valcen's mortal self, Ne͡ivat'va knew very little about the Threadwielder that had abandoned her other than that ve'd “heard [Evenatra's] cry for help”²⁾ and come to help her, hoping to destroy Terenyira.

This flimsy knowledge resulted primarily from Valcen's negligent, half-hearted construction of her mental autonomy, but also because the severance had caused physical damage to her brain. Of Valcen's personality, very little remained, though vis pragmatism and stubborn nature were recognisable in Ne͡ivat'va as well.

Rather than fall prey to the same fate that most contemporary kavkema around her would have succumbed to, Ne͡ivat'va rapidly enjoyed the explicit protection of Terenyira, who - while deeply irate at having narrowly missed a Threadwielder - at the time was willing to invest patience and kindness into the situation, as to at least give her guest the illusion of a choice about her options, as to make it less likely for her to resist.

Ne͡ivat'va was frequently torn between two potential loyalties: The Threadwielders or the kavkema. Terenyira exploited that, bolstered by that Valcen was not there to defend the Threadwielders. Eventually, Ne͡ivat'va chose a Nayabaru identity for herself (“a third option”³⁾), privately referring to herself as Kendakava Ne͡ivat'va, her title taking from the Kendane͡ivash word for 'voice' (kenda) and 'kavkem' to mean voice of the kavkema.

Ne͡ivat'va occasionally confused Valcen's musings as facts - most notably, she thought ve knew more about Terenyira than ve actually did, including reasons as to why she looked like a spider in the first place.

For a moment, there was a blissful silence, leaving her with no question that she could give a wrong answer to. She took in the machine's design. She'd never studied arachnids – she couldn't see anything obvious in the exoskeleton that suggested that Terenyira was anything but simply a larger version of such a creature. She vaguely recalled fragmented justifications for the harrowing form: With a spider's locomotion, she was supposedly optimally equipped to traverse even the most uneven ground. The exoskeleton offered solid protection. The segmentation… there was something about modules grouped together by function at the edge of her memory, but the details were beyond her.

It didn't matter. This sleek, supposedly practical design was only corporeal. It was the rest of it that had terrified Valcen, though ve never would have admitted it. The part that could touch what she'd lost. The part that could erase it.

A Thread Between The Stars: Prologue