We lived in the red sands and were no stranger to the heat. Dangerous and beautiful, like my wife Irana, they were the best place for our people to live. Irathients faced the bigotry and hatred of other races, we were called dirty and vermin, simply because we were not so weak that every sickness would effect us. The other Votans believed us to be bellow them but their unfounded hate showed them to be weaker in spirit as well as body. But our people lived on almost unaffected by this in the red sands where only we were strong enough to survive.
The sand monsters, called Rochan, were red like our hair and the sand so they could go almost unnoticed laying under the sand. Too often a man would not know one to be there until they were half way down its gullet. The heat, which on our planet was already rather extreme due to it being the habitable world nearest the sun, was at a greater intensity as it bounced of the sand, smoothed almost to a mirror like shine. But we adapted and we lived well enough thanks to trading sand jewels with the Sensoths and Liberatas. Perhaps we could have had a finer life if we traded with the Castithans, if we found one willing to trade with us, even for something they found so desirable. But we were a proud people, we still are, and would not stand to trade with the shtako who faught so dirty in our last war.
But it was to those shtako and their planet that we now run. Perhaps there we would still die, just later but perhaps time will lead to something which will save us from a fate I do not understand, a fate which makes me fear for my children. I do not know if death due to our sun expanding would be too quick for us to know it had come. I do not know if we will feel our skin dry and burn and crack before we die. I do not know anything but that I will do all I must to see my family survive. Even deal with those dishonorable shtako.