Edit: thanks everyone for the reviews
Selva had lived alone since her parents left. She preferred it that way. She knew English, both written and spoken, but didn't speak. She traded with the small villages on the edges of the jungle for things she couldn't grow, catch or make for herself. The villagers were used to her, and knew not to try to follow her. The skins and fruits she brought in to trade were rare or hard to get. Some of the animal traders would give her pictures of hard-to-get animals they had orders for. If she could get them alive, the traders paid well, so she had some money for things she couldn't trade for.
Selva could remember growing up on different dig sites, running around the ruins of ancient civilisations while her parents dug up mankind's history. Her friends had been the natives who helped her parents on their various expeditions, some teaching her to hunt and make weapons, others to cook or weave clothes and baskets.
When Selva was thirteen she and her parents came to this jungle. Their native guides had only taken them as far as the edge of the city before returning home to their families. The country had been on the verge of war, but her parents were determined to visit the ruined city. They figured they would be safe, so deep in the jungle, and they had been. Then her mother had gotten sick, and they'd needed to go into town for medicine. Her father had told Selva to stay at the camp site, where she would be safe, and wait for their return. Like a shadow, she had followed them, anxious about her mother. She had watched as her parents walked out of the jungle, arms up in a gesture of peace. The men pointing guns at them had marched them away, and Selva had never seen them again. That had been ten years ago. She had stayed in the ruined city, hoping her parents would return after the war. When they didn't, she continued to live there, it had become home.