She didn't make many friends, isolated as she was and dedicated to the goal of breeding more of her kind. She was fed the line that the Smok were attempting to keep her line genetically stable by moving her drones and guards about the fleet, and she bought it. When she found out later that her children were mostly used for war, it destroyed her. Ri' found freedom with one of her long-lost children, Ez'de, but it cost her so much.

She followed Ez'de to the outskirts of an alien world to settle, but between her depression and the lack of other Apidae, she lived a grey life. Soon that metaphor became all but literal, as she and Ez'de were cut off from the rest of the Nexus by a span of years caught in a dimensional rift known only as the Drift. When she and Ez'de were once again able to explore beyond lifting fog, the world had changed once more and all news of the Smoke--and the Apidae who remained with them--had gone the way of Ri's homeworld.

Ri' is unsure what to do. She has asked Ri' to do her inborn job to explore and bring back hope, and in the meantime, she is considering what it means to do her job. Without viable drones, she knows there is little she can do to expand her species, and so she is finally considering reaching out to the Nexus in all its alien expanse, though she feels extremely skeptical of relying on other species for her own personal health, and for the betterment of her species.

Whatever she chooses to do, she is sure of one thing: it will be under her own free will, without the meddling of those who might seek to use her children for their own gain.