Starsign, Chapter 3

The hull creaked under her again, and Melody quickly slid back down to the earth, stumbling a bit when her feet touched solid ground. She looked around, squinting as though that might help the brightness of her phone light as she searched the span of the wreckage again for any sign of life.

Still nothing.

“RrrrreeOOWW!”

“Leo!”

She whirled and sprinted back to the edge of the churned up ravine, heedless of the dark as she scrambled back up the sharp bank to where she’d left her cat. I shouldn’t have left him there, I should’ve just taken him back home, I should’ve…

The cat was exactly where she’d left him, eyes trained on the slightly deeper patch of darkness in the hollow between two recently felled young trees. His fur was fluffed up to make him twice his usual size, a low growl grating from his chest, but he didn’t appear to be injured.

“What’s wrong, buddy?” She knelt down next to him, turning her phone to shine the light in the direction he was growling. “Did you see someth–”

Movement in the darkness. Something shrinking back from her light. She froze, one hand tightening in Leo’s fur. Whatever–whoever it was was roughly human sized and shaped, but it was difficult to make out anything resembling details in the gloom, even with the occasional sparks of light cast from the swiftly dying brushfires of the crash.

“Oh my god.” She got quickly to her feet again and made toward the hollow, reaching out with one hand while she tried to adjust the light from her phone with the other. “Hello? Are you alright? What happened, are you the pilot–?”

The figure recoiled further into the shadows; an odd, pneumatic hissing sound seemed to come from them as they did. She went still again.

“Can…can you hear me?” Oh shit. “Can you understand me? Do you speak English?”

Fucking hell, it would be just my luck to wind up with a crashed Russian spy or something in the woods behind my house.

Slowly, the figure began to uncurl themselves from the shadows. They seemed to be wearing a full-body flight suit of some kind--well, of course they were, what else would they be wearing--and Melody couldn’t make out anything past the wide, black face panel of the helmet. Still crouched low, sort of hunched over themselves, they leaned just a bit forward into the now slightly shaky beam of light cast from her phone. The helmet tipped back, clearly looking at her. Still moving slow and stiff, they nodded, paused, then shook their head.

“You can understand me? Oh thank god. Okay, that should help a bit, but--wait. What’s no? No…no what? No… You…can’t speak?”

Nod.

Pause.

Head shake.

“You can understand me.”

Nod.

“You can’t speak.”

Head shake.

Realization started to dawn. “You…can’t speak…English?”

Nod.

“Wow. Okay, well…but you can understand it. You’re not just nodding randomly at me, you’re…responding.”

Nod.

Melody took a deep breath and forced the shaking in her head to still. “Okay. Okay, we can work with this. Are you hurt?”

Nod.

“Right. Okay. We need to get you to a hospital, but…can you walk?”

Frantic head shaking. A considering pause--their hand was pressed tight to their side--then a slow nod.

“Wha--you can’t walk?”

Head shake.

“You do think you can walk.”

Nod.

“You…don’t want me to take you to the hospital,” she realized, which was confirmed with a sharp nod.

Cool. That’s not suspicious at all.

She swallowed. It was so unnerving to just stare into that blank slate where a face should be. She didn’t want to just leave someone who clearly needed help, but… Something about this felt off.

Well. The whole thing was bizarre, but… Why no hospital? What were they doing out here?

“Alright, well, I’m not a doctor, so if you’re hurt, you need to go to a--”

More head shaking, this time before she could even finish the sentence. At her feet, Leo was starting to growl again; his fur hadn’t flattened so much as an inch, eyes glowing green in the faint light as they refused to move from the injured pilot.

Thinking quickly, Melody frowned and lied, “I have 911 dialed up. Make one weird move and I press call?” She meant it to be a warning as she inched cautiously closer. The way her voice shook turned it into something of a question.

But the pilot nodded in seeming comprehension, though they shifted away from her slightly as she moved nearer. She paused, frown deepening.

“Look, if you don’t want to go to a hospital, I need to at least see how bad you’re hurt,” she tried to reason with them. Maybe they were just in shock? She certainly wouldn’t be surprised. Maybe if she could just get an idea of how bad this was, she could…convince them to let her get some real help.

The pilot hesitated; even without being able to see their face, she could tell they were looking her over, evaluating her. Then, slowly, they nodded. Another soft hiss escaped as they shifted to uncurl themselves slightly, allowing her to see that the gloved hand pressed to their side was glistening in her unstable beam of light. Wet with blood.

“Shit,” she breathed, creeping a few steps closer and kneeling in front of them. “That’s--that’s a lot of blood. Okay. Okay, you’re gonna be alright, let’s just…”

This close, she could see that the wet stain was spreading out from under their palm. And that the hand pressed over the wound only had four fingers. She blinked, trying to process that--was it from the crash? No, it…there was no tear in the glove, it had been made for a four-fingered hand. A previous accident, maybe? Or…

Their hands were too big. It suddenly dawned on her that they were too big. Not in an obvious way, especially not with the way they were hunched in the shadows. But their legs, their shoulders, the line of their neck--even with the flight suit accounting for added bulk, something about their proportions just…wasn’t right.

And that was when she saw the blood. Really saw it, not just as a glistening stain in the white light of her phone, but as the slowly spreading puddle on the wet foliage crushed beneath the pilot’s body.

It was black.

That was no trick of the light. Red blood always looked darker in dim light, she knew that, but this…it was black like oil, shining with hints of other colors she couldn’t quite make out, and thicker than she thought blood should be.

“Oh my god.” She reeled back, snapping her eyes up to the pilot’s helmet. “That--who--what are you?”

The pilot sighed, another pneumatic hiss that she finally realized was pressurized air slowly leaking from their suit. With the hand not pressed to their wounded side, they reached up and gently tapped the side of their helmet, near the temple. The black face panel flickered, one damaged light on the opposite temple flashed dimly once, then the blackness retreated like a window shade rolling up, revealing a clear glass pane.

And beneath that, a face that was quantifiably, inarguably alien.

Previous Chapter: here

Next Chapter: here