Starsign, Chapter 4

“Oh, holy hell.”

Melody scrambled backward, nearly dropping her phone in her sudden haste. She just barely managed to keep the light trained on the pilot, looking at the creature with new eyes as they winced back from her in turn.

Face smooth from brow to mouth. Eyes too large and entirely black. Skin sickly blue in the white light. Four fingers on massive hands. Legs not bent in an awkward crouch, but bent backwards, inhuman. Their suit—not a flight suit, a spacesuit—not clinging to them in odd lumps after all, but apparently covering some sort of ridge down their spine that led to…

Sweet fuck.

They had a tail.

How had she not noticed that?!

Well, she supposed in her defense, the tail was pressed tight against one leg, and clad in the same dark material as the rest of their suit; in the unsteady light she must’ve thought it was part of their leg in their awkward crouched position. Was it even a tail? Or was it part of the suit?

The pilot--the alien--shifted a little further into the hollow and winced again, pressing their hand tighter to their side. The flickering light at the temple of their helmet went from blue to green, then yellow, then back. Their eyes--huge and black and glinting in the light--were trained on her face, but their free hand…

“Hey hey hey!” Melody threw her arm out in a useless, broad gesture. The alien froze, the hand not pressed to their side raised to about chest height and extended toward her. Some…device on their wrist chittered and beeped, screen flashing neon green. “No sudden moves, buddy.” She tried to ignore the tremor in her voice. “What--what is that? What are you doing?”

“Help…me…”

“Holy fucking shit!”

She dropped her phone, staring at it in a combination of shock and terror as the robotic voice emanated from the speaker--at the same time the alien’s strange, too-wide mouth moved and a low croaking sound seemed to come from behind their helmet screen. They flinched back from the clatter of her phone against upended tree roots, but went very still as she fumbled through the underbrush for the light.

Waiting.

Snatching the tiny computer back up, Melody found herself panting as she swung the light back onto the alien and looked from her still-not-receiving-service screen to their face and back. “Was…was that…you?”

“...Yes.”

Once again, their mouth moved, a hissing croak that sounded like it came from the back of the throat, but she heard English through the speaker of her phone. Tinny and robotic, but understandable.

“Oh my god.” She just stared for a long moment. Too long, but she couldn’t make herself do or say anything else. Leo was crouched low in his loamy crook, hisses and snarls faded to a halfhearted growl that rang far too loud in her ears. “You--you can understand me. And…speak…through my phone?”

“Yes. Please…” The alien’s eyes closed, air hissing out from their suit again as they leaned more heavily into what appeared to be their uninjured side. Their tail--definitely a tail--swept out over the ground, sifting leaves into a small drift. “I…need help.”

“Oh my god,” Melody repeated. She felt as if a solid half of her instincts had simply shut down, refusing to process what was happening. What was left of her natural impulses told her one thing.

She had to help.

“Okay--okay. If I… Can you walk?”

The alien blinked at her, and for a just a moment, their expression was utterly human: baffled relief. They nodded slowly. “But not…well. Not alone.”

“Right. Okay. I--I’m gonna help you up, okay?” God what am I doing what am I doing oh god oh god what am I doing? “I can help you back to my place--shit, can I touch you? Is that okay? I’m not gonna like, contaminate you with…Earth cooties, or whatever?”

The alien’s suit hissed again, a high, repetitive chirping sound squeaking through the air for several seconds before her phone translated:

“Ha…ha…ha…”

“That is…so weird,” Melody muttered.

The alien winced, what she had to assume was laughter quickly fading back to pained sobriety. “I have been…prepared for...emergency protocols. I am able to…withstand your environment…for the immediate future. Contingency protocols for involving…indigenous lifeforms…should protect me from…Earth cooties.”

Somehow, the robotic, translated voice managed to come across as bone dry.

That also raised a lot more questions than it answered, honestly, but she knew they didn’t exactly have time to sit and chat. Not if that still-spreading bloodstain was any indication.

“Right then. I’m gonna help you up, and get you back to…somewhere safe, okay? Then I’ll…see what I can do to help you with that.” She gestured to their side. “Like I said, I’m not doctor, but I’ll do what I can. Ready?”

“Wait.” The alien shifted, twisting slightly and immediately giving a sharp hiss of pain--no translation needed for that one--to root around in the shadows of their hiding place before bringing forward what looked like a miniature briefcase. Albeit a briefcase made entirely of glass and mercury, with a line of blinking gold and green lights along the seam. “This…is from my ship. For emergencies. It will…help.”

“A first-aid kit?” Oh thank god--she was pretty sure all she really had at home was some disinfectant and a handful of bandaids. “Great. If you can keep a grip on that, I can grab Leo and we’ll be home in no time.”

“...Le-o?”

“My cat.” She waved a hand at the animal as she carefully got to her feet and took a small step closer to them. “He’s…a small animal who lives with me. For companionship.”

The alien was now staring at the ginger ball of fluff as though the cat was the most bizarre thing they’d ever seen. Hell, maybe he was--she was sure this whole woods seemed pretty strange, from this out-of-town pilot’s perspective.

“I…see.” They looked up to her, and once again their face was just too different for her to get any sort of read on them.

“Here.” She leaned down, one hand out cautiously. “Lemme help you up.”

They stared at her a moment longer, then just as cautiously reached up to take her hand with their free one. She pulled, grunting with surprise at the amount of effort it took to get the alien to their feet--though she knew it really shouldn’t have been surprising. Upright, they were a good two heads taller than her, though she was inclined to attribute a lot of that to their lanky, oddly-shaped legs. Unfortunately, they weren’t upright for long--she’d barely gotten them on their feet when they swayed and had to reach out to grab one of the uprooted trees for balance.

“Easy, easy.” Moving on instinct, she ducked forward under their arm, allowing her body to take the place of the tree as a steadying presence. It wasn’t until the alien froze beside her that she fully realized what she’d done, and she found herself blinking up at them with wide eyes and a slightly slack jaw.

“Um…ready?” she squeaked, shuffling her feet a bit to get them turned toward the path that would lead home.

The alien seemed to hesitate, then their head bowed forward on that just-a-bit-too-long neck and their whole posture sagged exhaustedly. “...Yes,” her phone whispered, at the same time they gave a low, lamenting sort of whistle.

Jesus.

“Leo, c’mere.” She took a careful step forward and the alien came with her, leaning heavily into her side and limping badly. Fuck, was something wrong with their leg, too?

Her cat was clearly none too thrilled with the idea of getting closer to the stranger, but seemed to like the idea of being away from her even less, because with another low growl in the alien’s direction as she quickly unwound his leash from where she’d flung it, he darted forward to walk just in front of the two of them, barely a step to the outside of Melody’s free side.

“Good boy,” she gasped as they started moving properly. Goddamn, this alien was heavier than she would have thought. Or she was just out of shape. “You are getting so many treats.”

***

Getting back to the house was actually less of an ordeal than she would have expected. Once they were moving, the alien managed to keep pace easily enough, even occasionally urging her to speed up with quick nods or a robotic “Yes,” when she asked.

She kept checking her phone as they moved. Whatever was going on–and by this point she had to guess some sort of interference from her new “guest’s” crashed craft–it wasn’t abating. The phone still seemed to work fine for…whatever the alien had done to it to allow her to understand them, but anything that required the internet or cell towers was evidently out of the question.

Of course.

“It is…not a predator…is it?”

She flinched a bit, still unused to the mechanical translations that spoke a beat behind the odd clicks and hisses from the alien propped against her shoulder as she guided them back along the path.

“What are you—?”

She glanced over and saw the pilot eyeing Leo with a universal air of suspicion. Her cat, for his part, seemed to have entirely forgotten any earlier animosity and was sniffing curiously at the alien’s boots with every step they took.

Melody found herself choking back a slightly hysterical laugh. “No, he’s not. I mean–technically yes, but he’s harmless. Doesn’t even hunt for his own dinner or anything.”

The alien shot a look in her direction that Melody could only describe as “disgruntled newt”. “Technically a predator…is still a predator,” they pointed out, the slight chirp at the end of their phrase actually echoing past her phone’s translation.

“Look, if you don’t want me taking you to a hospital, you’re gonna have to deal with the tiny tiger,” she huffed at them as they reached the edge of the trees.

“Do you really…want to deal with…taking me to more humans?”

Fair point.

The alien hesitated for a moment at the edge of the open stretch of grass between her house and the trees, but when she kept moving, tugging gently at their arm around her shoulders, they stumbled along beside her once again. Getting them into the house wasn’t too complicated--the problem was what to do with them once they were there.

“Okay. Okay, just… Let’s get you… There we are.” Carefully steering them through the admittedly tight space between the edge of her counter and the wall, she managed to finagle her impromptu guest into a chair at her tiny dining table and quickly turned to dash into the bathroom and hunt up her first aid kit.

“Mow-wow-wooowww!” Leo was clearly displeased to still be wearing his harness.

“I know, kitty, but you’re just going to have to deal with it until I can--I can…”

Oh god. What was she doing?

No. No time for that, she could have a crisis later. Regardless of whatever else was happening--and it was a lot--there was someone in her kitchen who was hurt, and she had to help. She could deal with…everything else afterward.

“Okay. Okay. Okayokayokay.” All but leaping back out of the bathroom, first aid kit and two snatched towels in hand, she skidded to a stop in front of the injured alien and quickly dropped her supplies onto the table. “I--I think I need to see the wound,” she stammered, unable to make herself look at their bleeding side. “Is that--I mean, can you take the suit off?” She certainly hoped so: if the semi-constant hiss of escaping air was any indicator, this alien was already experiencing earth’s atmosphere.

They nodded slowly, and her phone--which she hurriedly placed on the table between them, next to the odd briefcase-medical-kit the alien had brought--answered, “I can. Clarification--I will be unhurt. But I…cannot physically…move well.”

“Oh, right, of course. Um…can I…how do I help?”

They seemed to think for a moment, then slowly tipped their head to the side and reached up with the hand not pressed to their side to gesture to the length of their throat. “...The seal is there. At the joint of the helmet. I cannot… Reaching…hurts.”

Melody took a breath. “Alright.” She scooched closer and followed the direction of their oddly-jointed fingers to find the seam between the suit and the helmet. “So I just…”

Her fingernail caught on something and suddenly the material of the suit felt looser under her hands. She quickly started working it down over their uninjured side--a task which was made slightly more difficult by the alien reaching up to remove the helmet itself. Wincing and muttering apologies in a near-constant litany, Melody managed to help them work the flight suit down below the wound in their side so that the material bunched at their…waist, she supposed. Hips, maybe, if that was a comparable feature.

“Okay, now lemme see…” She took a step back, intending to get a better look at their wounded side.

But then she saw them, the actual alien slumped tiredly at her dining table, and she couldn’t help a moment of unabashed wonder.

“Whoa…”

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