Starsign, Chapter 6

“I’m Melody, if we’re doing real introductions here.”

The alien stared at her, blinked, then cocked their head. “Ah…forgive me. Maybe the translator is…not as sophisticated as I’d hoped. Your name is Music?”

“Oh!” She snorted into her tea and had to cover her mouth with a hand for a moment as she wrestled the wild giggles back under control. “I mean--kinda, yeah. Melody is a word for a song or a tune, but we also use it as a name, sometimes.”

They nodded slowly. “I…see. Interesting.”

“I take it your people don’t…do names like that?”

Their head cocked the other way, dark eyes shimmering strangely in the warm light of her kitchen. “No. None that I’ve known, at any rate.”

“Mm. Well, it’s…I dunno if it’s common for us, exactly, but it’s certainly not unusual--hang on.” She frowned. “I thought you could understand me fine?”

The alien weaved their head back and forth through the air. For a moment, she worried they might be about to pass out--then she realized they were giving her a “so-so” gesture when their voice came through with a considering lilt to it: “My universal translator was programmed with all human languages we could find enough evidence for--you have a lot--but it is, at core, merely technology. It can be flawed.” They shrugged. “The more you speak, though, the more it learns. It would be ideal to have multiple input organisms, but…” Another shrug, this time accompanied by that slight head-waggle again.

“Huh.” She took a slow sip of her tea. Universal translator.

Okay. She definitely was not up for unpacking the implications of that just yet, but she filed the information away for later. “So, there are certain words that…just won’t translate for you? Like your name doesn’t for me?”

“Most probably, yes. Or they will translate to my language’s nearest equivalent, which may lack nuance.”

“Wild.”

“...I will assume that is a colloquial interjection.”

She smiled, unable to help herself, and nodded. “It’s just…I mean, like you said, we have so many languages just…for us. Just for humans. I can’t help but think how amazing it would be if we could all understand each other so easily.” She paused, frowned, then added in something of a grumble, “Or maybe not, I don’t know. Maybe it wouldn’t change anything.”

The alien made a soft, crooning noise of consideration that the earpiece only translated as a quiet “Mmmm.” It was enough to jerk Melody back to the table. She shook her head and chuckled rather sheepishly. “Right. Anyway. Not the point.” She cleared her throat and took another sip of her tea–lukewarm now–before popping her lips quietly and glancing away from the alien across her table to look at the framed painting beside her little kitchen window. Her eyes traced the familiar patterns of silver and gold paint connecting tiny bursts of color on a blue-black field–a stylized starmap she’d painted in college. She hummed quietly as she turned over the insane influx of information that felt positively unending over the last few hours. “Names…”

She popped her lips again, then glanced back at the alien for a moment. “So, your name doesn’t like…mean something, in your language? Nothing I could translate it to, like mine did for music?”

She saw them shake their head out of the corner of her eye. “No. My name is simply a signifier of my individual identity. A combination of sounds and inflections that differentiate me from others of my sect.”

Melody blinked. Well, that was interesting. “Okay, we’re gonna circle back to that, ‘cause now I really wanna know what you mean by sect,” she informed them. She shifted her attention from the painting to focus fully on her guest–and finally noticed that they were staring rather intently at the painting she’d just pulled her own eyes away from. “Erm…are you–”

“This is…inaccurate,” they said abruptly, pointing at the painting but turning their shimmering gaze on her. “There is no geographical location on your planet that would show such a view of your stars.”

Melody blinked again. “Ah–yeah. Yeah, I know.”

Something in their face sort of crinkled–not quite a frown, not the way she would have typically interpreted one, but something close. Oh great, now my painting has annoyed them. “But…why? Why keep an inaccurate map?”

Hearing their voice as she did now, she realized it wasn’t annoyance in their expression, but confusion. “Oh.” She smiled slightly and shook her head. “It’s not a map. Not really, not one you’d used to actually navigate. It’s art. It’s…how I see the sky.”

“Art…” The alien repeated carefully, looking to the painting again. The crinkles in their face smoothed out slowly and they cocked their head from one side to the other, trilling quietly. “That is…intriguing, I suppose.” They looked back to her, head canted to the left. “I do not find myself of a particularly artistic mindset, but…I do not think there are many among my people who would see art in…something we view as so logistical.”

Melody felt her cheeks warm and dropped her eyes quickly. “Yeah, I guess it is a little weird,” she chuckled. “I mean, it’s definitely no Starry Night, but it’s not accurate either so it’s like this strange limbo between what’s there and what’s not, so it–”

“I see I was not clear.” The alien suddenly cut her off, leaning just a bit into the table to fix her eyes with theirs. “It was not a critique, merely an observation. I was curious because it…it is intriguing to me that you find such beauty in something so mundane.”

“...Oh.”

Oh.

She stared for a moment longer, not entirely sure how to respond to that. Then she cleared her throat, shook her head and offered quickly, “Well, it–I mean, thank you, but it, ah…I’m not sure how to process viewing stars as mundane, but I guess if you’re used to flying through them they would be.” She chuckled a bit, and to her surprise the alien gave that quiet series of chirps she was coming to understand as laughter.

“Yes, I can…understand that, from the view of someone who never has.” Their eyes wandered back over the painting again. “You clearly have a fascination with them, though.”

Her blush deepened, though she wasn’t entirely sure why–there was no judgment in their voice. She found herself at a loss for how to respond, simply staring at this impossible creature sitting across the table from her, eyes still fixed on a painting she’d half considered taking down more than once.

“This one.” They suddenly pointed, tracing the shape of one of her stylized lines of silver and gold through the dotted stars. “It is an arrow, in your piece. A…flow onward.”

She followed the movement of their hand. “You mean Eridanus?” She sketched the shape of it in the air as they had, and they nodded. She smiled softly. “Yeah, it’s a river. I mean…that’s the constellation we assigned to that particular group of stars.”

“A river…” they repeated slowly, quietly. If they’d been human, she would have said their expression was contemplative–but it was difficult to tell if that translated properly on their face. “In a chart–one of our charts–it would be used for navigation. It points to our next closest outpost nearest this planet.”

Melody’s eyebrows went up. “Really? Huh.” Certainly noting that for future reference. She looked between the alien and her painting again. A thought burst into the forefront of her mind, and before she could think it through she offered, “What about that? For your Earth name.”

Their eyes snapped toward her so quickly that she almost jumped. They blinked, first one set of eyelids, then another, thinner set that clouded the black of their eyes with a hazy silver for the briefest moment. “River,” they said slowly, consideringly.

“Or, well…Eridanus,” Melody mumbled, shrugging and feeling suddenly foolish. “Though yeah, I guess that doesn’t exactly translate.”

The alien stared at her a moment longer, then made a low, clicking croon in the back of their throat that rose to a faint trill. With a small shock, she realized she recognized the sound: their name.

Her translator stuttered, recalibrating as they tapped at the device on their wrist. “River-Story. Ri-Ri–Eri…Eridanus.”

Her smile came back. This…this whole situation was so unbelievable, so perfectly impossible, and somehow… Somehow, watching this stranger offer up this moment of connection as best they could both manage–it settled something in her, grounded her in a way she didn’t expect.

“Eridanus,” she repeated. She dipped her head politely. “It is very nice to meet you.”

“Likewise.” Eridanus cocked their head and blinked, a soft rumble in their throat. Her translator skipped briefly again, then offered: “Star-Song…Melody.”

Her smile widened. “Right. Now that we’ve been properly introduced…” She looked down at her steadily cooling tea. “What now?”

***

“So.”

Melody was on her feet again, pacing the tiny space between her kitchen table and the front door. Leo, evidently still wary of but not hostile toward their guest, had taken up his preferred watchpost on the kitchen windowsill, eyes trained on Eridanus while the tip of his tail flicked back and forth every few seconds.

“Your ship was attacked, you had to perform an “emergency landing”--” she placed heavy air quotations around the phrase, which Eridanus simply gave a baffled look, before she continued– “which wound up crashing you practically in my backyard. So now you’re, well, grounded, as it were, and now I’ve got an alien in my kitchen and absolutely no freaking idea how to get them–er…” A sudden thought struck her and she stopped her pacing to face Eridanus. “Is, ah…is they right? I mean, is it…he? She? It? Are any of those accurate?”

Eridanus chirped a short laugh, turning slightly in their chair to better face her. “From my briefing before being stationed near here, I gather that my people have a…different understanding of sects–gender–than yours seem to. But yes, he or they will suffice well enough.”

Melody considered that. “Okay…but is that what you prefer?”

Eridanus blinked. “...In the confines of your language…yes. Yes, it is.”

“Alright.” She huffed out a sharp breath, relieved she’d gotten that sorted. “You’ll lemme know if that changes?”

“...Yes.”

“Cool.”

“I–” They blinked again. “I assure you, I am not chilled.”

A serrated sigh escaped her lips before she could swallow it back. Right. “Ah, that was a…colloquial expression. It means, like…good.”

Eridanus nodded slowly. “I see. Interesting.” They made that small sound she was coming to understand as a considering hum. “Low temperatures are not typically considered good for my species.”

That raised a whole host of questions that she knew they didn’t have time to properly address. Still, she couldn’t stop herself from blurting, “M’kay, so are you guys amphibian, then? ‘Cause that was my first guess, but also, like, you’re…” She waved a hand at them vaguely. “Y’know. An alien. So your physiology might just be so outside my understanding.”

Eridanus nodded slowly. “That is…a comparable understanding, I believe. Though a doctor or geneticist would be better able to answer that question–I do not even qualify as a proper medic. ”

She snorted. “Coulda fooled me, what with your fancy first-aid gadget.”

They looked away from her, and she got the abrupt feeling that she’d said something wrong. A feeling that only multiplied when they spoke again, and the translator in her ear gave their voice a carefully flat tone. “All pilots of my position must have rudimentary training in field medicine. But beyond that, no. It is not in my scope of knowledge.”

“Er, right.” She paused, trying to figure out where exactly her misstep had been–or if she’d actually made one. “Pilots of your position…meaning…?”

It took her translator a moment to give the answer–or maybe they were just hesitating.

“Soldiers.”

Right. That shouldn’t have been a surprise–she knew they'd only crashed because something had attacked them. But still, hearing it said aloud sent a chill down her spine.

“So you’re…a fighter. And you were…stationed by Earth?”

They shook their head with more vigor than they’d yet shown in the short time she’d known them. “No. No, not…precisely. I am–I am not much of a fighter.” They gestured to their still healing side. “Obviously.” They chirped another laugh, but this one held the barest edge of something like a growl that made Melody think Eridanus really didn’t find the situation all that funny. “I was actually charged with a…courier mission of sorts. My flight path brought me closer to your planet than most of our charted courses would, in the hope that it would avoid…provoking aggression.” They glanced down at their side again. “Obviously, that did not work as intended.”

“Wow. Okay. Processing that.” Melody leaned heavily back against her kitchen counter, palms braced to either side of her hips. “So you–you’re still…I mean, this mission you’re on, you still have to…do that?”

Eridanus looked at her and was quiet for a long moment. Melody got the distinct impression that they were running numbers in their head. Well, she couldn’t exactly blame them–if she’d been in their position, she wasn’t sure what she would be telling…someone like her.

“I do,” they responded, evidently done with their calculations. “It is…not going to be easy, however. My assailant entered your atmosphere on the other side of this continent, but–”

“Wait wait wait. Wait.” Melody raised both hands, a horrible realization dawning. “The other side of–the UFO thing was real? That was who attacked you?!”

Eridanus blinked, and something in the way they looked at her made her think they were taken aback by her abrupt change in demeanor. “I–UFO–yes. Yes, it is likely they were witnessed. Your people may have categorized their craft as such. But they suffered less damage than I did–their craft is likely still at least rudimentarily operational.”

Melody gaped at them, wide-eyed. “You’re saying–you’re saying that the person who attacked you is here. On Earth. And they have intergalactic transportation available?”

Eridanus shook their head quickly. “No, not entirely. I doubt their craft is functioning at full capacity, but tracking operations, basic weaponry, cloaking…that is likely still intact.”

She swallowed. “So. They didn’t get…whatever it was they wanted from you. And now they’re here. On this planet. And they have…a way of finding you.”

Their eyes met hers, some of the shimmer gone, replaced with a universal weariness that she couldn’t say how she recognized, but she instinctively did. “Yes. Which is why we need to leave.”

It took her a second.

“I’m sorry–we?!”

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