I lose track of time in the night. The stars spin by outside the cave entrance. I wonder if my brood is watching, what they might be doing to try to rescue me. Strange. I don’t feel the need to be rescued as keenly as I did before. I know I don’t belong here. I’m aware I’m a danger to this world. I am sure the only reason Krave is even trying to get me off the planet is because he’s worried I’ll destroy something important. But right now, with Tres on my lap and the stars burning in the distant sky, I feel an intense sense of belonging which I’ve never experienced before. If I was lost here forever, that might be all right with me.
Dawn slowly breaks. Tres still lays sleeping on my belly. Looking down at her, I feel a surge of warmth. I have never had anything to protect before. My kind are offensive creatures. We attack and destroy. We do not tend and care. But so far, I believe I am doing an adequate job. My tenderness and protective urges catch me by surprise. In my previous life, any sign of weakness was something to be sneered at and destroyed. I do not know what has changed now. Perhaps it is the fact that, sickening as I may find it, I too am weak right now, vulnerable on this planet. I may be far stronger and more dangerous than humans, but I am still a scythkin alone, and that will not do. We move and fight with the brood. A single scythkin is a pathetic creature. Not quite as pathetic as a single human, but still, fairly useless.
Tres stirs and I slide her gently down onto the ground. I want to go outside and look around, relieve myself, take stock of my position.
Stepping out of the cave, I feel fresh Earth air wrap around me, reaching my lungs with a crisp coolness which invigorates. I am beginning to understand why this planet and these people always held such significance to our kind. Scythkin have visited Earth from time to time through its history. Nobody got up in arms about that, because they blended naturally into the way of things, and it was the first timeline. You cannot break what has not yet happened. But this, according to Krave, is a kind of cosmic do-over. I am an anomaly in this world, a foreign object in a second timeline which may override the first and change everything forever. It is impossible to say what the true consequences of that will be, because time warps like this one are so rare as to essentially never happen at all.
If I were to meet scythkin visitors, I might be able to get them to take me off planet, along with Tres - if they didn’t kill me on sight. Our clutches are often hostile to one another.
Stretching my arms, I feel the golden glow of the sun begin to blaze across the planet’s surface, bringing light to the world below. I look down at this pristine place, and I see….
“FUCK.”
The old human curse escapes my lips in a growl.
In among the rolling valleys, between the trees, down by the river where Trelok’s tribe of captive women work fields of grasses, I see a pattern bent into the stalks, a large shape made up of several interlocking circles and lines. They do not echo any human pattern, because they are not human. It is a symbol is written in the Galactor universal script.
When I found myself on this planet after the timesplosion, I assumed I was the only one to be sucked down into this world. Those markings tell me I was wrong. What I am looking at is an SOS of sorts, an attempt by the Galactor aliens to call for help.
“Idiots,” I growl under my breath.
Galactor has never had any reverence or care for humanity. I know they will tear this planet apart to try to get back home. That massive sign is several hundred feet wide. If that does not work - and I imagine it will not work, because there is every chance they are too stupid to realize that they have been trapped in time as well as space, then they will resort to evermore desperate attempts to free themselves.
I’m going to have to remove the symbol. Hopefully none of the humans have seen it yet. It’s unlikely that they would recognize it as anything other than a trampled field. They certainly won’t after I set it on fire and destroy all evidence of it ever having existed. But… I stop myself before I stride down to do just that. What will become of the people who rely on those crops for food? They are Trelok’s people, and they deserve to starve, but I cannot be the one who brings that about.