Setting Fire to the Stars (a MM Sci-Fi Romance)

Chapter 1: Invasion

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Lauren
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(*tap tap*).  .  . Is this thing on? If you're watching this, put the camera down and back away slowly.

.  . . Wow. Still watching, huh? Someone's nosy. Fine, whatever, it's not like anyone else is gonna listen to this crap. Tobias thought it might be good for me to record this so that I don't forget. Also, this isn't a diary, alright? I don't do diaries. It's just. . . therapy? Something like that.

The story you're about to hear is mine (Okay, sorry ours, yeesh. Do you mind? It's my turn to record. No, I don't appreciate your background commentary. Wait your turn and be quiet. Thank you). Anyways, please don't turn this into a movie or something, but in case you do, I want to be played by Timothée Chalamet, okay?

If this was a normal story, it might be a cutesy little romance all about how I fell in love with a hot guy and how we lived happily ever after without any problems ever. Well, I hate to break it to you, but this isn't that kind of story. Buckle up, bitches, and don't forget the Mountain Dew.

- From the First Entry of the Lauren Everhart Diaries (*CORRECTION BY L. E. : NOT A DIARY!)

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When the spaceships first entered Earth's atmosphere, we all thought they were part of an elaborate hoax. It all began with a small fracture in the sky. A crack that grew and grew. A single shard of the depths of space, barely noticeable to the naked eye.

At first, it might have been mistaken for a meteor. A sliver of flickering darkness that materialized through an ocean of blue on what started out as a lazy Thursday afternoon, except that where meteors burned flecks of silver or gold, the shard of night did not burn at all. In mere moments, a sleek silhouette pierced the upper atmosphere. The thin ovoid descended from the stars with controlled restraint, like an angel of darkness.

It began with one. Then three. Then five.

Those ominous floating ships tapered to a point, stretched long like a cosmic lance. They were otherworldly, ethereal, perfectly symmetrical. The depthless black that devoured the sun's rays like a black hole. A colossal obsidian ring encircled the elliptical hull, hovering away from the main body, rotating with grace. Steel-blue striations pulled in faint geometric lines, the patterns shifting continuously within the rind of advanced circuitry.

My roommate and I had been chatting in the commons when they arrived. Mateo nearly swallowed his cigarette at the sight of the several massive UFOs descending from the mid-day sky like silent birds of prey.

Never in my twenty years of life had I ever seen anything like it.

The towering, spindled structure slowed with purposeful movements, the vessels standing taller than a five-story building. Sunlight bent subtly, refracting along unseen gravitational distortions radiating off the ship's metal. There was a low humming in the air, a constant single, deep-throated note that vibrated me to my bones.

A sharp, acidic smell filled my nose as the large vessel crawled across the horizon a handful of miles from our campus, the air tasting of freshly burnt ozone. The craft hung over the planet like an executioner's blade waiting to drop, silent, unnervingly still. Birds dropped from the air nearby in confused spirals, dead long before contact with the ground.

Screams carried on the wind. Everything happened all at once; people shouting, a flurry of sound, and movement running by us in a blur. Mateo might have taken off, but I was unable to tear my eyes away from those daunting hulls. The PA system crackled to life, the Dean's dry wheeze announcing for all to take shelter inside. By the time I made it back to my dorm, Mateo had our television turned to the local news station. The live feed displayed that spired army of crafts circling cities around the globe. NASA, ESA, and any amateur with tin hat and a radio tried to make contact with them. There was no response. Never a good sign.