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 a good idea for me to record this so I don't forget. Also, this isn't a diary, alright? I don't do diaries. Is it 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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It all began with a small fracture in the sky. That tiny crack, barely noticeable to the naked eye, was the beginning of the end. A sliver of flickering darkness piercing through an ocean of blue on what started as a lazy Thursday afternoon.

Laughter drifted through the early summer air as a football was tossed between friends beneath the sprawling tree canopies. Clusters of students lingered beneath the ivy-covered archways and ancient oaks, savoring the free time between lectures with coffee and friends. The grand campus of Kingswell College rose up in towering sandstone spires, bells tolling low across the sprawling quad. Students drifted beneath vaulted archways that looked as ancient as some of the professors, easy conversations mingling with the rustle of emerald leaves. The crisp scent of freshly cut grass lingered on the breeze, stained-glass windows casting rivers of sapphire and golds across the weathered halls.

My roommate and I had been in the middle chatting in the commons about our upcoming final exams when the ships first arrived. Mateo nearly swallowed his cigarette at the sight of the massive floating pillars descending from the midday sky like silent birds of prey.

It began with one. Then three. Then five.

They emerged as though carved from the depths of space, the giant ships each three times the size of the Empire State Building. As though carved from slabs of obsidian, the sun's glare,  reflected off their tapered hulls, stretching with a cosmic lance. Their designs were ethereal, perfectly symmetrical in shape and unlike anything ever seen on Earth. A colossal ring encircled the horizontal body, hovering away from the center, rotating inch by inch with an otherworldly grace. Steel-blue striations pulled in faint geometric lines, the patterns shifting inside the rind of advanced circuitry.

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

The towering, spindled structure slowed in purposeful movements. Light bent subtly around the vessels, 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 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.