The Traveller Effect (LGBTQ+)

2 ✖ Cornered

Song of the chapter: Choir Noir - Doomsday, a cover of Architect's one

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I had always wondered how someone would react to these types of situations. An astronaut, falling to Earth. They commonly re-entered Earth via splashdown, but I have read that the first man in space, Yuri Gagarin, had to eject during re-entry. He landed near a farm and was discovered by a woman and her granddaughter.

"Can it be that you have come from outer space?" the girl had questioned, not fearful of the man with his strange orange suit and bulging helmet.

"As a matter of fact, I have," Yuri has answered.

I truly hoped that that was how it actually had gone down. I briefly debated repeating the same question to the astronaut in front of me, but somehow I just knew this was an entirely different situation.

It might have been the fact that when the Traveller set its feet down, I realised how tall it was. I was sure it was reaching two meters in height. The spacesuit also had no patches indicating its affinities, such as a NASA logo or any other. Instead, just a large ✖ was printed onto the chest.

It might have been the shrivelling forms of the deceased doves behind it; their souls already have parted from the world. Doves: the birds that it had on its person seemingly for a reason. It couldn't have grabbed them mid-fall as doves are not active during the nightly hours. It must have had the animals beforehand.

It might have even been the metal structure that now laid at the impact crater, some of the parts having peeled away during landing and now littered quite a bit of land. The metal parts that were visible to me looked nearly... alive. As if something was breathing just beneath the surface of the metal: sculpting, shifting, singing.

A glowing blue viscous substance leaked from the broken ship and, quite literally, threw fuel onto the fire. The inferno intensified, and I had to shield my eyes from the sudden eruption when a large amount dropped onto the flames.

I coughed a lot, my entire throat feeling as if I ingested nothing but a bucket of chilli seeds. It pained me greatly.

The surrounding sunflowers glowed brightly as the flames amplified their beauty for a singular moment before they returned to ashes and dust. Everything the flames touched died out instantly.

Except for the Traveller.

It began to approach me, its movements slow – whether because of the new gravity or the suit, I did not know – but it had me immediately react. I cluttered onto my feet and took a few movements backward, away from the Traveller and the fire.

"Holy shit, are you okay dude?" I asked the Traveller, thinking what a rough landing it must have been. It had to have ejected from the ship before landing, knowing it would have perished otherwise. It still must have been quite resilient, not jumping with a parachute and being confident in its own survivability.

Looking back on this day, it would have been better to put distance between us instead of feeling the awkward need to fill the silence with the hope that maybe, maybe, it had actually been human and could reply in my own tongue. That it understood my nervous cluttering of words.

SHHRRRZ came the incomprehensible sound from within the suit. The Traveller had spoken its first word, if it could even be considered as such. It sounded much more like someone had yelled something profound into a canyon and the echo was an insult to your status as a mammal with vocal cords.

"I really hope that was just the suit and not how you actually sound," I whispered in distress to myself, my feet backing up away from the astronaut – possible alien.