I never really got to see how bad it was before.
Now, I take note of all the cracks in the capsule's body, all of the rust and burn marks from the missiles, the places where the wings snapped off and the broken remains of one of them.
I was definitely attacked. The question is, by who?
"We need to get down and get a closer look." I told Major Chang.
He nods and pulls out of his backpack a rope with a grappling hook at the end of it. After securing the hook onto the rocky edge of the crater, we slide down the rope to the bottom, landing with a soft *thud*.
I walk the perimeter of the vessel, observing every inch of its battered surface. Then something highly unusual stops me in my tracks, causing Major Chang to bump into me and knock me over straight to the ground.
"Whoa, what happened? Sorry...are you okay?" he steadies himself and helps me back on my feet.
"Look," I point up at one section of the capsule, which is covered in what looks like a bright blue graffitied message. The glyphs don't match any languages in my default database, so I can only conclude they're from the natives' vernacular. "Major...can you read this?"
"Not exactly, but I have something that might help." He reaches into his backpack and retrieves a small notebook. Inside are pages and pages full of hand-drawn glyphs like the ones on the capsule, with notes in English next to each one.
"What is that?"
"It's a sort of...legend I came up with to help me learn the natives' language. I spent the past 5 years or so developing it from pieces of their writing I found here and there, plus listening in on their conversations whenever I could pick them up on the radio frequency. I don't have it completely figured out yet, though."
"Let me see it!" I take the notebook from Major Chang's hands and immediately flip through the pages, scanning each one and storing the information in my internal database. Minutes later, I hand back the notebook and try to decipher the glyphs on the capsule.
"It says...'GO...HOME...OR...GO...WITH...US'?"
[[TO BE CONTINUED]]
YOU ARE READING
I Am XIAO: An Inktober Story
Science FictionFirst published on Instagram under the username @leilacreatesthings as a response to Jake Parker's "Inktober" art challenge during October 2019-January 2020. PREMISE: In the year 2520, on the space capsule "Blue Dragon", the sole passenger, a NASA...
