[Freezair]

(I suspect depictions of injury and some language may happen. Not sure, though)

The Vast Plains were wide and open, but they were not without signs of civilization. Here and there, scattered homesteads dotted the landscape. Trailers parked beneath the handful of trees available, ramshackle sheds hastily erected by survivalists and preppers, and the occasional professionally-assembled home stood like islands in the sea of grass. Velo's cabin was somewhere between the second and the third--he'd built it himself with the help of friends, but he liked to think he'd done a good job of it. Some of the timbers were warped and cracked, but he had a well that supplied him with running water, and solar in the day and a generator at night, and his wood-burning stove warmed the whole thing throughout.

But the thing he was proudest of was his astronomy balcony.

Velo was no amateur stargazer. He was a professional astronomer with a focus on asteroids. The reason he lived so far from the lights of the city was so that he could see the lights of space. And he'd build himself a beautiful, glass-topped room in which he could store his equipment and monitor the skies in comfort. Grew a few plants in there too, though that was more as a hobby. He monitored objects entering Evelon's atmosphere, tracking meteor showers, shooting stars, and the occasional rare impact.

Some nights, there wasn't much to see, but tonight had been interesting. All of a sudden, his machinery had begun to go haywire. A meteor shower had been detected--a high-volume of things burning up in Evelon's atmosphere. But a show of this magnitude was unseasonal. What not on Earth could be causing so many bright streaks of light?

And then he saw it. An immense fireball, blazingly obvious to the naked eye, when streaking across the night sky.

And it looked like it was about to make impact.

[ToxicShadow]

Any attempts to measure the length of time would have been pointless. She wasn't even aware that she had been lost in the vastness of space to begin with, not in the least bit conscious through the entire venture. Had things gone according to plan, she would have arrived at her destination long ago. But she was victim to unforeseen complications. Her pod had been thrown off course, and became damaged in the process. It was a miracle that she was still alive in her state of suspended animation.

Entering the atmosphere, the already weakened, partially corroded hull of the strangely egg shaped pod didn't resist the heat and pressure as flawlessly as it had been intended to. Though, even as the temperature inside the pod had reached boiling and the pressure was so much that it crushed her ribs, she was still left unaware of what was happening to her. What had happened to her.

The final impact didn't do its passenger any more favors, either.

While she was safely seated and strapped in with multiple pieces, and with various, unusual wires and tubes attached to and inserted into her body, her weakened, emaciated body was still banged around in its place, bruising and bleeding easily. And some of the internal instruments were broken on impact, creating a mess of shrapnel, one of which pierced through her skin tight suit and was lodged, while still jutting out, of her lower abdomen.

Externally, the pod still held its shape, to a certain degree, the metal was still scorching from its entry, although it desperately tried to regulate its internal temperature, maintain and mend its wounded passenger, and put down its data gathering roots, in spite of its heavily damaged state; it was not successful at all of these things. While it kept her suspended, her body was not beginning to heal.

Aside from a single glowing panel that was cracked and flickering, the pod seemed to be entirely made of metal from the outside. It was that very panel that seemed to draw others toward it, however, as was its nature. With any luck, a denizen of this new world would find the pod sooner rather than later, touch the panel, and it could harvest their DNA to begin to awaken and attempt to repair her.

[Freezair]

((Apologies for the small wait!))

The entire Plains shook as the fireball made impact, and for a brief moment, the sky was brighter than day. Velo shielded his eyes and braced. For the briefest moment, he wondered if he was going to die. Then the light dimmed, he still felt his feet beneath him, and the world seemed to remain standing. He opened his eyes, and nothing seemed amiss.

Except for the fire clearly burning on the horizon.

Any meteor big enough to survive the atmosphere and make impact should have shown up on his radar. He was quick to realize that this couldn't have been an interstellar object--this was something manmade. He'd just witness a plane crash or something similar. Which almost certainly meant someone might be injured.

He didn't have to think twice.

He ran into his house just long enough to place a call to the local volunteer firefighters and grab an extinguisher before dashing out towards the source of the blaze.

Scorched grass crackled in the wake of the crash, and Velo shot spats of extinguisher powder on them as he ran passed--like a Frost Paragon shooting little bits of ice breath. But the closer he got towards the crash itself, the more confused he became. There was rubble around, but he didn't see the remnants of wings or rotors he expected. And the crashed object itself looked too... too something. Possibly, just possibly, it could have been a jet engine, but then where was the rest of the plane?

And what was that strange glowing panel on the side?

His walk slowed and he showered the nearby flames in the fire extinguisher. It was like that panel was sending tendrils of light into his mind that begged him: Touch this. Touch this. And the calm, rational part of his brain knew that the pod was probably blazing hot, and he would burn himself, and he'd just put out the fires around it, for goodness's sake...

And yet...

And yet...

And before he realized what he was going, his hand was on the glowing panel.

[ToxicShadow]

The man would find, likely much to his astonishment, that the panel was not hot to the touch like he had anticipated. Like it should have been, by all rationale. Rather, it was warm. Gently so. In the very moment that contact was made, the strange machine scanned him and accepted his genetic information, and the flickering became a stronger, more stable glow. Beneath his fingertips was a soft, rhythmic pulse, akin to a heartbeat, that slowly began to increase in rate.

The waking process began.

Within a brief moment, the unconscious passenger was injected with the new fragment of genetic code harvested from the one that made contact with the pod. From there, she was rapidly forced out of her suspended animation, her eyes shooting open as the straps that held her in retracted and all of the machinery detached itself from her body.

Where the panel was, the pod began to crack open, its two pieces sliding and lifting upward and downward, into itself, and one thin, extremely pale, and semi translucent hand grasped at the edge of the opening before the newly woken woman stumbled out, exposing herself and her existence. Though, her body was covered in a skin tight body suit, it did not leave much to the imagination; certainly not her ill, emaciated state. She was panting heavily, as she became more and more aware of the state she was in, the foreign air feeling strange in her lungs. The pain. Even breathing was painful, but not because of the air. She'd broken bones. Even her hair was long and white, not entirely unusual for her kind, but it lacked any semblance of faint color it once had and grew out while she had been unconscious.

The hatch slammed shut behind her once she was safely ejected, and leaning against the pod to support herself on her wobbling legs, half hunched over, she grasped at the rod that impaled her with her shaking hands. Gritting her teeth, not even able to scream, she promptly yanked the object from her body, dropping it to the ground once it was free, before collapsing into the stranger, unable to continue to hold herself up. Her blood was not red, but a faint pinkish hue.

She couldn't even bring herself to look up, to see who it was that had come for her, although it was a fact that that she wasn't alone. She was awake, so not alone.

[Freezair]

Velo tried to cling to rational, earthy explanations for as long as he could.

Oh, the fire extinguisher blast must have cooled this panel more than I expected.

Surely, this must be some kind of new, experimental plane! No wonder it looks so strange.

This person climbing out must be a test pilot!

She can't really be that skinny. It's a trick of the light. Surely.

But all that broke down when she began to bleed.

There were creatures on Evelon that had red blood. There were creatures with blue and green blood. There were creatures that didn't have blood so much as ichor. But absolutely none of them that he knew of had blood that was bright pink. The only place blood came in that color was in hyperstylized anime.

This person... they're not from Evelon.

But... but that would mean...

But he couldn't bother to think about what it would mean, because she collapsed in front of him.

He flung the extinguisher aside and tried to get his hands under her. She was gravely injured. And while he knew you were not supposed to move the injured, this patch of the world was full of smoke and flame that would only hurt her further.

But as he tried to move her, he realized that she was still conscious. She was weak as a newborn kitten, but awake.

"I don't know if you can understand me," he said. "But I'm going to pull you out of here! I'm not very strong--I'm just a scientist. But I want to help!"

[ToxicShadow]

The words meant nothing to her.

As the pod had just crash landed, it did not have the time to absorb and harvest much data on her behalf, as it had been intended to do. Given its damaged instruments, she wasn't even certain if it would be able to do so. But that didn't matter now. There were more pressing matters than the state of her vessel.

With his hands helping to support her, she inhaled a shallow breath, wincing as she did, but she forced herself to move. She grabbed onto his arms with each of her hands, bracing herself in such a way, more desperate than she even realized.

The words meant nothing, but that tone of voice said everything she needed to know. He wanted to help her. And he was the person that saved her, already. She was able to meet his gaze for a moment, nodding her head, before closing her eyes and leaning more into him. She could already feel her consciousness slipping, even though it had just been finally returned to her.

To begin with, before stepping into the pod and being hurtled into space, she hadn't weighed all that much. And, now, she was only skin and bones.

[Freezair]

She didn't reply, so he couldn't be certain she'd understood. But one thing did become obvious as she clutched at him: she needed his help, and she seemed to be okay with it.

And with every ounce of his strength, he began to drag her away.

The going was slow, and he tried not to bump her on anything hard. As his arms began to burn, he raged inside his head: Where on EARTH are those volunteer firefighters, anyway?! But, quick as he was to anger, he understood the reasons. It was not wildfire season; most of them, save the night guard, were fast asleep. For what Velo had described, many hands were needed, and they had to be woken up. And they were, after all, only volunteers.

As soon as they were free of the smoke and flames, Velo knew he should do something about her bleeding wound. It was pink blood, but he knew blood when he saw it, and if... whatever species she was was anything like creatures of Evelon, losing too much blood would be fatal to her.

He tore the shirt off his body and ripped a long strip from it. The rest he tried to wad up into some kind of compressing, absorbent ball. He then tried to tie it to her as best he could--a makeshift bandage, but one that would have to do until he could call the local doctor, too.

But that would have to wait. The most important thing now was getting her somewhere safe. And the closest place he knew of was his own home.

***

Velo's cabin was a fairly spacious two-story wood building sticking out of the Plains, flanked by large solar panels that gave him electricity. He was quite grateful he'd built a ramp up to his porch in addition to the steps, as it meant carrying her up was easy.

He'd leaned into the whole remote-cabin thing and had a lot of rough wood furniture in his house. His sofa, which he made a beeline for, had a rustic-looking woven design and a polished wooden frame. He arranged the pillows as best he could to prop up her head and got her onto it as best her could. He crossed his thick carpet, the dark green color of moss, to the squat and square wood-burning stove in the corner of the room. It had its own little tiled floor, and he quickly lit a fire.

His kitchen was separated from the rest of the living room by a long countertop. He rushed in and removed several jugs of distilled water from his fridge--his entire supply. His well water was perfectly safe for him to drink, but if she was... an alien... then Evelonian bacteria might prove deadly to her.

The local doctor didn't pick up his phone when Velo called--he was probably asleep, too. So Velo broke into his first aid kit and removed some real gauze and bandages. They were sterile, but the shirt he'd staunched it with almost certainly was not. So he broke out the antibacterial spray as well.

This will probably sting, he thought. I'm sorry. He peeled his shirt away and, with hesitation, attempted to spray her with the spray and replace her bandages with clean ones.

[ToxicShadow]

She was only vaguely aware of what was going on around her, but as she laid still, her labored breathing seemed to ease just enough to be noticeable. That man had dragged her away from the wreckage, she knew that much, but she didn't know where she was. Just that she was with him, and that this room wasn't as blistering hot as inside of her pod or as cold as the outside world she'd stumbled into.

There was no resistance on her part as he peeled away the blood soaked shirt from her wound, but she winced, her entire body tensing, at the cold, stinging sensation brought on by the antibacterial spray. Fortunately for her, since it was his genetic information that was used to awaken her, her body being exposed to the bacteria of this new world wasn't as harmful as it could have been, otherwise, if she lacked his resistance.

If he looked closely, though, he'd realize that her wound was already beginning to heal, not nearly looking as bad as it had just moments before. She wasn't stupid; it would have been considered a poor choice by most to remove an impaled object from a wound like hers, since the object, itself, helped to prevent blood loss. But, in her case, it had to be removed so that her body could begin to heal itself of the damage done. If it remained, it was only a hindrance to her own healing. It was just a slower process than it should have been, given her current state.

At the location of the impact, without its passenger, the pod began to break down. Not destroying itself, but removing itself from sight, so that no others could discover it. It was a defensive, preventative measure. As she was becoming more aware, she could sense this happening, as though she was directly connected to it. Which, in a way, she was. It was like a part of her. But that was only a realization in the back of her mind.

With her bandages replaced, she still did not try to move her whole body, aware that she was still too weak to really do so, but she turned her head enough to look at the man that had saved her. She opened her mouth to speak, and she was aware that she didn't know how to thank him in a way that he would understand, so the words of thanks that came out certainly sounded foreign to his ears, but she could hope that he understood her gratitude by the look in her eyes.

[Freezair]

As he saw her wound, Velo cocked his head at it. He could have sworn it was smaller than it had been before. It was almost as if it had been healing itself.

It really is true. She's an alien.

Of course he'd been thinking it. He'd come to the conclusion almost right away. And yet, somehow, seeing such an awful wound almost healed... that was what drove it home. He paused for just a moment. This? This might be first contact with intelligent life outside of this planet. This is a monumental occurrence. And it's happening to me. I'm the first representative of this planet's inhabitants that an entire intelligent species is going to encounter, and I'll probably inform their views for decades to come.

...I better not screw this up.

Even if the gash was healing, he still covered it up. Even if it was healing, he wanted to keep it clean, and the bandages would do that. He couldn't know that she was already slightly immunized against Evelonian bacteria.

He startled when she spoke. "O-oh! You're awake! I... I'm sorry I... I needed to heal you, so I apologize if it stung..."

But he quieted himself and mulled over her alien words. He didn't know exactly what she was saying, but her tone made it clear. She seemed... grateful.

He proffered a mug of cold, distilled water at her. He pantomined drinking it and sat it on the side table he'd moved beside her head. "Water," he said. "Wa-ter." Though he'd read plenty of sci-fi with exotic takes on life on other planets, he was reasonably certain that in reality, all life--regardless of what form it took--would need to rely on water. It was possible her species got most of its water from the food it ate, so she wouldn't need to drink, but he didn't know and didn't want to take that chance.

[ToxicShadow]

Though he spoke, she couldn't make any sense of her savoir's words. It was a shame that her pod hadn't had the time to absorb information about the world before it was activated, thus, allowing her to actually understand him. But, then, she being found so soon was what had just saved her life. If she had stayed like that... she didn't dare to let herself think too much about it.

She intently watched as he lifted the mug, seeming to mimic drinking from it, before setting it down close to her. After a long moment of staring at it with her soft, pink hued eyes, she decided it best to try it. She easily assumed that it was for her.

Although her wound was beginning to heal, she was still incredibly sore. She braced herself with her hands to help slowly lift herself and twist herself around into a sitting position without straining herself too much, though still wincing as she did. Her whole body ached, it practically screaming at her, but it was a strangely dull sensation, at the same time. Like she could hear it but, since she was trying to ignore it, she was managing just that considerably well.

She reached out for the mug offered to her, her single hand trembling as she did, making her hesitate. Then, she reached out with both hands, having to lean her whole body over a little for it, but she cupped it in both shaky hands, hoping to keep it secure that way. Managing not to spill it, in spite of her body's weakness and protests, she brought the mug close and peered within it. Once again, she stared.

"Wa...water," she quietly repeated the word he had spoken, unable to say it louder with the soreness of her throat, trying to commit it to memory. She coughed three times after the effort, then quickly lifted the mug to her lips and gulped down the liquid contents in one go. Consuming the cold water sent a shiver throughout her body and she could feel the cold all down her throat and in her stomach in the aftermath. It was an incredibly strange sensation after so long, and it even made her feel a little sick. Though, that realization hit only afterward.

She set the empty mug back down on the table, her hands still trembling, before allowing herself to at least fall back into the pillows and wooden frame of the sofa and loudly exhaling, glad that she didn't have to keep entirely holding her own self up yet. Part of her just wanted to keep sleeping, to sleep until her body was healed and she didn't have to feel that pain, but she had so many questions. So many concerns. Her gaze remained on the man, holding a desire to communicate with him, but not even knowing where to start. And the aching. It didn't go away.

Perhaps...

"Sarin," she managed to utter, bringing one of her hands to her chest and patting it twice, before repeating it again. Her name. "Sarin." Her voice was a little clearer this time. Then, she lowered her hand and titled her head a bit at him, her gaze questioning.

[Freezair]

Velo watched hesitantly as she swallowed the water. All sorts of worries tumbled briefly to his mind: What if it wasn't bacteria-free enough? What if there was some infinitesimal contaminant in it? What if her species didn't even drink water? But he forced himself to stop. Clearly she was an intelligent creature. He could trust her not to drink something bad for her--and she'd taken the water wincingly, but in earnestness. If he'd been rescued by an alien species and they'd offered him a drink, he'd have been able to figure out if it was water or not.

And, though she was an alien, he was pleased to see that some things were truly universal. He watched the way she patted her own chest and spoke. "Sarin." It seemed no matter where you went in the cosmos, that was how you shared your name when you couldn't introduce yourself properly.

Sarin. He was surprised it was an easy name for him to understand and pronounce. He couldn't say the same of his own name, though. "Orbital Velocity" was a bit of a mouthful. He decided to go with the shorter version in his instance.

He patted himself on the chest. "Velo," he said. "Ve-lo." He wouldn't confuse her convalescent mind by babbling out the whole thing, either.

But... maybe there were things he could still communicate to her.

He pointed at the ground beneath him. "Evelon," he said. "Eh-veh-lon." Hopefully, she understands that I'm trying to tell her the name of the world she landed on. If they name houses on her planet, it could be a problem, I suppose...