It was rainy night in the jungle. The treetops were buffeted by cruel winds, and the ground under their protective cover was transformed into a sea of mud. The small animals didn’t dare leave their holes, and the large animals didn’t bother. Alone and unbothered, a young boy crouched in the shadow of a fern-like plant at the edge of the large clearing. Droplets of rain ran down the boy’s face and dripped off of his chin as he stared pensively at the sheets of water soaking the thick green grass of the clearing, making it marshy and, he thought, cumbersome to travel by foot. It wasn’t a particularly cold or unpleasant rain, save the relative impossibility of keeping anything dry. Actually it didn’t really matter whether or not it was raining; things still got damp in their own way. Such was the curse of the humid atmosphere the boy lived in, but he didn’t mind dampness very much anyway.
The boy was maybe twelve or thirteen annual units of age, with a comparatively well muscled physique. He had fair skin and fair, though unkempt, hair. His eyes were strikingly gold, and they gave the impression that he was staring right though you. In the dark, they shone like cats eyes, if viewed from the right angle. He was very dirty, dressed in rags and covered in mud. He had a generally feral look to him. He settled more comfortably into his crouch, a position he had had to learn out of necessity to find comfortable, and was secure in the knowledge of his relative invisibility for the time being. The grass rippled and waved and the night was, in its own way, peaceful.
Suddenly a low throbbing sound began to fill the air, starting soft, but building edgily towards an imposing crescendo of noise. The boy jerked his head up, and searched the sky through the rain for a second or two before he caught sight of the source of the sound. He had been expecting this ship-it was on a scheduled supply run-but the disconcerting sound of the landing boosters had caught him by surprise, in a momentary lapse of focus.
Slowly, the thrumming craft slid downwards through the thick atmosphere. In shape, it was not unlike a slightly elongated egg, measuring thirty or forty meters high. There were no visible propulsion devices. The hull was colored the unassuming dull silver of entry velocity grade stainless steel, and was nearly featureless except for rivulets of perspiration that ran down its spotless surface. The boy wondered idly what such an impressive ship was doing on a routine supply run.
The landing boosters slowed it easily to a near standstill a few meters off the ground, and a set of three neatly hidden legs emerged in unison from its underside, emitting small hisses of pneumatics gas and extending to tickle the tops of the softened grass. They skated left and right for moment, as the ship searched for a choice landing spot. Then, in an instant, the throbbing died, and the ship settled its immense weight onto its extended legs.
The boy’s heart began to beat a little faster. The ship’s lights had not yet illuminated the lawn, but he knew that soon enough, they would, making it much hard to approach the ship undetected. Seizing his chance, the boy stole quickly forward in the thick gloom, towards the underside of the ship and settled again in its shadow. A moment or two later, an illuminated stairway folded out of the ship and light spilled onto the grass. A hail of drops was suddenly made visible. Infront of the opened hatch. As the stairs swung down in front of the boy, he inclined his head, noticing markings on the metal surface. He couldn’t read. But the marks interested him. They evoked a strange feeling of dread in him of which he knew not the cause.
A group of people exited the craft carrying a few small crates and items of luggage. They wheeled a midsized all terrain vehicle carefully down the steps, and waved the door shut, spluttering in the rain.
After, moment, the loud thrumming returned, and the ship slowly left the ground. The people it had left stared after it, for a while, but it quickly disappeared into the sheets of rain. They set off towards the small settlement at the end of the clearing. The boy with the golden eyes was nowhere to be seen.
