We were eating breakfast when the cabin was shaken. It stopped. An intermittent hum came from the backyard. We rushed out to find a space ship covered in stars floating just above the ground.
It was half the size of our cabin. We walked around it. I put my hand on the hull. It was cool to the touch, and the ship moved even under the slightest pressure of my hand like a balloon.
"I wonder if it has a door?" I said.
Just then, as if by coincidence, the edge of a door appeared, then it disappeared again. Meva saw it too.
We tried to find the edge of the door with our fingers, but the remained smooth aside from two large gashes to the left of where the door was.
"I wonder if someone is inside."
Again the edge of the door appeared, opening only slightly, but enough to allow sound to escape from the ship’s interior.
"WAAAaaahhH!" a cry came from inside. Not the cry of something big but of something small.
"That sounded like a child!" Meva gasped. "We have to get in!"
As if moved by her demand, the hatch opened wide, a small set of stairs extending to the ground. The cry came louder now that the hatch was open. We couldn't see inside because white lights flooded from inside. Meva was halfway up the stairs before I grabbed her arm.
"Meva! We don't know if it's safe!"
"WaaaaahhhhH!" came the baby cry again.
There was fire in Meva's eyes. "Someone needs us! We'll find out if it's safe later!"
She pulled me up into the bright light. I stumbled on the steps, and then we were inside. Meva tripped over something beyond the door, and she gasped. We stood there for a moment, waiting for our eyes to adjust to the light. From inside the craft, it was hard to make out any sounds beyond the hum of engines and the crying.
Finally, through squinted eyes we saw what Meva had tripped on. Two beings lay on the floor together, arm in arm. I would have thought they were asleep, but their faces were gaunt, their skin already stretching around the shape of their skulls, eyeballs dried and sunken. Meva covered her face.
I knew what had killed them. I had seen it before in the mines. When a miner was being punished for something particularly terrible, he would have his rations taken away. These were the effects of starvation.
Again, the crying. This time Meva stepped over the corpses and went in search of the source.
"What if it is a trap? That cry could be a universal distress signal to attract victims! Maybe this is not a ship! Maybe it is a living entity and it hopes to kill and eat us?!"
"You have a great imagination, Tzurk." Meva called over her shoulder.
I followed.
In a small chamber, Meva found a baby in a padded pod, chained to a console. The room was filled with the stench of feces. When Meva lifted the child from her bed, it was easy to see that the smell was coming from her overflowing diaper. Even its pod was smeared with it.
"Tzurk, quickly, give me your robe!" Meva said.
Meva removed the dirty wrapping and tossed them back into the pod. Taking my robe, she gently wrapped the child. Though sullied, the child seemed comforted by its new found freedom from the soggy diaper. Her cries sputtered to a stop.
Meva rocked the girl in her arms, singing softly. The baby watched her with wide eyes. The little thing spoke, "P." She burped a green bubble. I popped the bubble, and a small crystal fell from it, landing on the floor. It looked just like the crystals I had seen inserted into the grid, except this one was bright green.
The baby nuzzled her head into Meva's arms, her eyes closing in exhaustion. Meva looked around the room.
"She hasn’t been changed her for days." Meva observed.
It didn't make sense that the two beings on the stairs starved to death while the child seemed to be so well fed. I turned the crystal over in my hand, trying to understand. Then it came to me.
"They starved themselves to feed the child!" I said, "The crystals come from her! They power the ship. She was their only chance for their survival. After they died, the ship ran out of power, and drifted into our backyard."
Meva smiled, “She found us, Tzurk! We could not ... she found us. You did see where the ship landed, right?"
I shook my head.
"... on the female baby garden. She will be OUR child!"
I saw the look of renewed hope in Meva's eyes. Though I doubted any cosmic will was bent on bringing us this female child, I did not want to hurt Meva’s feelings. Whatever the cause of this coincidence, it was a good thing for Meva's heart to have a child in her arms… a child that needed her.
We took P off the ship and brought her into the house. That night, she slept between us, and we could hear her breathing. I put my hand on Meva’s hip, and she put her hand on the baby’s back. Just before we drifted into a deep and peaceful sleep, I heard Meva say, "You're safe now, P. I love you." A giggle. A burp. POP! A crystal clatters on the floor.