The vehicle - it must have been a vehicle, though one without wheels; it was shiny and metal and still rumbled softly with engines even as it smoldered in the crater - the vehicle let out a whine and a piece of it slid aside, revealing a hollow interior. I fluttered backwards, I couldn't help it, but I steeled myself. Someone needed to know what was going on. I dedicated my compound eyes to taking everything in - the curved symbol on top of the vehicle, the way the ground beneath and around it was burned, the hissing of gases from the hollow interior, and the stark white creature that emerged, one slow, shaky step at a time.

It had only four limbs, and they were all thick, and a smooth, round head with no eyes or antennae - though I couldn't tell if the whiteness was its skin or some kind of all-encompassing clothing. It struck me that the vehicle might be a cocoon, and this creature had reached the end of its metamorphosis by arriving on our world. But it had no wings. There were many digits on its two upper limbs, and I could only assume that a body built so thickly was strong and durable. But it could not fly.

I looked up towards the sky, where the vehicle had come down from. Would a flightless creature build a vehicle that could fly for it?

The creature was walking towards me, slowly. I let myself touch the ground, folding my wings so I would not seem threatening with my eyespots. If this was a kind of metamorphosis, then this creature would no doubt be disoriented. I told myself I had nothing to fear, that it must think me as strange as I thought it.

I held out one of my mid-limbs. "Hello."

It put a limb to its waist, and a small object came away in its hand. It held the object out towards me - metal and angled, a thin cylinder on top of a flat rectangle.

There was a flash, and I jolted backwards, pain shooting through my body as I landed several feet away. My mid-limb was gone, bleeding from a stump at the joint. I screamed, as much from alarm as pain. What had it done to me?

The creature took another step towards me. Energy shooting through me, borne of alarm, I leapt up from the ground, flapping my wings furiously and darting into the trees, hoping to lose it among the branches, hoping beyond hope to reach home with my warning in time.