I was walking through the forest when I saw it. A star falling from the sky to the earth.
I could feel the ground rumble as it crashed on a mountain not far from the hill I was atop. I looked at my companion, and we looked towards the cloud the star had made. We had heard stories before, and he had even seen one when he was young. It was people from the sky.
"We should go back to the village," he said. I hesitated, knowing that he was right but wanting to see a sky person for myself. Would they be broken and bleeding? Or had their star protected them?
"We should count them first," I said. "We need to know if it's one or many. The chief will need to tell the Commander."
It was his turn to hesitate. His eyes examined the cloud the star had puffed up. I knew that he was remembering the time he saw it as a child.
"It looks bigger than the other," he admitted. He nodded once. "We will count them."
I clicked my tongue to get the animal I called mine to follow. I had raised it since it was a pup, lost from its mother. The creature was as much mine as I was his.
"Come, Shadow," I told the animal. He stood from the ground and moved to my right side. We slipped quietly through the forest, and when we came to the smoky landing area of the star, Shadow waited as my companion and I climbed two tall trees. He took his notebook out and began sketching the smoking structure. I listened carefully, and heard sounds like loud, fast wind. Then a large piece of the structure lowered, and people began to walk out. The first to take a step was a girl, with dark hair. She threw her arms up and screamed a phrase in English, which was followed by cheers from the others.
I counted as quickly as I could, and signaled to my companion as he recorded my estimates and double checked me. They all looked young, close in age to me, and they were joyful as they reveled in the forest around them.
They began exploring near our trees. Shadow was smart enough to crouch behind the bushes and stay hidden from them as they ran and shouted, scaring anything in the forest off for miles.
We ended up staying past nightfall, waiting for them to retreat into the star. With so many of them, we did not want to be spotted. It gave us the opportunity to observe them, though, and we discovered many things.
I counted 99 of them. A group of five went searching for something, heading for the mountains. The majority of them stayed behind and built a fire. They were loud and rambunctious, leaving me to wonder if they thought they were the only beings on the planet.
When rain began to fall and would mask the sound of us leaving, we slipped down from the trees and retreated further into our woods, and headed back in the direction of the village.
"99," he said. We were both shocked. The people from the sky never came more than one at a time, and they were always broken when they crashed. These were many sky people, and none seemed near-death from their crash.
When we got to the village, we went straight to Indra. She was eating by the fire, warriors close by.
"Indra," I said. She looked up.
"I'm eating, Arli," she told me simply.
"There was a star that fell from the sky, with people inside of it," I explained to her. "Lincoln and I went to see. We counted them."
Indra's face changed from annoyed to slightly less annoyed.
"Why did you scout them without my orders?" she demanded.
"We wanted you first to know, so that you could tell the Commander," I explained. Indra nodded, but her tone remained level. She wasn't angry, but she wasn't pleased either.
"Fine. You'll go tomorrow and watch them again. Report back to me." She turned to the warriors around the fire. "Send the fastest rider to tell the Commander of the people from the sky."