Here's the second chapter, the part where things begin to change. For future reference, new chapters will be posted every Tuesday, but today I'm making an exception.

Again, thank you to the ZAA authors for proofreading.

CHAPTER 2: THE CYLINDER ON HORSELL MEADOW

And then came the night of the first falling star. It was seen early one morning, rushing eastward over Podunk. Hundreds must have seen it, thinking that it was just an ordinary falling star.

I was, of course, at home at the time the meteorite fell. The Hopps family home, nestled into a hill in Bunnyburrow, faced Ottershaw, but although that morning my blind was up, I didn't look out of the window when I woke up, so I couldn't see the smoke rising from the Meadow. I might have missed it, but many other mammals didn't, witnessing it flying through the sky with a distinctive hissing sound. Its fall must have been seen as far as Ottershaw, Badgerburrow and Hareford.

Early that morning, Sharla had left her home for Horsell Meadow, believing that a meteorite had landed there. She had guessed that she would find it somewhere between Bunnyburrow, Ottershaw and Horsell. In those early hours, Sharla did find it, not far from the sand pits on one side of Horsell Meadow. The projectile had created a huge impact crater, kicking up dirt and gravel. Thin, blue smoke rose from the crater, drifting along with the wind. Mounds of earth were visible from a mile and a half away from the crater. Fire was starting to spread eastward across the heather.

What had surprised Sharla most of all was not just that the projectile was so huge, but that it was so bizarrely-shaped for a meteorite. It was cylindrical, caked over, its outline softened by a thick, scaly, dun-coloured crust. Sharla couldn't get closer to it, however, because it was still so hot from its entry. A stirring came from within that cylinder, something that Sharla had assumed was just the uneven cooling of its surface. Nobody thought that it would actually be hollow.

Sharla remained standing at the edge of the pit that the Thing had made for itself, staring at its strange appearance, astonished at its unusual shape and colour, and dimly realising even then that its descent might have been designed, rather than by chance. The sun had risen and the air was becoming warm, not just from the sunlight but from the heat given off by the Thing. She later told me that it was completely quiet – no birds, no breeze. An eerie, ghostly silence was all that there was. She was alone in the Meadow.

And then something startled her. Clumps of ash fell from the top of the Thing, onto the ground below. A large piece suddenly came off and fell with a sharp noise that brought her heart into her mouth. She drew closer into the pit, not realising straight away what it meant. It struck her as pretty strange that the ash was only falling from the top end, and from nowhere else.

It dawned on Sharla that the Thing was not a mere meteorite, that its cylindrical shape was indeed not natural. And when her eyes rose to the top of it, she noticed that it was rotating slowly, with a muffled grating sound. And then she had realised: the cylinder was artificial, hollow, with an end that screwed out. And there was something within that was unscrewing that top.

"Oh my, there's somebody in there!" Sharla started forward. The thought of something trapped inside the cylinder was so dreadful to her that she forgot the heat for a moment. Thankfully for her, the heat drove her back before she could burn her hooves on the still-glowing metal.

The heat had brought Sharla to her senses, and she had backed out of the pit, quickly running back towards Bunnyburrow. She must have looked mad, because her wool had frazzled in the heat and she was covered in dirt. She had met a young rabbit on a newspaper round, attempting to explain what it was that she had seen and heard in the pit. Perhaps the rabbit thought that she was about to go savage, because he had run away from her before she had even finished her first sentence to him.

It was lucky for Sharla that a news crew, led by the local correspondent for ZNN, Moosos Alexander, had pulled up to report on the falling star. Sharla had lucked upon him while scrambling around Bunnyburrow, trying to tell anybody who would listen about what she had discovered in the Meadow.

"Are you here about the shooting star?" Sharla had asked. Alexander had observed her like he wasn't sure whether he should engage with her.

"Well, yes," Alexander settled on affirmation, crossing his arms. "You, uh, look… worn. Were you out there trying to find it? Where is it?"

"It's out in the Meadow, right now!" Sharla told him.

"A fallen meteorite! That's good."

"But it's something more than a meteorite. It's a cylinder—an artificial cylinder, with a lid that unscrews! And there's something inside, trying to get out! You can hear noise from inside it!"

Nodding to his news crew, Alexander asked Sharla to lead them to the cylinder. They headed back to the Meadow, and found the cylinder, exactly where Sharla had left it.

The sounds had stopped, and the top had unscrewed enough to reveal a thin circle of shining metal between the lid and the cylinder. Air moved through the gap with a sizzling sound.

"Start recording," Alexander said to the cameramammal with him. He positioned himself in front of the cylinder, facing the camera.

"We're live," the cameramammal, a caracal, signalled.

"I'm reporting from Horsell Meadow, just outside Bunnyburrow. I'm sure many of you caught the amazing star shower last night. I'm standing in front of one of those shooting stars, but as you can see, it's not a star. It looks more like a cylinder, with a lid that has been unscrewed. We have an eyewitness who says they heard movement coming from inside the cylinder. Miss!"

Sharla had been attempting to figure out if she could get close again, to help whoever or whatever was inside the cylinder, but Alexander pulled her in close, to the camera.

"Can you tell us what you saw?"

"Uh… I got here at six, and I saw the crust come off the top. Then it started to unscrew. I could hear something inside. We have to get them out of there!"

"Well, there you have it. Something alien inside the cylinder, but are they friend? Or foe? Until the lid comes off, we won't know. Moosos Alexander, reporting for ZNN."

The caracal cameramammal stopped filming, lowered the camera and nodded.

"Right, well, I'd better get this off to the studio." And with that, Alexander and the caracal left Sharla alone in the pit. Sharla eventually left the pit herself, going home to clean herself up and to report to her superiors at ZASA, hoping to get to them before the news ran the story. Later that day, ZNN's news report ran, and many had gone to the Meadow to see the 'dead aliens from Mars', as ZNN put it.

When I saw the report, I knew I had to see this for myself.

When I got to the Meadow, there was already a small crowd gathered around the rim of the pit. There had to be about twenty mammals there. The gravel and sand surrounding the cylinder was charred, as if by a sudden explosion. Sharla wasn't there. I figured that she was probably waiting for her superiors to arrive after letting them know what she had witnessed. There was nothing else she could do at the time.

A group of young rabbit boys – I recognised at least two of them as being from the Leapington family – were sat at the edge of the pit, throwing stones at the cylinder. I figured that probably wasn't the brightest thing to do, so I decided to warn them off.

"Hey, cut that out," I warned them. "You might make whatever's in there angry."

The boys skipped away after that, and started playing Tag within the crowd, but at least they weren't antagonising whatever was inside the cylinder.

Among the other gathered mammals, I could see a young rabbit mother holding her kit, a couple of sheep, Gideon Grey, and a few mammals who were likely just passing through and were drawn in to see what all the fuss was about. Some mammals left while I was there, while others instead joined the crowd. I climbed into the pit, hearing something like a faint movement beneath my paws. I noticed that the cylinder's lid was not moving – it had stopped unscrewing.

It was only as I got closer to the cylinder that I noticed: not a word could be heard from anybody in the crowd. Even the rabbit boys had fallen silent. It was as if everybody had been hypnotised by the cylinder.

It was clear to me that this Thing had come from Mars, backed by that green mist I saw in the skies, but surely nothing inside it could be alive. I'm not the best when it comes to astrophysics, but I assumed that if there was anything living in there, it had probably died the moment the cylinder had crashed into the ground. I assumed that the unscrewing lid was some sort of automatic process. Maybe it contained other things, like records, or artefacts from Mars.

In the afternoon, news websites had started picking up on the story as well. Having been at the receiving end of them, it didn't surprise me at all to see that they started publishing big, sensationalist headlines:

A MESSAGE RECEIVED FROM MARS

Remarkable Story From Bunnyburrow

There were others, variations that all basically said the same thing. Sharla had sent her report to her superiors in ZASA, and they were going to send somebody else out to survey the cylinder. Observatories across the entire country had been roused, watching the skies for more cylinders.

The headlines had drawn in yet more mammals from out of town, pushing out some of the locals. The burning heather had been extinguished, but the scars along the ground towards Ottershaw could be seen plainly, with smoke rising into the sky. The impact site had become like a strange tourist attraction.

In the early evening, Sharla had returned with a cheetah whom she had introduced as Stent, her superior in ZASA. They were examining the cylinder. Stent, who was giving out orders in a high, almost chirpy voice, had a look of concern on his face. He was standing on the cylinder, which was now evidently much cooler. A large portion of the cylinder had been uncovered, though its lower end was still embedded.

"This crowd is becoming a problem," Stent remarked. "Especially the boys. They'll likely go away before it gets dark, but I'd like to see this area cleared and a barrier put up to stop any more mammals getting closer, and we need somebody keeping those mammals back."

"That's somethin' the Sheriff can see to," Sharla replied. "Judy, hon: can I ask you to go get him to put that up?"

"Sure can," I nodded. "Anything else happen?"

"There's still the odd noise coming from inside. Some workmammals tried to unscrew the top," Stent answered. "They couldn't do it. Probably because this thing's large and there's just no way to get purchase on the lid."

I was happy to be one of the few privileged enough to be kept in the loop, so I eagerly went looking for the Sheriff. He wasn't in the Sheriff's Office, nor was he at the town hall. I relayed this to Sharla, promising that I would keep an ear out for him to arrive. I left a note with his clerk at the Sheriff's Office before heading home, explaining the situation and stating that I would be by later. I figured I would have enough time to have dinner before once again heading out.