This may all be for nothing, but it’s good to be taking action. Any action. I feel less useless, less helpless. Less expendable.
“I have an idea where we can leave the note.”
?????
Faith doesn’t even try to stop our harebrained plan. She’s busy trying to calm Arjun, direct the doctors, and work with Tess and Kit to get our computerized systems up and running. They’ve concluded it will be possible to right the ship if they can get the thrusters working, but at the moment, nothing is online.
In conclusion, she’s overwhelmed. Somehow, a giant alien is the least of her problems.
“Just don’t lead it back here. And don’t get eaten.”
Right.
We gather back into our huddle and make our way only partway back through the forest. We stop at the dried-up riverbed. If the aliens want to come inspect us, they’re going to have to cross it. It’s wide and it’s open, and if we leave something here that looks sufficiently out of place, it will surely be spotted.
We work together to prop up an armload of long sticks in a tall cone. We tie a red bandana to one of the sticks to ensure it attracts attention. Assuming they can even see color? There’s so little we know and so much to learn, I’m practically giddy. I’m really, really hoping they aren’t aggressive. We use a large binder clip to attach our note to another stick.
We stand in a circle around the display and laugh as we admire our work. We’ve come from outer space, traveled between galaxies, and this is what we’ve come up with. Sticks and paper.
“This is the most old-fashioned art project I’ve ever been a part of,” Skye giggles. Being the crew’s artist, the drawing itself fell on her. She depicted a simple scene - our ship in the sky, with a person waving in the window. We aren’t sure how to go about asking a question yet, so we settled on a simple greeting from space.
I can’t imagine what the answer will be.