At three feet from it, she stopped.

At three feet from it, she stopped. Part of the rock had fallen away to reveal a hollow interior, and as she leaned over to see what it was, instead of wonderment and excitement, she furrowed her brow in confusion.

It was hard to make out what it was in the gloom of the early evening, but from where she was standing it looked like the inside was laced with some kind of mucus-like membrane, like someone had sneezed really hard into it. Something like this should have surprised her, it seemed, but the possibility of organic extraterrestrial life almost seemed ordinary at this point for some reason.

Besides, it wasn’t the alien snot, but what was buried inside of it that suddenly intrigued her the most. Barely visible within the crevice was what seemed to be a football sized egg. It was egg shaped at least. She knew that was what she wanted to take as soon as she laid eyes on it. Any sense of danger the object might pose to her was overwhelmed by a curious sense of wanting she bore for it.

She’d never been very good at keeping her hands off of unknown objects anyways, no matter how much her mom would tell her not to, and this thing especially she just couldn’t resist. Unzipping her backpack, she reached in and drew out a pair of gardening gloves (which more often than not were warranted when picking up strange objects).

Slipping them on, she leaned over, being careful not to touch the rock (which seemed to have cooled rather quickly, but she didn’t want to risk it). As her gloved hands made contact with the mucus, it ripped and fell away like it was made of tissue paper, which made it easy for her to wrap her fingers around the egg-like thing and draw it from its rocky cocoon.

Holding it up high to catch the moonlight, she turned the object about in her hands, trying to get a better look at it.

“What the hell is this” she muttered.

The surface seemed to be reflective, shimmering slightly in the moonlight as if it were covered in some sort of Vaseline coating. It wasn’t made of rock or anything, because when she applied pressure with her hands the outer membrane gave a little bit, taking the consistency of a thick skin. All along it there were crisscrossing veins of various thicknesses creating a web-like network across its surface.

Her heart beat fast, she could feel her pulse in her hands…or at least that’s what she thought it was. After she stood still for a moment longer and allowed her heart rate drop, she realized she wasn’t feeling her own pulse, she was feeling the egg’s. The egg itself was pulsating slightly, though in the low light you wouldn’t be able to tell just by looking at it.

“Maybe…” she thought to herself “Maybe I should keep a hold of it… just for a little while…for safe keeping.” She wasn’t sure who she was guarding it from, it just seemed like it needed to be protected.