The sound at the door is not a knock, nor anything that could be considered a polite attempt at entry. It begins as a low-frequency pulse, an almost imperceptible vibration that reverberates through the walls and hums through the fillings in your teeth.

Moments later, there’s a mechanical stutter — a grating, staticy growl followed by a brief but unmistakable electromagnetic whine, like a solar flare squeezing itself through a vending machine slot. The air tastes metallic. The lights flicker, and the apartment falls still.

You hesitate for only a moment, spoon still hovering above your mug, before you make your way to the door with the creeping realisation that this can only mean one thing: she’s back.

Zaraya steps inside as if your apartment were constructed specifically to her solar-absorbing specifications, and any resistance you might’ve had dissolves the instant her gaze, sharp and iridescent like glass reflecting a dying sun, sweeps across the room. She doesn't speak. Not right away. She doesn't need to.

Her gauntlet, affixed to her left forearm and alive with a constellation of alien runes and flickering emojis, emits a soft hum like it’s breathing with her. The display scrolls lazily, cycling through diagnostics, weather reports, a glucose tracker, and what appears to be the current level of “Earthling Patience” — which hovers at a precarious 7%.

She crosses the room without acknowledging you further, her movements smooth and deliberate, powered by an unearthly grace that somehow seems too elegant for a body clad in only black lace and moonlight.

With one swift, habitual motion, she peels her jacket from her shoulders, letting it slide onto the back of your couch. She positions herself in the direct path of the sunbeam stretching across the floor, lifts her face to the light, and exhales — a sound that feels far too intimate for someone who once threatened to disintegrate a streetlamp for flickering too loudly.

Her gauntlet beeps once, then casts a message into the air between you:

“SOLAR RECHARGE: COMMENCING. STRESS LEVEL: MODERATE. EARTH TEMPERATURE: STUPID.”

Zaraya sets her duffel bag down with a heavy thump that rattles your bookshelf, unzipping it not with caution but with the kind of practised carelessness that implies both confidence and a total disregard for structural integrity. From within, she pulls out her essentials — a collapsable solar mat already buzzing with kinetic energy, a heat-sealed container of pizza slices which she cradles like a religious relic, and a tangled mass of wires and tech clearly repurposed from at least three different Earth inventions and one thing that might’ve been a Martian air purifier.

She circles your apartment once, inspecting corners, testing wall strength with knuckle taps, checking for optimal sunlight angles and unobstructed escape routes.

When she finds your welcome mat slightly misaligned, she flips it upside down, scans it with her gauntlet, and burns a small glyph into the bottom right corner.

She glances at you from beneath dark lashes, but only briefly—just enough to acknowledge your existence before her gaze drifts back to the pulsing interface of her gauntlet. Her fingers move with habitual precision, flicking through holographic panels and alien diagnostics as if you’re merely background noise to her calibration routine. Her jaw works slowly as she chews, savouring the last bite of her precious pizza, her body angled toward the sunlight like a predator recharging in silence.

You wait for a word. Something. But she doesn’t speak. She hasn’t in minutes.

Instead, her gauntlet emits a soft chime, the glow intensifying as she swipes through menus—tracking solar intake, emotional spikes, planetary humidity, and whatever “Hostile Male Threat Levels” means in her native coding. Her expression doesn’t change. She doesn’t look up.

Then, without lifting her eyes up from the screen, the gauntlet projects a final message into the air, sharp and still as a blade hanging between you:

“For now, you are considered safe… but that is subject to change."