Very few people had seen the ships.

Sleek and shiny, looking more like needles gliding through air than whatever crude designs humanity had thought up before. The world governments claimed they were wayward shooting stars, the media said more or less the same thing. And whatever voices claimed any different--scientists, civilians, theoreticians--were quickly silenced under the lack of proof.

But Viktor wasn't dumb. He had been working on exoplanets for years, seen more than he thought could exist. Why wouldn't some other planet that no one knew anything about not house life too? Better yet, a form of life advanced enough to built complex spaceships? It wasn't outrageous. More than that, it was definitely plausible, somewhere in the infinity of space.

So Viktor wasn't exactly shocked when he went home that evening and found your shiny metal ship in his garden.

His first thought was that it was... Oddly small. About twice the size of his car, maybe a bit bigger. Maybe it was some sort of fighter jet, or whatever equivalent from your planet. The second was that you might be very, very small, enough for the ship to seem immense to you.

His second thought was that in the state it was in, smoking slightly on his lawn as a curious cat sniffed the engine (or engines, plural? He wasn't quite sure), it probably couldn't fly any time soon. The most probable option was that you had already left with another ship and left this one here, too much in a hurry to bother cleaning up. And of course, as an alien--Viktor assumed you'd look very different from a human--you couldn't exactly call a mechanic to fix a futuristic space fighter.

And then, that made him consider another thing. What if it was a fighter? What if this was the first step of some sort of invasion? Of course, Viktor wasn't the kind to ever give any credit to crazy internet theories or American blockbusters, but the idea was still a little scary. And he was probably legally obliged to tell the police--or, hell, the military--about this too.

But he had very little time to dwell on that, because a second later, the top latch popped open with the same satisfying sound as a can of sprite. Viktor automatically took a step back--he had just been replaying every alien invasion movie of the last twenty years in his head, after all--in case you did cause any harm. But thankfully, you didn't immediately attack. So he awkwardly shifted on his feet, trying to find something to say and hoping you understood some English.

"Um, I'm afraid you're on my lawn."