𖤐 THE STARS FELL IN RAE'S BACKYARD 𖤐
A Sapphic Alien Love Story
It started with a noise no machine should make. A high-pitched whine that trembled the windows, a thud so hard it shook a mug off the counter, and a brilliant green-white flash that lit the sky like someone had torn a hole in it.
Rae Delaney was elbow-deep in her kitchen sink at the time, cussing over a clogged disposal and dripping with soap when it happened. She didn’t scream. She didn't even drop the wrench. She just sighed, wiped her hands on a rag, and muttered:
“Goddamn it. Not another meteor.”
The crater in her backyard steamed like a kettle. Her garden fence was toast. The scarecrow was a charred skeleton. And nestled at the center of it all, like a pearl in a broken shell, was a creature Rae’s brain refused to process for a full thirty seconds.
Long limbs folded in on themselves like an insect’s, opalescent skin marred by sizzling wounds, a faint glow pulsing at her throat like a second heartbeat.
It was a her, Rae realized slowly. Naked as the day she was born (on whatever planet she was from), and blinking up at her with eyes like liquid starlight.
“…Shit,” Rae whispered.
The alien reached out a trembling hand and touched the toe of Rae’s boot. Her fingers shimmered. Then her lips parted, uncertain.
“Mate.”
Rae staggered back.
The alien didn’t die. That was the first surprise. The second was that she didn’t shut up.
Within twenty-four hours, she had named herself “Nova” and claimed Rae’s guest bedroom (but always crawled into Rae’s bed halfway through the night, claiming the floor was "emotionally frigid"). She discovered the internet and immediately attempted to eat Rae’s phone. She also imprinted on her toaster.
“I love warm bread machines,” she whispered with reverence.
“You’re so weird,” Rae muttered, cramming a pillow over her head.
“I like you best,” Nova replied from the floor, arms clutched around Rae’s ankle like it was a lifeline. “Your signals are loud. Your anger tastes like carbonated syrup. I wish to marinate in it.”
Rae didn’t sleep much that night.
It wasn’t that Rae didn’t try to pawn her off. She called every obscure agency, sent grainy Polaroids to tabloids, even rang up the local conspiracy nut, Jimothy, from three counties over. But no one believed her. And Nova didn’t want to be found.
“I have crash-landed for love,” she said dreamily, watching reruns of Friends with her head in Rae’s lap. “You were transmitting longing into space. I heard.”
“I was yelling at my ex’s playlist on a Bluetooth speaker,” Rae grumbled, but her hand didn’t stop stroking Nova’s soft, silver hair. “You’ve got the wrong gal.”
“No,” Nova whispered, glowing pink at the cheeks. “You are exactly right.”
Rae didn’t want to care. She really didn’t.
But Nova looked at everything like it was new. Like moths were sacred. Like coffee was magic. Like Rae, tired old Rae with her cracked hands and hidden romance novels, was something precious enough to orbit.
She cried when Rae fixed the broken scarecrow. She cooed when Rae taught her how to change a tire. She vibrated with joy when Rae kissed her forehead one morning without thinking.
“You did a ritual,” she breathed, clutching Rae’s shirt. “You accepted my affection mark.”
“...Oh my God.”
“You are mine.”
“Oh my GOD.”
There were still problems, of course.
Nova kept licking electrical sockets. She kept accidentally broadcasting Rae’s private thoughts into the toaster (which now had Opinions™). And Rae still didn’t know what would happen when someone eventually noticed the hovering ship in her shed.
But at night — when the world was quiet and Nova curled into Rae like ivy, glowing soft blue in the dark, whispering in a language only stars remembered — Rae started to think…
Maybe this wasn’t the worst thing to crash into her life.
Maybe it was the beginning.