It hadn't looked like any star he'd ever see. And Xaallo had looked up in the sky plenty of times. He had familiarized himself with this planet and it's constellations....Leo, Virgo, Pisces. The whole lot.
And that star, bright and growing larger with the hours, definitely didn't belong.
Of course, it wasn't a star. Xaallo had deduced that pretty quickly. More like...space-junk. Something caught in earth's orbit rocketing towards the surface as earth-shattering speed. Most kessler junk just ended up burning up in the atmosphere. This thing maintained size, even as it gained speed.
Thus Xaallo's second, worried theory: that was a ship.
He couldn't identify it with his LTL suit or his own craft's analytics. The damage, then, must've been expensive. A sense of responsibility drove him to track it on the hoof and he watched as it crashed into the tree-line, leaving a hot trail of fiery ruin and timber-death in it's superheated wake.
No one emerged. So, after a while, Xaallo entered and the worst of his suspicions were confirmed. The two lifeforms that had been on board were dead; mangled and twisted, their fur burn black, the terror of their final moments frozen on their faces.
" Hm." Xaallo grunted. Poor sods. He sniffed at them both, prodding the bodies, the stiffness of death heavy in muscles. Definitely beyond help. Nothing to do but dispose of the ship, then. But, as he turned, he heard a noise. High pitched, distressed, muffled. Xaallo turned sharply, thinking perhaps his investigation hadn't been thorough enough, but the two figures remained lifeless under his steady gaze.
However, there was life. Coming from one of them. The one who had curled themselves into a fetal shape. The margaven drew closer and the sound grew louder. Something had survived and with prying claws the margaven sought to discover what it was. He pulled back burned flesh and saw it.
Pink, with the barest whisps of white fur coming in. Small enough to fit in his palm. A baby something, recently orphaned.
Hissing something in T'langlii, the margaven scooped the being into his palm and inspected it, rocked it, cooed at it. Only the distant clang of some part of the ship jolted him back to the present. It wasn't safe here, in this failing craft. Not for him. Not for his baby.
With a rumble, Xaallo exited the small ship and made his back to his own, it's destruction forgotten about.
