A beach somewhere

The locals picked through the wreckage of the alien craft, giggling like the children they ressembled, though they were a lot older than they looked. Millions of years older.

The crust had already started forming on the wreckage, in greens and greys and deep purples, even as it sunk into the soft silt that formed the entirity of this small planets surface. It spooled out in little patterns, decorating the edges of the framework, or hanging down towards the planets surface in stalagtites, as it does on anything that sits still for long enough.

The crust squeaked and foamed slightly as it was drawn down and smothered in the horizontal sludge that is itself made up of the ground skeletons of the tiny creatures that made up the crust. The ship was sinking.

 

Bits of space suit and sail cloth hung limply in jolly colours from bits of the frame and the giggling creatures pulled bits off and whacked each other over the head with them, without much thought to what they meant and what they had once been.

That was unlikely to endear them to the riders of the massive  platform framework that had, a few hours before, broken through into the large watery atmosphere from the chill of outer space, and now loomed over the wreckage, hoovering, massive. They were watching with some distain as the child like inhabitants of the small beachy world slapped each other in the face with the soggy remains of their collegues, ducking and weaving and giggling, like the children they weren’t.

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