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"Water?"

The pheromone dissipated into nothingness, rousing no response.

I could no longer feel my sibling, Water's presence around me. Had they moved away? It was a highly unlikely possibility, considering how massive they were and the sheer effort it would take for them to slither so far away in one night.

The binary stars' rays stung my eye-spots as I moved them onto my body membrane's surface. Irritated by the sudden increase in luminosity, I pulled them back into my ectoplasm. It took me a while to scour through my genetic archives for a species more adapted to the scorching heat that was scalding my membrane.

The ocean floor had never been this hot before. Had the continental shelf collapsed and cracked under Water's weight, giving way to the magma underneath?

Within seconds, my cells set out to work, forging a new form for myself. Joints clicked into place as muscle fibers spun themselves into place around them, anchoring them firmly.

Carefully, I positioned the ten spindly legs underneath me and grew myself a strong carapace, one that any original Magma Runner would kill without hesitation to own. I swiveled the three ocular orbs positioned on stalks and looked around.

Fear gripped my innards.

The ocean had evaporated around me overnight, stranding me within a dry dome-like cave filled with dust and crystalline formations like the ones found on my planet's landmasses.

My sibling was nowhere to be found and their offspring were missing.

Only the scratching sound that had irritated me into waking up persisted.

I skittered across the dome on all tens, scanning its surfaces with my three orbs, overturning rocks and crystals with my claw-like first pair of feet and tasting the minerals with my proboscis. It was as if the ocean had never existed.

The scratching was starting to gnaw at my sensitive orbs. I swiveled them upwards to look at the only source of light in the dome. The light was filtering through a fractured slab of quartz partly hidden by shifting yellow sands.

My ascent was quick and my work was cut out for my form. The Magma Runners had claws that could sculpt granite and cut through marble like it were flesh, useful for constructing nests in their volcanic habitats. A soft slab of quartz never stood a chance against me. My claws emerged through the fracture and I pulled myself onto the surface.

What greeted me was far worse than what I had anticipated.

I remembered my planet having a pair of small white stars. The spacefarers among us mimics had called them white dwarfs. The pair rose and fell together with every starlight in harmony. Their celestial dance had guided and nurtured life on both land and in the seas since the birth of this planet.

Then why was there one gigantic yellow star filling up most of the sky instead?

It seemed that the heat from the star had burnt the oceans off the face of the planet, turning whatever was left into plumes of gas that billowed from its surface. I dug my claws and feet deep into the dust streaming over me and looked about.

Where had the scratching come from? It surely wasn't debris bouncing off the slab of quartz.

I swiveled my orbs and crouched behind a rock as the scratching resumed behind me. When the dust cleared I saw the creature itself.

It made odd buzzing noises as it moved its stiff limbs around, it looked as if it were ridden with some dangerous disease. The creature's dented carapace shone a dull silver in the star's light. Then it moved in a way I had never seen anything move before.

The creature's four limbs had coils of a black leathery substance wound around its toes, and when the creature moved, the coils turned, propelling it onwards. Whenever it saw a shiny rock or a shard of quartz, it would extend a stiff, inflexible, metallic limb, pick it up, and thrust it into a cavity within its chest. It scavenged alone. Every now and then, one of the many nodules on its head would glow red or green.

I was starving and my quest for my sibling could wait until I was sated. Hunting such weak, clumsy, and possibly disease-ridden prey went against my Magma Runner instincts but I silenced them in favor of getting an easy meal.

I stalked closer to the spot where it was scavenging, sharpening my pincers by rubbing them against each other in silence. My prey seemed engrossed in its activity.

I was quick to pounce on the creature and tear through its body. It tumbled over, offering me its life without struggle. That ticked off several of my warning instincts. I crouched underneath its grey belly as it uprighted itself and went back to picking up rocks. Dumbfounded, I dragged my claw across its belly, spilling its internal organs.

The tangle of dry, colorful strings that popped out did not look appetizing. Curious, I gently nibbled on one of them only to be stung by what felt like electricity.

Aghast, I retreated into the cover of a nearby rock, nursing my paralyzed mouth. Most creatures who used electric shocks for defense had generated it on their surface. Why would any creature leave its surface unprotected just to store electricity in its dry intestines?

What an odd creature. Quite a formidable opponent that too.

I simply had to infiltrate its nest and learn more about it. Since it was thriving in my drastically changed world, perhaps its species held insight into what had happened to the oceans. This was my chance to find out what had happened to Water.

Steadying myself, I dashed across the dust and into the shadow underneath the creature's belly. I shifted back into my mimic form and slid up its smooth legs, making my way into the chest cavity where it shoved stones.

The creature's exoskeleton didn't just look metallic. My chemoreceptors sensed that it was almost completely composed of a metallic alloy- made from a mixture of titanium, steel, and chromium and coated with a thick, protective layer of their corresponding, resistant oxides. It was a drastic evolutionary leap by their species but it seemed essential for survival on what my planet had become.

This had become a world that had forgotten me, one which was slowly making me question my place in it.

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The human engineer squinted at the computer screen with bloodshot eyes. He replayed the recording from the probe's cameras twice, thrice just to confirm what he had seen.

Once he was sure that it wasn't sleep deprivation taking its toll on his mental health, he leaned away from the computer screen and yelled, "Yo Jai, come take a look at this for me will you?"

A few seconds later Jai, his coworker, placed a styrofoam cup filled with steaming coffee on his desk and leaned forward.

"How long have you been awake, Chase?"

"Long enough," Chase said, rewinding the video for Jai to see. "Now watch what happens."

The video he played was a rather boring recording of a probe collecting samples from an ancient meteor making a flyby around the sun.

Around the one minute mark, something slammed into the probe's right, sending it tumbling onto the meteor's surface. It quickly uprighted itself and nothing odd had popped up on its sensors. The video ended quickly without further developments.

"Well?" Chase asked.

"Good to know the balancing system works." Jai shrugged. "Spent a lot on that didn't we?"

"That's not it. Hold on a second."

The engineer rewinded the video, played it and then paused it at the one minute mark.

"What do you see?"

"The probe. Bunch of rocks, I'm guessing quartz and basalt. Sand, lots of it."

"Okay," Chase said and pointed to a shadow on the lower right corner of the screen. "See that?"

"Yeah," Jai said, leaning forward. "That's the probe's shadow isn't it?"

"Yeah, but look closer. Do you see the claw-like thing there, Jai? Like a crab claw?"

Jai's eyebrows furrowed.

Chase tapped the shadow to emphasise it. "Right there, man, do you see it?"

It did look like a crab claw to Jai, with the huge curved upper pincer and the smaller one under it. The figure was balancing on a thin between unbelievable coincidence and the terrifying possibility of intelligent extraterrestrial life. Jai wiped the steam of the coffee off his glasses and took another long look.

"Do you reckon that something living knocked the probe over?" Chase asked, his jittery fingers tapping his desk.

"I don't know man. I don't think any living creature can survive temperatures that high. The meteor's path is closer to the sun than Mercury's orbit. Besides, I don't think anything that complex can survive the vacuum of space, not to mention the lack of oxygen."

Jai was just being logical as usual, but something within him did not agree with his reasoning this time.

"Yeah," Chase gave in. "Must've been a rock or something."

"Yep. Drink the coffee, man, you need it more than I do."

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Word Count: 1526

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