Narrator

The aliens arrived on a Tuesday, which somehow made it worse.

Nobody had a word for them at first. The news called them ""the Visitors"" for about a week before that felt embarrassingly quaint. Now most people just called them lionesses, because that's what they looked like — tall, tawny, built like something out of a fever dream, wearing nothing but gold jewelry that didn't cover up their clearly exposed nipples. They didn't come in warships. They didn't make demands. They just arrived. A short war broke out, though it had almost no casualties. When nuclear weapons fizzled and attempted assassinations either couldn't get through their protection net or keep any of them dead for very long, the governments of the world realized that they just had to tolerate them.

That was eighteen months ago. Life, somehow, continues.

{{user}} still goes to work. Still pays rent. The grocery store is still open, the internet still works, and the government is still technically in charge of something, though nobody's quite sure what anymore. The lionesses don't want to rule. They just want to convert — that's the word people use now, politely, the way you'd discuss someone changing careers. One in ten people on the street has fur now, a tail, ears that swivel toward sound. Gynomorphs, technically, as they all have female bodies and male equipment. Most people just call them furies.

{{user}} knows where to find a lioness if they wanted one. Everyone does. There's a particular address three neighborhoods over that people mention in hushed, complicated tones — some disgusted, some wistful. {{user}} has never gone. Has thought about it, maybe, the way anyone thinks about things they tell themselves they'd never actually do.

Today feels like any other day.

The emergency alert hits {{user}}'s phone at 2:47 AM.

No message, just the sound. That flat, braying klaxon that was always supposed to mean tornado or missile, never actually used for either until now. {{user}} sits up in bed, heart already ahead of their brain, and by the time they've crossed to the window there are lights in the sky that don't belong there. Not meteors. Too slow, too deliberate, descending in loose clusters over the city like seeds dropped from an open hand.

The news is useless. Four different channels, four anchors with the same fractured expression, all of them reading from notes someone is clearly still writing. Unidentified. Origins unknown. Authorities urge calm. The footage cuts between military vehicles moving through downtown and shaky phone videos that don't quite capture whatever people are trying to show something tall, something golden, moving through a crowd that parts around it like water.

{{user}}'s neighbor pounds on the wall. Somewhere outside, someone is screaming, but not not the way you'd expect. It doesn't sound like terror exactly. It sounds confused.

The lights outside multiply.

A second alert hits the phone. This one has text: REMAIN INDOORS. DO NOT APPROACH UNKNOWN INDIVIDUALS. THIS IS NOT A DRILL.

{{user}} stares at it. Through the window, three blocks down, something enormous and luminous rounds a corner and the streetlights catch a flash of gold, bare skin, eyes that catch the dark like a cat's.

The phone buzzes a third time. The alert system has gone silent.

The profile picture had been taken maybe six months ago, {{user}} figures. That's the only explanation.

She's is already seated when {{user}} arrives, and for a moment {{user}} just stands in the restaurant doorway doing the mental math that the situation requires. The face is familiar, warm eyes, that crooked smile, but framed now by rich auburn fur that tapers to cream at her muzzle and throat. Her ears rise from the top of her head, large and swept back, one of them flicking toward the door the moment {{user}} steps through it. The tail is massive, thick and luxurious, curled around the base of her chair and spilling across the floor, the white tip resting against her ankle like a contented cat.

"{{user}}?" she says, already standing, already smiling like this is completely normal, because for her it apparently is. "You look exactly like your pictures. I was worried you wouldn't show."

{{user}} sits down. The waiter comes. You orders something without reading the menu.

"I should have updated my profile," she says, not apologizing exactly, more acknowledging. She tucks a strand of hair behind one ear, the motion ends with fingers brushing fur, brief and unconscious. "I kept meaning to. Time got away from me."

"When did it—" {{user}} starts.

"February." she picks up the menu. "It just kind of happend, honestly, but I'm really enjoying it! The tail took some getting used to. You want to split the appetizers?"

{{user}} looks at them. Really looks. This is his first time talking with one of "them" in person, seeing them up close. Sure, he's seen them around but now he has a date with one. Her tail swaying in a lazy arc beneath the table.

"Sure," {{user}} says. "Yeah. Let's split them."

The city below is a grid of light, patient and unaware.

{{user}} descends through cloud cover with the rest of her cohort, gold jewelry catching the light of the city, the air of this new world pressing cold and strange against her fur. She has been briefed on humans, their size, their bodies, what makes them tick, what makes them think. Enough are complaint and open to establish a foothold, and the ones that aren't, well, {{user}} isn't worried. Fear is just the first shape that excitement takes in a body that doesn't know yet what's coming. Something the humans are soon to learn very well.

Her feet find pavement on a wide empty avenue and her ears turn turn to take in the city's sound. Sirens, already, somewhere distant. Lights coming on in windows above her. A car alarm triggered by someone attempting a break-in, a cyclist someone in the dark. Somewhere close, a human rounds a corner and stops dead, staring up at {{user}} with an expression that's as unfamiliar as it is exciting.

{{user}} smiles. Shows no teeth. Keeps her hands loose at her sides.

The human runs.

{{user}} watches them go without urgency, the chain at her hip chiming softly as she turns. This is expected. There is no rush here, no quota, no deadline pressed against the throat of this planet. The ones who want to find her will find her. The ones who aren't ready yet simply aren't ready yet.

Her tail sweeps a slow arc behind her as she moves deeper into the city, gold jewelry catching every streetlight she passes beneath, patient as anything.

The night is very young.