Zanna dropped her bag by the front door as she arrived home after a long shift at work. For whatever reason she seemed to get stuck with all the annoying customers today, so she felt utterly drained. The sun was just setting in the West when she emerged from her cathartic shower, its carnelian light illuminated her living room. Her job paid well and she enjoyed it, but jeez were people stupid. If she had to explain to one more person that, no, the veal schnitzel was not gluten free… whatever, no use getting worked up now.

She quickly tossed yesterday’s lunch into the microwave before flicking on the TV, searching the channels for something interesting. A kid’s cartoon? Nah. An action movie? Nope. A reality show? Ew. She kept it on the news while retrieving her reheated fried rice, and when she returned to the couch she was surprised to see that the news was showing a meteor shower.

That’s odd, but exciting. Zanna usually made sure to keep up with the latest news about space, taking her telescope into the backyard was a weekly ritual for her after all, but she must have missed any online mention of the upcoming event. After quickly finishing her meal she retrieved the telescope from her room and headed outside. 

It was the most intense meteor shower Zanna had ever witnessed. Hundreds of streaks of light dashed across the sky, illuminating the obsidian heavens with speckles of diamond dust. She had planned to use the telescope to search for Saturn and Jupiter tonight, but this was a welcome surprise indeed. 

After standing still and staring up at the night sky in awe for a few minutes, she decided that this moment was too beautiful to not capture forever, and so, leaving the telescope on the porch, she dashed back inside in search of her camera. She had just found it in her closet, when a thundering boom came from the direction of her backyard.

For a few seconds the whole house seemed to shake, and the lights flickered in and out a few times before righting themselves again. Zanna is frozen in shock for a moment. Was that… No. In the middle of a meteor shower. No way… a meteorite must have landed nearby!

With her heart pumping, she rushed back outside, and saw a thin column of smoke rising up from deep into the woods that lay beyond her backyard. Excitement taking over her body, she grabbed a flashlight and her camera, and rushed off into the woods.

She couldn't believe this was happening. A real meteorite, not too far from her house, close enough to feel the impact, in fact! After living here alone for some time, she knew this part of the forest like the back of her hand, and so Zanna rushed forward, eyes on the pillar of smoke visible between the trees.

After about a minute of running, she reached the impact site, a crater about a dozen metres in diameter, and after psyching herself up for a moment, she peered into the centre. The meteorite was still slightly obscured by the smoke, but nonetheless Zanna let out a small gasp. 

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From the centre of the crater came a soft blue glow, getting slowly brighter as the smoke drifted off into the night. When all the smoke was gone, the… thing could be seen as clear as day. Zanna liked to think she knew a thing or two about space stuff, and she was 99% sure that meteorites didn’t glow blue, nor did they have fur, four legs and a tail. 

The creature laying still before her looked like a piece of the night sky torn out and thrown onto the Earth. Its body was a navy blue mixed with black, speckled with a few whitish spots conjoined with thin white lines. After taking a moment to process what she was seeing, Zanna slowly made her way around the edge of the crater, and eventually could see its face.

It was a lion, its mane streaked with greens, pinks and reds, like a small nebula. She waited for what felt like a lifetime, but the lion-like being did not stir. It lay there, eyes closed, not moving at all save for the slow but shallow breaths it drew. After a few deep breaths herself, Zanna worked up the courage to enter the crater. Slowly but surely, she approached the creature, and about halfway down the gentle slope she noticed something else. 

What looked like a rose gold collar was wrapped around its neck, and hanging from the collar was a precious gemstone that seemed to shift colours as the creature's small breaths made it twist and turn. Etched into the jewel was a symbol that looked familiar, but that was the least of Zanna’s concerns, for the beast was waking up.

She was frozen where she stood, too confused and frightened to move. The beast, without opening its eyes, slowly tried to stand. It failed at first, groaning in pain. It tried again, but the second it put pressure on its front left paw it buckled and the lion collapsed again. A wave of pity washed over Zanna, and she would have helped it stand up if she had any goddamn clue what she was looking at.

Finally, after struggling for some time, the lion resigned to just sit on its hind paws. It brought its injured paw to its face and finally opened its eyes. It didn’t notice Zanna at first, for it was too busy inspecting its injury. The lion growled, and that growl became a deep, booming voice.

“When I find out what the hell ju-”

The lion cut off when he finally noticed the human standing in front of him. The two stared at each other for a moment, the lion's eyes widening when he realised what was in front of him. Zanna pinched herself to make sure she wasn’t dreaming, while also trying to remember if she accidentally put some funky mushrooms in the fried rice. The silence stretched for a bit longer, before the lion finally spoke again.

“Um, hello human, nice to meet you, big fan of your species. I am Le-AUGH.”

The lion had made the mistake of trying to stand up again, and cried out in pain. The sudden sound almost made Zanna jump out of her skin as fight or flight finally kicked into high gear. She scrambled out of the crater and bolted back to her house, the haunting moans of the injured lion echoing through the forest after her.

She didn’t look back until she reached her porch with her telescope still standing abandoned, staring up at the meteor shower still occurring above, oblivious to its owner's current state of confusion, panicked thoughts racing through her adrenaline filled head.

Was it an alien? It spoke English, I think. It was a hallucination, probably food poisoning. Food poisoning doesn’t make you see magical space lions! Zanna stared out at the forest, wondering if she should call someone. Who? Her parents? Friends? The Government? She sat down on her couch and held her head in her hands, trying to calm down. Eventually the pounding of her heart in her ears faded enough for her to think clearly again.

That thing fell out of the sky during a surprise meteor shower. It looks like a starry night sky, and it can speak. It’s a lion, and it had a collar around its neck, with a strange symbol on it. The symbol looked familiar to her, it was a small circle with a long line emerging upwards from its side, before curving back down again. That's when it clicked in Zanna's mind.

She grabbed her phone and quickly began looking her suspicions up. As it loaded, that same symbol looked back at her, and next to it, a depiction of a lion. Realisation dawned on her face, and Zanna looked back at the woods as a single word escaped her mouth.

“Leo.”