Entry: June 19, 654 A.E

Evening

The Day Everything Changed

I've been prospecting sunstones on Zarathustra for eight years now, working my claim up in Cold Creek Valley on Beta Continent. It's lonely work, but I've gotten used to my own company. At seventy, I figured I'd seen just about everything this planet had to offer. I was wrong.

It started on what seemed like an ordinary day. I was out at my diggings, about five hundred yards from camp, setting off a blast shot to expose more flint deposits. Those sunstones—fossilized jellyfish from fifty million years ago that glow with thermofluorescence—they're my livelihood. I'd found thousands over the years, worked claims on more planets than I could remember at the moment. But this day, this particular day in June, would prove more valuable than all the sunstones I'd ever crack out of Zarathustra's ancient seabeds.

I came back to camp late that afternoon, tired and ready for a shower and my pipe. Left the door open while I was getting cleaned up—something I'd normally never do, what with land-prawns and other local fauna always trying to get into things. When I came out of the shower stall, I found I had a visitor.

There in my shower was a small creature, maybe a foot high when sitting on its haunches, covered in soft golden fur. It had a round head, big ears, and the damnedest little humanoid face with a small snub nose. Two tiny hands with opposing thumbs. It looked up at me with wide eyes and said, "Yeeeek!" in what I can only describe as a startled voice.

Now, I've encountered plenty of Zarathustra's fauna, but I'd never seen anything like this before. My first instinct was that it was some kind of primate, but there aren't any primates on this planet. "Hello there, little fellow," I said, squatting down for a better look. "I never saw anything like you before. What are you anyhow?"

The creature looked at me seriously and said, "Yeek," in a timid voice. I couldn't help but smile. "Why, sure; you're a Little Fuzzy, that's what you are."