I'm on my hands and knees, looking at the strange accretion of living growths that have begun to sprout from the ground in the shade around the base of a strange black boulder the size of my pickup truck. The boulder is the largest of several in a small clearing in what I think of as the jungle. The growths, almost like ferns but somehow plump and wet like fungus, are pinky-orange and sit entirely within the drip-line surrounding the tiny overhang of the boulder just before it meets the ground.
It has been hours of walking through the jungle, but it has not been difficult going. The plants, or at least, what were analogous to plants, were rarely stiff or thorny. Plunging through dense thicket was like walking through a thousand stilled car wash brushes, the strange leaves and branches soft, rubbery. The larger trees, towering above to hold up the top layer of canopy, left ample gaps for sun to peek through.
Things a little bit like geckos, gigantic moths, strange furless prairie dogs that zipped up and down trees and into burrow-holes among the knuckles of surface roots - the place was alive in a million ways around me.
I had seen game trails, with strange tracks. Things that seemed to have pads or fingers, claw tips, strange ruts and upturnings.
Early in the day, I heard the sound of something absolutely colossal shoving through the place, but far away and getting farther while I crouched and listened.
Just before sunrise, I'd awoken on a large stone outcrop that overlooked the canopy to the faraway horizon of titanic mountains. I remembered laying down to sleep in my bed. I remembered the conversation I'd had before bed.
They had asked me if I would be willing to go with them and look at a planet. The aliens. They said they wanted someone to look at it who hadn't been involved in making it, to give them an outside opinion. They seemed most insistent that the major qualification was simply being willing to go, when I told them I was no biologist or geologist or any other kind of ologist.
So I told them I would, and they said they would take me when I slept.
I spent a while from the outcrop looking out as far as I could. It seemed that the jungle was a little thinner towards what seemed to be a coast, and I figured I'd might as well head that way.
It had been a delight. Everything new, every species, every sound, a whole ecology like nothing I had ever experienced.
I had no way of knowing how close to the shore I was, but I had expected it to be several days' walk when I set out. And although the day seemed longer than Earth's, eventually the sky began to darken, and I began to consider what I ought to do about shelter, about water. I decided to hop onto a game trail headed in the right direction and followed it, hoping for a watering hole or at least somewhere likely to bed down.
As I walked, I began to notice tracks very different from anything I had yet seen. They almost looked to be hooves, wide round fronts that tapered to the rear. Large - the size of my hand, if a pair of the hoofprints was indeed one track. And whatever it was was probably heavier than me, if the depth of the prints said anything. I thought I could maybe guess that it was four legged, but I was only guessing.
Eventually I (and the tracks) led to a thinning, and the thinning gave way to a wide clearing. Just as I reached the brushline, I caught sight of it.
It was like a llama, but with a wicked-looking beak where the snout would be. The long neck gave way to a powerful-looking four legged body, with slender digitigrade legs that ended in bony-looking hooves. Its head was turned up and away, almost like it was scenting the wind.
It was by far the largest and most intimidating life I had seen, and I had no idea what to expect.
Slowly, it turned its head, and as it did I could see that it had three eyes on either side, in triangualar clusters, and another in the center of its forehead above the beak. As its gaze passed me, neck beginning to twist, it shifted its feet and I saw that the hooves were immense claws that folded fully under the sole of the foot.
As its gaze passed, it stopped and stared, and then it began to walk slowly towards me.
Some part of me, as I studied the strange fractal whorls of brown and white on its coat, wondered if I should back away, or run, or yell, or hold my arms up to look bigger, or perhaps simply stand still.
It was close enough to hear its footsteps on the thick lichen-stuff that filled the floor of the clearing like a pie crust, and then it was close enough for me to see my own reflection in its eyes.
It stopped an arm's distance away, and raised itself up to its full height, and then it slowly lowered its head to rest the bottom of its beak on my collarbone. It tilted its head and pressed its face against mine, and it sighed. I felt the hardness of the beak where I used to feel the hardness of a jawbone, and the strange fractal fur where I used to feel fuzzy jowls, and I saw a triplet of black orbs where there used to be a watery brown one, but the sigh was exactly the same.
I knew what it was in the instant. Not what - who. And before I could second guess, someone spoke.
"This is our gift to you," the voice behind me said. It was the same voice that had asked me if I wanted to come here.
"We put him in this body, so you could see this place together."
But then, as I hugged him, but before I could tell him he was still a good boy no matter what he looked like, I awoke here on this Earth, where he is still gone.