Saltflower

The visit. The three ships materialized over Puget Sound one evening at year's end. They appeared in the skies of Tacoma with a roar that shattered windows and stopped hearts. They were like nothing seen or dreamed, improbable monsters of dull, scarred metal, incredibly filling the sky. Tacoma had a brief, shocked glimpse of their solid reality. Then, ghostly silent after the initial roar, they shuddered away. The ships moved in awesome silence across the western portion of the continent, darkening the skies of a dozen cities and a hundred towns, briefly blotting out the starlight of late December. They zigged and zagged, seeming to grope, to search. But for what?