text: Taziha watched the market from a distance. She knew many people argued against the free galactic markets, they saw every transaction here as inefficient and shuddered at the thought of wasting time walking up to a stand and negotiating a price with the vendor. Taziha herself didn’t. In fact she loved the markets. At every station, colony or habitat she visited Taziha could be found observing the market, ideally with a traditional beverage in her hands. Her imagination ran wild as she saw dozens of species negotiating with each other. What where their stories? Where did they come from? What were their hopes and dreams? And will they ever achieve them? For example, a Kaveni was negotiating with a belt miner. The Kaveni where rarely seen outside their own systems, and when they do venture out it is only to remote systems such as this, far from the heart of galactic society. They fundamentally disagreed with a number of core policies as far as Taziha knew. They never opened their borders or took a seat in the galactic council. Besides rare scheduled visits by Galactic observers and a select few privileged visitors no sentient creatures besides the Kaveni themselves walked on their worlds in the galactic rim. And they rarely ventured outside themselves. Taziha would love to become one of those select few and write about his experiences there. First-hand accounts about first contact or records on the lives of pre-spaceflight civilizations always sold well. Giving her readers a glimpse into the self-isolated Kaveni Empire would be the next best thing compared to that. Unfortunately an aspiring writer such as Taziha could only dream of an opportunity like that. A species Taziha didn’t recognize walked into her field of view. It was bipedal, just like most sentient species but curiously didn’t have any scales or fur. However an unknown black pattern decorated one side of its face, it was seemingly one with its skin. The alien seemed to be quite a bit taller than most bipedal species and covered much of its body, with the exception of its hands and face in grey and black clothing. Despite its size it walked quietly and with a purpose, its predatory eyes scanning the crowd as they moved out of its way without even thinking about it. For a brief moment its head turned to Taziha, almost as if it had felt her watching. But it was already looking somewhere else before Taziha could look it in the eyes. Taziha was curious. She prided herself in knowing all the sentient aliens that lived in the galactic community. This could be a new arrival of course, but those always made the news and Taziha found it hard to believe she could have missed that announcement. No, that was impossible. The alien knew what it was doing, and didn’t stare at all the other aliens that crowded the market, it wasn't to the galactic stage. She couldn’t stand not knowing what species this was, and to her great shame started up her Galactic codex. The unknown alien stopped at a stall for an engine merchant, next to the belt miner where the Kaveni was still negotiating. Taziha could easily see that the vendor also didn’t recognize the alien, the merchant seemed slightly put off by this but started negotiating all the same. With her codex finally started up she took a quick scan of the alien and searched its database on sentient alien species. **No results. Search all archives?** Taziha was dumbstruck. This must be a bug she thought. There was no way an uncontacted species could just be walking around a market in a galactic rim system. She ordered her codex to perform a general search on the alien. **1 result found: Human** Taziha’s hands shook as she read more and more of the article about these humans. The entire species had been killed by a Nylk war-rampage a few months after first contact. The galactic council had condemned the action but trade relations with the Nylk clans never stopped, and were still open and profitable this very day. “Human!” A loud, high pitched yell sound across the market. Taziha looked at its origin and saw another human, a female apparently looking towards the human who was still negotiating with the engine vendor. Her codex told her that the first human was male, but in truth Taziha didn’t see many differences between them at first glance. The female was a fair bit shorter than the male that was true but she was supposed to have far larger breasts than the male, and longer hair on the top of her head according to Taziha’s codex. But in fact Taziha didn’t see any distinctive breast shapes under the female’s clothing, and the female only had [millimetre] short hair while the male was completely bald on top of his head. Still, her codex identified the two human sexes on differences in general body shape, a much less obvious trait for Taziha herself to notice. The human male, and many aliens turned to look at the human female. As soon as the male and female locked eyes they both opened their mouths and showed their teeth to each other. “Human!” Thundered the male as both humans began running towards each other with their arms opened. Taziha was impressed with their speed, in only a few seconds they crossed the market and slammed into each other with a force that would have injured many other species. In a blink of an eye the female had both her hands behind the back of the male and seemed to bury her face in the fabric over the male’s chest. The male only had one arm behind the back of the female and seemed to protectively hold her neck with the other while he softly talked into her ear. Many of the species at the market where now openly staring at the two humans, and it was obvious to Taziha that no-one recognized the species that was supposed to be extinct. Except for the Kaveni. Taziha saw a flash of recognition in its eyes before it turned back to the belt miner, seemingly in a hurry to finish his transaction and leave the station. A handful of other aliens now brought up their own codex and began searching just like Taziha had done herself. The human male saw and broke the embrace, the human female only now noticed the crowd. She turned to the human male and activated her H-tool on her arm, a holographic personal computer that was standardized for use by all species in the galaxy. The male activated his own H-tool and the two exchanged a data packet. If Taziha had to guess it would be the coordinates for a more private location to meet up. The two humans nodded at each other and began running towards the two separate docking bays of the station. Taziha only needed a moment before she decided to take of running towards her own ship. Whatever just happened here, she felt it would be significant to the galaxy. As a writer hoping for her own big adventure to tell about... She just had to get involved. Somehow. This story has been running around in my mind for a long time now, I originally wanted to write it from the human perspective but I felt like I would be bogged down by explaining everything, so instead I went for the alien perspective.