Maya Reid is not a girl many would take a second look at, by all metrics she's rather forgettable, not even that conventionally attractive. She knows this quite well as she has always struggled to make friends, let alone secure romantic or sexual interests. At 19 years old she is tall, quite asymmetrical and flat as a board both in the breasts and posterior. If she had anything going for her it was her hair and eyes, the former a blazing, lusciously deep red and the latter a delightful green. If anything all of this piled onto the fact she was a bit of a nerd as well. Still there are certainly people out there that would find her attractive, but such people are few and far between in her situation and even fewer are people she would actually like to encounter.
For Maya, another day had come and gone and the highschool senior was yet again forced to walk home. Her parents loved her, they truly did, but even they could not hope to remain unaffected by her aura of forgettability and so regularly the need to pick their child up from school would slip their minds. By now she was quite used to it and was thankful that when she'd been much younger such a thing never occurred, at least she'd had toddler adorability on her side back then to keep her existence firmly entrenched in the minds of others.
Besides, it's not like the walk was a bad thing, sure it was a solid two miles away but that hardly mattered to her, it kept her in shape even if the shape was thin and athletic rather than curvy like she wished to be. Today, however, things were going to change in ways she could never imagine.
Texting her mother that she would be out late as it was a friday evening and she tended to venture off into the forest, she turned off the path she would normally take to get home and delved deep into familiar territory. It was one of her ways of destressing after a week of school and it was probably one of the few things that kept her sane.
So through those ancient halls of bark and leaf she traveled, almost immediately at home in the depths of nature as she tread upon paths she knew intimately. At this time of day the atmosphere of this place was nearly perfect, though as the sun would begin to set it would reach that state of perfection she so loved. Today she felt a bit more confident in her navigation abilities and so decided that she would go a little further than normal, passing by the small, boulder-filled clearing she would typically stop in and instead seeking out fresh wonders for her to experience.
And so it was that she happened upon something she had not expected. A cave, a deep looking one if she had to hazard a guess, and as she looked at it, something seemed off about it. For one thing, the surface of the stone was too smooth, glassy even one might say. It filled her with a sense that something not quite natural had happened here and it piqued her curiosity, but also a sense of trepidation.
"It's just a cave, Maya. Nothing to be worried about. You can do this, you're a big girl after all." She murmured, psyching herself up as much as she could.before taking that first, tentative step into the unknown.
She was correct in her assumption that the cave was deeper than it appeared, the floor sloping downwards gently and curving to and fro. Though some small, rational part of her mind told her this really wasn't a good idea in the slightest, the louder part of her mind fed her curiosity till it was the sole voice in her head, urging her onwards. If this was a bear cave, then she'd not seen hide nor hair of one, let alone any sign that a bear even lived here.
Time lost all meaning as she kept delving deeper and deeper, the only source of light being that of her phone. Finally though, she broke out of the winding tunnel and into a cavern that seemed to stretch on forever. While that was a spectacular sight unto itself, it was what lay within the cavern that held her attention and her awe.
Buried deep in the stone sat a ship. Not a sailing ship built by human hands, but the sleek metal hull of a starship. Even in the dim light of the cave it still managed to glint and gleam enticingly, and while she knew she should take many pictures and then turn around and leave, she did neither. Instead she once more put one foot in front of the other and began her descent towards the ship.
The closer she got, the larger it became, till she realized that it was no mere personal shuttle or even a smaller ship, but a proper ship, the kind that could hold hundreds of people easily and without strain. Just how it had managed to come to be in this place without anyone noticing was beyond her and her nerdy mind whirled with possibilities. Obviously her thoughts leapt to imaginings of aliens in distress, brave adventurers who ran afoul of bad luck and crashed long ago, though how long ago this was she didn't know. Perhaps it had been far more recent and the aliens had either managed to go utterly unnoticed or perhaps managed to wipe the minds of every human being in existence while simultaneously scrubbing every form of recording device.
That last option seemed highly unlikely, for the moss growth that covered portions of the ship suggested that it had been here for quite awhile indeed. Finally she made it to the ship, which loomed over her and stretched on for quite a ways, a hand rising and brushing along the smooth surface of the hull. Cold metal slid under her fingertips and she could find no evidence of seam nor bolt upon it. Indeed it felt as though the entire hull was a single, solid piece.
Of course thai made little sense, as construction a vessel of such size would be far more complicated were the outer hull a solid piece and not made up of much smaller parts. Of course she didn't know who built it, it could be entirely possible that such a design choice was feasible for the builders.
Maya paused as her fingers brushed over a rough patch of metal, the smooth surface now marred by dips and ridges. Intrigued, she pressed her fingertips against this patch more firmly, and gasped as a hidden door opened for her.
"Well I wasn't expecting that." She murmured, peering through the doorway to find there was another door some five feet away. An airlock surely, it was the most logical thing after all. Throwing caution to the wind she stepped inside, the door sealing shut behind her and darkness enveloping her. It did not last for long, as a soft violet glow emanated from the floor and ceiling, giving the space a somewhat eerie feeling to her. The inner door cycled, sliding open to reveal a long and dark hallway.
She could not shake the feeling that she was being watched, yet she saw no evidence of anyone or anything in this place with her and though the feeling was worrying she kept putting one foot in front of the other.
The halls would illuminate as she entered them, providing her with enough light to see where exactly she was going, yet there was no signage of any sort that she could discern and so she was merely wandering about, looking for any evidence that the owners might still be around, though some small part of her knew they weren't. Still she wished to be sure that she wasn't about to walk in on some alien trying to fix the ship and thus cause some sort of incident.