It’s a small, soft, ridiculous thing that looks at you with eyes like galaxies and says, without words:
It blinked.
“Okay,” she whispered. “Okay.” It’s been three years since the Cute Invasion. Humanity still exists, but it’s different now. We work less. We sleep more. We spend afternoons lying in parks, watching Puffballs bounce like happy, weightless clouds. Cities have been reclaimed by moss and flowers, because no one has the heart to mow a lawn where a Puffball might be napping. Cute Invaders
Part I: The First Sighting No one sounded the alarm when the first one landed.
Dr. Vasquez turned off her screen, climbed out of the bunker, and found a single Puffball waiting for her on the ice. It was shivering. She picked it up, tucked it inside her coat, and felt—for the first time in twenty years—something loosen in her chest. It’s a small, soft, ridiculous thing that looks
And we did.
You didn’t fight a Puffball. You adopted it. Humanity still exists, but it’s different now
Their biology was their battlefield.
The creature—barely the size of a tangerine—let out a noise that was not a roar, not a hiss, but a squeak . It was the sound a new sneaker makes on a gym floor, mixed with a kitten’s yawn. Then it wobbled forward on stubby, non-terrestrial legs, fell over, and looked up at her with an expression of utter, heart-melting confusion.
They weren’t conquerors. They were refugees .