First contact

The planet was perfect for them. The land was lush, full of alien plants. The trees held foods which one day would become part of their diet. But at first, when their ship landed, the biologist took a sample, to check that it was safe to eat.
It was an uninhabited planet, nobody has set foot on it, ever. And though it teamed with plant life, not a single animal was to be seen.
‘ḷuch̀i, le uʢa, ʡǔɱutsa, ɱi u ’i ɱig̈i. ṇulǔtsa, úlhú u ɱig̈i ʡeg̈ù ra uʢa ɱi ra.’
the planet was perfect for them. Alien seaweed floated gently in the current, and the probably quite young planet hadn’t yet evolved any intelligent life, just a few single called organisms. The crew didn’t stay far from the splashdown site before encountering land, though. and with land, cane an alien species. ‘ûb ʙ ʙiʙ ʙ ʙûbirubùr ʙ? Ya ʙ rubùr ʙebyûa!’
someone, history doesn’t remember who made a fatal mistake. Tales tell of one’s species either capturing one of the other, believing them to not be sentient. Tales tell of one attacking the other in a great panic.
Even if that has been all, neither species could communicate with each other, as neither has a shared language to translate to, and nobody was, at first willing to try to decipher the other’s language.
‘lǒ mitô ʡǔ tûtû! ɱi lôtû!’
’You have attacked our crew. We came in peace.’
’Æ ya buria ræ ʙòræy, ʙòræybær brebrebre, yæbru re yærû briB ræ briyia?’
’ Or did you believe us to be animals, savages at best, insulting us, imprisoning us.’
The result of whatever happened would change the galaxy, even if neither species would have known that at the time.
And that was where we came in. Soldiers sent from both sides, believing the other to be hostile, and therefore retaliating, in a way that made our beliefs true.
Although officially wet made first contact when our species saw each other, both of us believed that ‘first contact’ required an actual exchange of information.
And so, we two strangers, without speaking the other's language, sat down to have a... conversation?
‘land’ I said, pointing to the beach I sat on. ‘sea’ I said, pointing to where you floated in the shallows, injured by something, possibly the same thing that injured me.
‘[land. Sea]’ you said, pointing at the land, and at the water, I didn’t know what that meant, but I could gather that it had something to do with the ground above the sea. We didn’t have a word for that yet, but we did have one for water. ‘water, not water’ I said, gesturing at each in turn. I then pointed at you and said ‘alien’
‘ʙûbirubùr, i’ʙûbirubùr’ you informed me. ‘ʡǔɱu’ you added, pointing at me. I didn’t know what that meant, but I assumed you wanted to know my species. ‘Tregule’ I responded, pointing at myself. ‘And you? What’s your species?’
You seemed to want to know who I am, or, at least, you wanted to know what I was. So I told you.
Our species has this technology, called a translator, when you enter words you know into it, it can translate the language for you, even sometimes extrapolating from the known data, to guess at what other words mean. Though land and sea were not many words, I had entered them, in an approximation of the spelling and pronunciation. We managed to all each other questions, and I entered the answers, forming a sort of dictionary, hours were spent there, just talking, something neither of our species had thought to do.
Some tone later, after I had recovered after you had too, we both went back to the coast. You brought a... thing, which allowed you to enter the water, and waved a metal device with a screen in my face. ‘ʡiʀúlhú, ʡǔʀúlhú ʡiʀúlhú!’ you said and pressed a button. A mechanical voice said ‘Language it’s a language changer.’ And maybe I laughed at it, and thought about what you could have meant. ‘Translator dictionary?’
The dictionary beeped and retranslated my input. It was, I must admit, odd, hearing my own words in an alien language.
Peace was declared between our two species sometime later, and wet sat down on the coast, All of us wearing a similar environmental suit, but this allowed us to stand on the ground. We exchanged information, divided up the land, and, amount with the total of four other species we met during the war, we formed an area of peace.
Maybe our species official first contract wasn’t the best, but our individual one? That was perfect.

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Translation of alien words is currently in progress.
Languages used:

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