It was huge, easily her own height standing, which she discovered she was doing, staff raised to guard, words of alarm filling her mouth ready to be shouted.  It might have been a cat, if a cat had had very short legs under a round body that swelled into a great ball of a head, making the whole creature seem to be only a vast face on top of furry feet, and a grinning mouth half that face, filled with nasty-looking triangular teeth that glinted in the firelight, very white, very sharp.  The nose seemed only a nubbin and the eyes small, though each was at least the size of her hand, and they crinkled at the corners as if with amusement, making the toothy grin seem on the verge of laughing.  But the ears atop the body were halves of a sphere, almost perfectly round.

Alea would have cried out, if the words hadn't purred in her mind:

Don't fear, woman. I shan't eat you.

What - what are you? Alea thought.

One of those who filled this planet before your kind came,  the creature answered.  Foolish folk, they think they slew us along with all the other animals that lived in this land before they came.  We hide now, and they never see us - unless we want them to.  Of course, no one ever believes those who do.

Then why show yourself to me?

Curiosity, the creature answered.  You're not like the others, you and your mate.

He not my mate!

You mean you don't know that yet? the creature asked.  How foolish your kind are!  Tell me, though, what was that great golden pie that dropped you like kittens from a mother's mouth?

The lie Gar had taught her sprang to her mind unbidden - but she looked in the creature's eyes and the words stuck in her throat.

We know truth from falsehood, the creature told her, even if you do not.  What was that thing - the wagon that brought you from the stars?

How - how did you know? Alea asked.  Then a came to her rescue.  If you knew, why did you ask?

Because we have never seen one like it, the monster replied.  The wagons that brought the ancestors of the people who live here, they were all ungainly, bumpy things that looked like very fat birds with very short wings.  Its grin widened, and a drop of saliva dripped from a tooth.  We eat birds.

Why don't you eat people? Alea demanded, fear gripping her vitals as her hands gripped her staff.

Because you have minds, the creature answered, minds complex enough to be aware of your own existence.  In that you are enough like us so that we could not think of you as food.

Even though these people took your land and chased you away?

There is surely enough land for us over the sea, if we wish it, the alien answered, unperturbed.

No, not alien, Alea realized - native.  It was she who was the alien on this planet.