Joanna “Jo” Teale is a graduate student renting a cottage in the woods. She hasn’t been there long. She’s completing research for her doctorate, specializing in ornithology. Jo spends most days trudging through the woods for her research. As she returns to her property one night, she spots a girl near the driveway. The girl looks about nine years old and has a pale face with dark eyes. She’s in pajamas and no shoes, so Jo assumes she lives nearby.

The girl was trying to pet a stray dog on Jo’s property. Jo tells the girl to go home and goes inside to prepare dinner. While Jo cooks over the fire pit out back, the girl reappears, looking hungry.

Jo and the girl talk. Jo wants the girl to go home, but the girl insists she has no home, saying she’s an alien from a planet somewhere in the Pinwheel Galaxy, within Ursa Major. Jo thinks the girl’s pretending and continues to pressure her to go home. The girl claims she took her human body from a dead girl and doesn’t know the dead girl or her family. Jo threatens to call the police, adding that they’ll find her parents.