Victorian Koala

• Charly Smith, Grade 8
• Short Story
• 2010

I walk on my burnt paws, the leaves crunching with my every move. If only I could find a nice place that wasn’t burnt and wouldn’t leave me with soot in my eyes. I could feel my breathing getting heavier as I struggled to walk without collapsing of dehydration. Crunch! What was that? I looked up and saw a big yellow thing walking on two feet.

I hadn’t heard the leaves crackling before because of my burnt ears. I cowered away from this big yellow thing, what did it want with me? Then the ground below me was shrinking, it was getting further out of reach.

I heard mumbling from the thing that was carrying me; I managed to turn my head to the right and to my dismay found another of those yellow things. They were speaking to each other, only… they were speaking in tongues... complete gibberish. As I was being carried I noticed the trees were black and broken.

I was so fatigued. I had to go to sleep.

When I woke up I was propped up on a big metal table. I was surprised that I felt no pain, not in my paws, not in my ears… no pain I wasn’t sick anymore. I could breathe through my nose. I let out a cry of happiness and sat up. I looked around to see the things that had been carrying me out of the fire, but this time they weren’t yellow. I’d heard about these things my mother used to tell me stories of how they helped us when we needed it most.

One of the humans picked me up, like they had done before and started walking into a different room. I wasn’t scared this time, I can’t explain it but I just got this rush of excitement of what will be in that room. One step… another step… I saw the person’s hand reaching out the door opened with one steady movement and what I saw in that room was the most marvellous thing I have ever and probably will ever see in my whole life.

There was a girl sitting on a chair, her brown hair in plaits that reached the waist of her flowing pink dress. I had seen someone just like her before, to me she was not a human she was just… Annabelle. I loved her so much, she would come out and feed me carrots and she would play with me in the bush until we would tire.

As soon as she saw me she jumped and ran to me. I held out my paws for her to hug me. I saw her mother standing by the door; she was crying tears of joy. She carried me out the door and walked across the road to a small house, like Annabelle’s house.

That’s when I realised something. This was Annabelle I heard her talking to me I only understood one word of what she said… Home.