Leaving Home

• Aidan Leiner, Grade 6
• Short Story
• 2016

Leaving Home
By Aidan

You know that feeling when you’re boarding an enormous space cruiser - leaving behind everything you’ve ever done and loved? All of the memories, just getting flushed away in your tears of both joy and sadness? That’s me right now. My mum and dad’s hands are clamped together and would need a, - well something really powerful to detach them. I’m holding Violet, with my backpack on. Violet is weeping and I’m just telling her that it’ll be fine.

I can hear the constant beeping of the ticket scanners and soon, we are there too. “Journey for three?” the attendant asks. “Yes, thanks” my mum replies. “Go straight up the hallway and take the third right. The on-board crew will take care of the rest.”

We do as she says and eventually find our way to our cabin. When we walk in, we are amazed at the quality of the room. This was only economy, but it was quite luxurious. After we had settled down, I decided that I would go say hi to the captain. Dad came with me on the ten-minute walk to what was almost on the other side of the ship. Once we arrived, my dad shook hands with the captain who greeted us and told dad and I that his name was Warrick. I asked him how long it would take to get to the new planet and he said about four to five years without space traffic! He chuckled after saying that. We chatted for about fifteen minutes and before long we were heading back to our cabin. I was excited that I was going to reach sweet-sixteen on the ship, although it was still a bit less than fours years away.

Over the coming weeks, I had a lot of fun mingling with some of the other kids in H3. H referred to our level and 3 was to symbolise the third group of cabins on that level. There were roughly one million people per deck and twenty-six decks so there were heaps of people on the ship. That may seem like a lot, but the ship is enormous. It’s as big as one hundred MCG stadiums. And, our ship is only one of 250 ships travelling to the new planet. On board, there are multiple water parks, stadiums, basketball courts, an athletics track, gardening facilities, every shop that you can think of and more. That’s just to name a few things. I wont tell you about much of the journey simply because its not the most interesting journey you’ll ever hear of…

“Good morning passengers, this is your captain speaking. This is the wake up call, and the final one too! Yes that’s right! We’ve landed on the new planet we will call home from now on and…”. I was still half asleep even though my body was telling me that I was excited. It finally registers in my brain and I run over to mum and dad’s bed and hug them tight. “We’ve landed,” I say.