The Arrival

• Atticus Lee, Grade 5, Manly Vale Public School
• Short Story
• 2020

Finalist in the 'The Inside Story 2020' competition

At first we thought it was exciting to meet them. We thought they would understand. We thought we could be friends. Everybody knew about them. Every night on TV the reporters would talk about them and every newspaper had the same headline. Only a few came at first, but over time more arrived. The city was crowded - everyone wanted to meet them. We could not understand what language they were speaking but we enjoyed their company anyway.

We were good hosts, we showed them around and made them feel welcome. We prepared feasts but they never ate. No one could work out where they had come from. They confused our greatest scientists.

I met one myself once. It was extremely tall- about three times my height. It seemed quite interested in me. It stared around in awe of our city. I don't know what it found interesting. We had been living here for generations and it was a dull place. There were some interesting building structures but that was all, the rest of the city is just normal buildings.

They were kind to us at first, they admired every move we made- but that was a while ago now. Things have changed.

Now we live our lives in fear. Many people I knew were captured by them. Trapped in glass cages, with no way to escape. They took my best friend- they carried him into the massive ship in which they had arrived. I was too scared to help, what if I got captured as well?

Then just as suddenly as they had arrived, they left. No one knew why... but just like that they were gone. We waited for a very long time. But they never came back. We wanted them to come back to return our friends and family but at the same time we hoped they wouldn't come back to take more of us. It was a strange time not knowing what was going to happen. It made us feel weird, why would they take our friends and families? Don't they have their own?

To this very day I still tell my great grandchildren about the day the humans invaded our planet.