The Day They Came (working title)

Worse than French

Yay! A new story, I've finally ditched the writers block, though I haven't a clue how this is going to end, so that should be intersting. Also, I'm rubbish at title, so any ideas would be welcome. Now enjoy.

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Hannah's POV

They came in a French lesson. There was no warning. No whirring of ships, no screaming in the other classrooms, no shouting, not even some running footsteps. I suppose, in retrospect, the school might've been a bit quieter than normal, but not noticeably, and besides, retrospect is unreliable, you can’t trust your memory to be right. I’ve agonised about it far more than I should have, wondering if there was anything I could have done, but I’ve realised that at the time I had no way of knowing what must have been happening so  close by.

I was too busy frowning at my text book, trying to work out what the hell this nonsense meant, and failing badly.

I was caught up in tangle of French which could have been a load of letters piled together at random for all the understanding I was getting out of it, so I didn't notice when it first entered our own classroom.

It was the silence falling around the class that alerted me that something was wrong. No one screamed, no one even gasped, they just shut up. Every inconsequential, or trivial conversation, every  consultation on a particular word, even the teachers voice stopped.

I glanced up to try and understand and why everyone had shut up and I froze.

It could almost have been human. Two arms, two legs, one head. You know, about the right shape for a human. Humanoid, that’s what those Sci-fi shows call it I think, not quite human, but similar. It  didn’t have skin, but instead had flexible but hard scales, the same dull red as dried blood.

Later I discovered that its species have seven fingers, two short, stocky and the scales hard as nails and inflexible, three that were very similar to human fingers, but with only one joint that could flex in either direction rather than two that could flex in one, and two fingers that were long, thin, and curled into two hollows in its palm to keep the soft scales on them from harm when they weren't in use, though I didn't know this all as soon as I saw it, I only saw five of its fingers the stubby and human ones.

It was a tall creature, with a short tail that was flat, like a ribbon, and long and as wide as my fingers were long, and split into two half way along. There were no ears that I could recognise, and four eyes: two at the side of its head that were vivid purple with gold rectangular pupils, shaped like a goat or horses and two at the front of its head that were orange with silver cat like pupils in the front of its head, and had it turned around I would have seen two identical eyes on the back of its head. It had no lips, just a square seam in its face that I later found opened outwards like a pair of doors for food to pass through. It did have a nose, well, three round holes, one large one on its forehead and two smaller approximately where a human jaw bone would have been, and I guessed that they were noses, as well as a way of breathing.

It was strange, I'd grown up watching films about aliens, Star trek, Doctor Who, Star Wars, that sort of thing, but I'd never realised until I actually saw an alien that for one to look so humanoid was unusual, almost to the point of impossibility. Almost, but not quite.

When I saw it my mind sped up, rather than freezing in a panic. I stopped thinking about myself as an individual, and thought about everyone in the classroom, the school even.

I want you to understand that it wasn't really me who did what I did, it was a calm, selfless, genius, that did what I did. The me that was really me was hiding somewhere in the back of the mind, and crying with terror. I just want to make sure that  you realise that, and don’t think of me as this selfless, and intelligent person, because I’m not.