I pulled my head up off the floor where I'd landed, electricity somehow crackling through my hair. I didn't entirely understand what had happened. With a lot of effort I stood up, and turned around to find the person I'd slammed into. It was a girl, who I could tell was sixteen years old. She was just standing there staring at me, so naturally all I did was stare back.
The girl was short for her age, with messy, curled brown hair and brown eyes. She had dark skin, though fairer than mine, and a spraying of freckles across her face. She was wearing a watch on her left arm, but not the normal kind of watch. It went further up her wrist and I could tell it held a whole heap of power inside. She was wearing a blue machine-made shirt, machine-made pants and machine-made brown boots; where she came from must have relied on machines for clothes making. She also had a backpack on her back.
Once I'd taken all this in I finally mustered the courage to say something.
"Who are you?" I asked in wonder.
The girl smiled sheepishly. "I'm Sophie. Sorry I bumped into you, it was an accident, I can't exactly control where I land." She said, talking quite fast. "I probably should've calibrated before I landed but I was following a ship and wasn't really concentrating. It mustn't be far from here." She paused for a moment, looking around. "So who are you?"
"I'm Abigail." I replied, trying to take in the sudden turn of events. "You said you were following a ship?"
Sophie nodded. "It was one from my planet, Earth. I've been looking for a human ship for a while, I was wondering if this was the right one." She ended hopefully.
"Well, it's just over there." I told her, pointing in the direction of the field.
"Ah, that would explain the smoke." She said, waving her hand through the plumes of thick smog drifting above her head.
"Yes, it disappeared for a moment because of the electrical activity here, but it's coming back now." I answered intelligently.
Sophie nodded, then looked down at her watch and flipped open a compartment. "I'm in the Staarus System..." she said thoughtfully, reading off of a little screen. "What planet is this?"
"Flauraan." I answered, wondering at the technology on her wrist.
"Flauraan." Sophie repeated, typing it in. Then she flipped the compartment closed and stood there grinning. "I haven't been here before. It's nice. Except for the smoke, but you know, that's not your fault."
"Um, what exactly is that thing?" I asked, still distracted by her watch.
"This?" She said, holding it up. "It's a teleport watch - or at least that's what I call it. I can use it to disappear from one place and appear in another. It can supposedly go anyplace in the universe."
"That's amazing!" I said in awe.
"Yeah, it is." She said, looking down at the watch fondly. "So... Abigail, how old are you?" she asked, looking up again.
"I'm fourteen." I replied.
"Wow, you look just like the fourteen year olds on my planet." Sophie said, smiling. "Which is a little strange, actually; you look very much like us humans do."
"You look like us Paladanians." I answered swiftly.
"Paladanians?" she looked confused. "Oh is that what your species is called?" I nodded. "Ah well that's cool. Paladanians." She continued, stretching out the word. "Yeah I like that. So do all Paladanians go around without shoes on or are you starting a fad?" she asked, pointing down at my feet, which were bare.
I looked down at them as well. Paladanian feet are very tough, so we don't need to wear shoes or any other kind of covering on them. We wear shoes on special occasions, as a sign of respect, but apart from that we go barefoot all the time.
"We don't really need to wear shoes." Is what I told Sophie. "Our feet are hard enough for most surfaces."
"Ok, maybe you aren't so much like humans but still, we do look the same as you." She stated, her head cocked on one side.
I rolled my eyes. "You keep saying that. Anyway..." I said. "Do all you humans have teleport watches?"
"No, only a couple have been made." She replied. "And I was lucky enough to get one of them."
"Alright." I answered, nodding. "You must have been really lucky."
At that moment, there was a thud from the direction of the spaceship and then the sound of marching feet. Sophie spun around towards the sound, concerned.
"That sounds bad." She said, and then looked at me. "We should go check it out."
"Yeah, we should." I replied, looking calmly back at her. "Let's go."
She grabbed my hand and we ran towards the spaceship. The smoke was very thick now but we could see just enough to know where we were going. As we drew closer to the spaceship the sounds of marching feet were louder. We kept running until we were just at the border of the trees, still under cover, where we stopped and looked out at the sight in front of us.
The ship was not far from the edge of the woods, and it was even bigger than I'd thought it was. There was a bright light spilling out of a door which had opened up at the bottom of the ship, with a platform stretching to the ground. At the bottom of the platform there were at least a hundred people, and still more were exiting the ship. I looked closely at the people and gasped as I realised that they were all holding weapons.
"Sophie." I whispered. "What are they doing?"
"I don't know." she whispered back. "It looks like they're getting ready for a fight."
"I can see that." I snapped at her, still whispering. "But why?"
"I only followed their ship; I don't know everything about them." Sophie turned to look at me. "I can tell you one thing though; they didn't come here by accident."
I nodded. "It's almost like.... They're angry at my people."
"Why do you think that?" Sophie asked curiously.
"Well, I've been watching them, and most of them don't want to fight but they're making themselves do it because they're angry at something we've done. See the way those two are acting." I pointed to two of the people outside of the ship. "Look at their faces. They look scared, scared of the Paladanians, they've heard bad stuff about us. But they've resigned themselves to fighting, like they have to fight, and there are only a couple of reasons people would do that. Either they're being forced to, or they feel like they have to for some ridiculous reason. Do you see what I mean?"
"What?" Sophie stared at me, dumbfounded. "How can you possibly know all that?"
Blood rushed to my cheeks. "I'm... I'm sorry. I didn't tell you, did I? Paladanians have these sort of... powers. We can tell things about people just by looking at them. We notice things better than other people. It's a natural gift."
"All of you are like this?" Sophie looked impressed.
"Well..." I hesitated. "My powers are actually a bit more advanced than the usual Paladanian."
"Oh really?" Sophie looked at me, grinning.
"It's true!" I told her exasperatedly. "But that doesn't matter now." I pointed back towards the ship.
"Oh yes. I forgot." Sophie said, turning her attention back to the ship as well.
I rolled my eyes.
"I still don't understand how you can tell that much about them, from this far away." Sophie muttered.
"Never mind." I said, eyes on the people still milling around the ship. "You wouldn't be able to understand it anyway."
"I'm not stupid, you know." Sophie said, not looking at me.
"I know." I told her.
She scoffed.
"I really do." I turned and looked her right in the eyes. "You're not stupid, you're actually really intelligent. You're more intelligent than some of the people I can see over there." I indicated the ship. "You've seen a lot of things, been to more places than any of them. You've been travelling like this a long time, and you're looking for something important."
I noticed that Sophie was looking quite wary now.
"Abigail, you know that's really spooky right?" she said.
"Sorry." I ducked my head, feeling guilty. "I just get carried away sometimes."
"No, no it's alright, it's just...." Sophie started, looking at me in a mixture of awe and confusion. "You can tell all that just by looking at me?"
"Yeah." I said softly.
"How?" she asked.
"I can't explain it but I can... see it, in your eyes." I replied.
Sophie looked back out at the people around the ship. "You can't see their eyes." She pointed out.
"I'm just making assumptions for them. But when I actually look into peoples eyes, I just know things." I tried to explain.
"Can you read minds?" Sophie asked.
"No, but I can read emotions from close enough." I answered.
"Ok." Sophie nodded. "I think you're one of the strangest aliens I've met so far."
I laughed. "Yeah right."
"Well, you've got the weirdest powers then." She said. "Except for those aliens I met which could absorb pine needles."
"What?" I asked, confused.
"Never mind." Sophie said quickly. "Anyway, what are we gonna do about the humans over there?"
"Well, there's not much we can do right now." I scanned them quickly with my eyes. "They're waiting until their whole force is assembled, then they're going to go over their battle strategy and then they're going to go."
"You totally can read minds." Sophie laughed.
"Be quiet, I'm thinking." I waved my hand distractedly through the air. "We don't know which way they're going to go so..."
"What do you mean?" Sophie interrupted, looking confused.
"Well, there are a couple of places they could be attacking." I explained. "They could be going to my town, which is the closest and most likely, or the other one over the mountains, which would be a lot harder but it's still likely, or they could be following the road to one of the towns off in the distance." I waved my hand in the general direction.
"Well, since they landed here it's probably your town." Sophie said. "Like you said it's the closest."
"Yeah but they're here for a specific reason, they're not just choosing any town, they're going to go to a certain place." I rambled. "How can I tell? Because those people over there are holding a holographic map and are trying to work out which way they're going." I pointed back towards the people outside the ship.
"So like I asked before, what are we going to do?" Sophie looked sideways at me in the gloom. It was getting dark now.
I scanned my eyes across the humans again. "Well, I think we should run to my town and make sure the leaders know what we've found out, save them a bit of time. Then they can warn the leaders of the other towns so that they know and then they'll work out a plan to stop any attack."
Sophie nodded at me. "Good idea, but will we have time to do all that?" she asked.
"It should take the humans at least five minutes to get going, and then it will take them about twenty minutes to reach my town, and more than thirty minutes to reach the other towns, judging by how many people there are here." I calculated quickly.
"Alrighty then." Sophie said. "How long do you think it would take you to run to your town?"
"About ten minutes." I answered her. I noticed that she'd only mentioned me going. "Aren't you coming with me?" I asked.
"I'll hold you up, I'm really slow and besides, I might be of use here. I'm human so the humans might listen to me if I try to talk to them." Sophie answered solemnly.
"Sophie, there's not much chance that'll help." I told her, putting a hand on her arm. "They might just shoot you on the spot if they see you coming out of the woods."
She looked at me sadly. "I've got to try." She said, and she meant it. She was determined to try and stop them.
I sighed. "Alright, but only once they get close to the town. Promise me you won't let them see you before then."
"Yes ma'am." Sophie said, putting her hand to her forehead in some form of salute.
I smiled for a moment, and then turned in the direction of my town. "Once they've started moving, follow along behind them if you can. If you can't without showing your position then just wait here and I'll meet up with you when I get back." I turned my head to her as I talked.
Sophie nodded. "You sound like you're making battle plans or something." She said thoughtfully, staring out at the ship again. "You'd better get going; they look like they're almost ready to move."
"Alright, I'll see you later then." I said, and then I started running.
It was ridiculously dark now, but the light from the ship was behind me as I ran and I knew these forests quite well. I'd played in them as a kid, and Leila and I had explored them many times. I kept within the border of the trees as I was running. A thousand theories ran through my head, why did the humans want to attack us? It was plain that that was their intention but I still couldn't tell what the reason was. My people were nothing but accepting of other races and never did anything to offend anyone, at least not to this extent. So what was it? Maybe they were on the wrong planet. That didn't seem likely but it was more likely than other theories I had. I shook my head after a while, I had to concentrate on running, otherwise there was a chance I'd go the wrong direction. Finally I could see the lights of my town twinkling up ahead through the trees. I sped up and burst through the edge of the trees, ran past a couple of buildings at the edge of town until I reached the road which led to the town square. I followed the road for a couple of minutes until the tower of the Counsel building loomed above me.
I burst through the gate into the town square and rushed to where a group of people were standing around the Counsel building. They were murmuring about the invaders and they were scared. Too bad I had to scare them even more.