The Girl Who Watched The Stars

The Girl Who Watched The Stars 
By Paul McCann

Tessa never had many friends and she liked her own company . When ever she felt down or unhappy she would watch  the stars at night .
Over the years she found some places far out beyond  the city where she built some star watch huts  in remote places in the wilderness . 
The huts had see through clear plastic panels on the roof that allowed her to see the stars shining above .
In the silence there,she lay there feeling like the queen of the Cosmos . She imagined the sky was her garden and the stars where flowers that she had planted in a magical place called  
The Garden Of Heavenly Firmament  . Just for a while  she escaped into another world where she felt happy and free to be somewhere else for a while . 
In her life she worked as a vet as she had always loved animals and found she could  communicate with them in a unique and special way .
Her best friend Leanne also worked in the same place with  her . They had known each other for many years and shared many secrets with each other over that time  .
Leanne was a married woman with a family of young children .
She was the only person who knew about Tessa’s star watching huts and her frequent getaways to those places .

One night Tessa while gazing at the stars she noticed a new star there near Mars and it seemed to be moving .  She was intrigued and remained there in one of the huts longer than usual observing this new sighting . It seemed to be changing its colour and was growing in size moving up and down .
Suddenly the thought entered her mind , maybe it wasn’t a star , maybe it was an unidentified spacecraft that  she had discovered .
She always thought that there could be other life forms in the universe on some planet somewhere in the outer limits in an unknown , uncharted , place where no camera or telescope had ever seen and where no space pod had ever been .
She watched with intrigue as this object came closer to the earth and she decided to take some time off work and went to get some supplies into the hut in the remote Northern outpost of Queensland , Australia .
She shared her secret with Leanne and took four weeks off work . Leanne noticed a kind glow around Tessa but thought nothing of it disregarded what she saw .

Tessa returned to the hut and after a few nights something happened she could not explain or understand . 
The object she had been observing had  disappeared and had gone . 
Now there was no more need for her to stay because maybe it had been a dying star that exploded somewhere in space and time which sometimes happens .
Never for a moment did she ever think that the object she had been observing was also observing her and as she was packing up to leave the hut they made themselves known to her .
She was confronted by a group of alien beings from a distant planet who spoke to her about where they came from and offered her a one way trip to that place if she was interested .
Tessa always trusted people and she had learned to follow her feelings and something told her that this was a once in a lifetime opportunity and she grabbed it with all the love in her heart .

When Tessa never returned to work Leanne informed the police . 
A massive search began to find her but after weeks there was no sign of Tessa . She was placed on a missing persons list and eventually when she wasn’t found the file on her was closed .
Leanne had often thought about the last time she saw Tessa and how her body seemed to have a  this strange glow around her . She though must have been  a sign .

Life went on as normal for Leanne and for Tessa well she had found another life somewhere beyond .

The End