Graham’s hand was a warm anchor on my arm, a reminder that no matter how far we went, we would never leave Earth entirely behind. It would always be with us, in the shapes we wore, the words we spoke aloud between ourselves, rather than the ones that were thrown through the pollen and translated into a dozen, a hundred, a thousand alien tongues.

“The harvest is coming,” I said, standing a little straighter. I felt First’s approving eyes on me. Had she been in my position once, with her own parent, under an alien sky? Was this how our genus cultivated diplomats? This conversation, or something like it, was happening over and over again, all over the planet. Other Firsts and other children, explaining the inevitable, because it was the polite thing to do before we devoured the world. “Earth was given the opportunity to refuse it, and didn’t. It was a problem for tomorrow, and there were things to be done today. Humans have never been good at that math. The ships aren’t leaving; the dying isn’t going to stop. But it can be over quickly, if you want it to be.”

“Never,” spat the vice-president, her lips drawing back in a snarl. “Now!”

More guards rose from behind the line of SUVs, all of them armed. I flung my arms wide, trying to block Graham from the hail of bullets I knew was coming. His body was flesh and blood; he couldn’t heal like I could.

// yes // said First sadly. // now. //

The sky above us began to scream as the rest of Hunter’s copse dropped out of the trees and into a sharply banked descent, their wings folded and their jaws gaping wide. Hunter launched himself upward to join them. The vice-president’s guards, faced with a choice between shooting two civilians—even if one of them was green—and a horrifying nightmare spider that, while huge, had done nothing to threaten them, or a sky full of aerial escapees from Jurassic Park, began firing wildly upward.

Hunter’s copse flew through the bullets, shrieking and batting their wings at the guards. The sound of ripping filled the air, underscored by the understandable sound of screams. Through it all, First remained calm, looking at the vice-president with the serenity of a conqueror who knew that her hour had come around at last.

// now // she murmured. // are you ready to listen? //

Harvest

… And before we judge of them too harshly we must remember what ruthless and utter destruction our own species has wrought, not only upon animals, such as the vanished bison and the dodo … The Tasmanians, in spite of their human likeness, were entirely swept out of existence in a war of extermination waged by European immigrants, in the space of fifty years. Are we such apostles of mercy as to complain if the Martians warred in the same spirit?…

—H. G. Wells, The War of the Worlds