Congratulations to this week's winners - Sabine Carey 7S, for Ant Story, and Jacinta Stephens 10B, for Get Off the Grass. Thank you to all of our wonderful entrants - we are so impressed with your creativity and entertaining ideas. Well done!

Enter each week for your chance to be published in our college newsletter and win a terrific writer's gift box. New prompts will be posted on Compass each Monday. Enjoy reading the entries from Sabine and Jacinta.

Ant Story

I kneel on the soft soil, head slightly raised to look at the queen. The same position hundreds if not thousands were doing, standing next to me, behind me. All staring at our queen. She slowly walks to the stage, her six legs moving gracefully. She comes to stand at the stage and begins to speak. Her voice was soft, but at the same time full of command, slightly melodic, but it also had a touch of danger to it. As far as the eye could see, beings similar to myself watch intently.

‘My dear subjects.’ She starts and looks disapprovingly at the crowd. ‘It has come to my attention there has been an…..what shall I call it…. an uprising.’

The crowd gasps, eager to hear what happened. It echoes all around the underground chamber. I gasp too, but for a different reason. My knees start to shake, and I feel sweat beading up on my forehead and my antennae wilt. The queen nods to the crowd and continues.

‘I was as surprised as you are when, during a court meeting, I was attacked.’ She scans the crowd, eyes resting on me. I was surprised. Did she know? I did not look away from her. No one did. But in my peripheral vision I could see my… allies fidgeting. I wished I could yell out to them, to tell them to stop being so obvious, but I couldn’t. The queen lifts her gaze and continues.

‘The large ones… the humans… crushed the chamber in which we were holding the meeting. At first, I thought it was just another of the shows of ignorance those humans… those monsters show to us, relentlessly squishing our kind. But then I was told by a source who wishes to stay anonymous that there was a much more sinister explanation.’ I gulp. ‘I was told… that there were certain individuals who planned this event. I was given a couple of names, but I want the guilty to come to me and tell me if it was them. If they don’t within a couple of days, they will be faced with extreme punishment. Thank you, dear ant colony, for listening. You may go.’

I stiffly get up and head out of the hall. Though everyone else was heading to their jobs, I ducked through a dark alleyway. Looking around I found the pile and leaves and moss, and ripped it from the ground, revealing a secret passageway dug through the dirt. I climb down and then pace the floor, waiting for the others. A few minutes later I hear a loud thud followed by two more. I look up, and realise that Leaf, Snipper and Ali must have arrived. They walk over to me.

Everyone seems stiff and worried. I glance around before I started talking. ‘The queen must have known what we did.’ I start, and Leaf looks up and says, ‘yes, Clove, and she also said that she was given names. I wonder how many she knows, and what she’ll do if we don’t come tell her it was us!’

‘lets just lay low for a while. If we don’t seem afraid, she won’t know it’s us.’ Snipper says and Ali nods, but we all seem to agree. Everyone leaves but once they’re gone, I feel heat building up inside of me. It wasn’t fair how Snipper dragged me into this! A couple of weeks ago life was pretty normal, though most people could see that the new queen wasn’t so well-kind-hearted.

After a few weeks people knew that if things kept going the way they were, soon our colony would have no contact with anyone else. I sigh. I know we had to do this. Had to arrange for the meeting to be held at the area where the Big Ones walk, so the chances were the building would get crushed, the Queen would be hurt, and hopefully they could reason with her or start over. Looking back, it definitely wasn’t a smart move for us.

I keep thinking we should turn ourselves in, but I know that if we did we would not come back. The queen is not a fair queen, and she would go against her word and we would be prisoners until the day we die.

The next few days go by, but there are so many new restrictions it’s hard to keep count. Today I am having another meeting with Ali, Snipper and Leaf. Unlike normal, Leaf and Ali are already there, but Snipper arrives after, looking puffed out and nervous, which was strange. As we talk more about how we can go back to our normal life I realise something. I scan everyone’s face. Ali’s round face looked innocent enough, her big eyes shining, and Leaf looked thoughtful. Snipper on the other hand, looked anxious -and guilty? I start to talk in a low voice.

‘We never told anyone about our plans, did we?’ I say, and everyone nods. ‘We swore we wouldn’t Clove.’ Ali tells me. says. ‘Well,’ I continue, ‘then how did the queen find out about our group? I think there might be a snitch here.’ Leaf gasps. Then I see movement in the corner of my eye. Snipper is at the entrance, trying desperately to climb up. We grab him, and using some fabric, we sit him down on a chair and tie him to it.

‘Sorry,’ Leaf says, ‘it’s for your own good.’

‘Someone will find you here, as you’ve probably already told them about where we hold our meetings.’ I say, and to our surprise, he nods, and grins?

‘Maybe I did, maybe I didn’t tell them,’ he says, and does that silly grin again, ‘but I probably did.’ And with that word I hear a banging at the entrance, and the queen’s guards stomp down.

‘Put your hands in the air’ They say. We don’t. Leaf and Ali and I sprint towards the exit, taking the guards for surprise, and loop around them, running out of the exit. We keep running until we are out of town. I’m sure the guards are still following us, but we need to rest for the night. We huddle around, and I know that I will find a way to stop this mess, and I won’t stop trying until everyone is safe again.

By Sabine Carey, 7S

Get Off the Grass

“Get off the grass. The ants are having a conference.”

“Yes, of course, apologies ants,” I hopped off the grass, looking down at the crunchy brown previously beneath my feet. I spoke to both the supposed conferencing ants, and our next-door neighbour, Mr. Walter. The man was totally insane, but he was generally a nice guy, unless you stood on his ants.

It was always worse in Summer, always more ants out and about.

After bidding farewell to Walter, I shut the front door softly so as to not frighten Mr. Walter’s ants. That is something only done once.

“Walter’s ants conferencing again?” asked Mum as I reached the end of the hallway. I nodded in reply and plonked onto the green, squishy thing that could once have been called a couch, approximately eighty years ago. Slight exaggeration, but I did say approximately.

My friend, Ted, walked in dismally and groaned louder than our dining chairs when Uncle Podge sat down.

“I know, he yelled at me too,” I said with a sigh. Mr. Walter had taken a toll on us this Summer.

“I wasn’t even on the grass that time.”

“You haven’t got him on his best day. Dad turned the sprinklers on last night.”

Ted’s eyes widened. “No way. Why?”

“He’d had enough, I guess. The grass is dry as a bone. Hasn’t been a blade of green since November.”

The next day Ted came over again, which was nothing out of the ordinary. What was out of the ordinary, was the way he came in; terrified.

“Who died?” I scoffed.

“It’s Walter – he’s gone ballistic.”

“What do you mean, ballistic?”

“They took him away in an ambulance it got so bad.”

“What happened?”

“It’s seriously weird. Apparently, he woke up in the middle of the night, only to find his kitchen completely covered in dead ants.”

Holy cheeses. It was no wonder he was taken away in an ambulance. He went off his nut when anyone looked at his ants, let alone when his kitchen was painted with their bloody remains.

The rest of the day consisted of confused expressions and police officers knocking on our door questioning and querying. That night Dad and I traveled to the hospital in search of Mr. Walter as we owed him a visit. Visiting hours were nearly over, the only reason the nurse let us in was purely based on the fact Walter had been asking about us all day. She’d assumed we were family.

Dad and I exchanged a knowing glance. No doubt Mr. Walter had been asking about us the entirety of today because he thought the moment he was gone; we’d be doing some form of interpretive dance on his ants.

When we walked in, the old man was fast asleep. His snoring rattled the heart monitor beside his bed. The room was cold and smelled of the dinner that had just recently been consumed.

We sat with him a while and decided to leave him sleep in peace. However, us departing silently did not go unnoticed on Mr. Walter’s part. His snoring ceased as soon as we opened the door. Sitting bolt upright, he roared – in what I could only imagine was anguish – and pointed at us.

“LEAVING WILL COST THEM THEIR WEIGHT IN FEATHERS.”

And then he lay down and fell back asleep. That was incredibly odd. We sped out the door in an increased haste.

By the time we arrived home it was late, resulting in me clambering straight into bed. At 2:30am I was woken out of a restless dream by a knocking, coming from my window. Slowly, I pulled back the curtains and incurred a much needed six month’s growth scared out of me.

“Ted?” I hissed. I didn’t particularly care that he probably couldn’t hear me through the fogged-up glass. His eyes were once again wide. And just like before, he was terrified.

As silently as possible – which, as it turned out, was not very silent – I attempted to open my window a smidge.

“What are you doing here?”

“F-feathers.”

“Feathers?”

“Written on Walter’s front door. It said, ‘my weight in feathers is not your concern.’”

My eyes were just as wide as his now. I thought back to what Mr. Walter had said. Leaving will cost them their weight in feathers. I had no idea as to what that could even remotely mean.

“Why were you looking at Walter’s door in the first place?”

“I left my yo-yo,” Ted held up the bright red light-up yo-yo he’d found at the school market last year. When I said ‘found,’ I didn’t meant ‘bought,’ I meant found, in the bushes.

“It landed on his lawn yesterday and I thought it was a bad idea to go get it, for obvious reasons, and when I found out he’d been carted off to hospital I ran in to tell you and forgot about my yo-yo!”

"That sentence was a tad long, Ted,” I chuckled.

“Shush, this is important.”

A lengthy discussion later, we were even more confused. Who knew that was possible? None of it made sense. Not to sound like a pessimistic detective, but we had hit a dead end. I wasn’t aware we’d begun an investigation, but we’d hit a dead end, nonetheless.

The next morning was disrupted by sirens. Sirens belonging to the police. We all rushed out the door in anticipation.

Just as we burst out of our front door, a pair of cops burst through Walter’s door and minutes later came out with a hand-cuffed young man kicking and screaming.

It turned out that the young man dragged out of Walter’s house was his son, who Walter would rather have disowned. The son had killed all his ants in an attempt on the older man’s life, in search of some inheritance.

As they say, the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree – the son was just as over-protective of feathers, as Mr. Walter was of ants.

By Jacinta Stephens 10B

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