McMinnville was alive with excitement.

The UFO Festival had turned the town into a parade of tinfoil hats, glowing headbands, and inflatable flying saucers.

Among the crowd, moving unnoticed, was Mac.

Mac wasn’t wearing a costume. He didn’t need one.

Before he left his planet, his boss had told him, “You won’t need a disguise. Humans won’t see you as you are. They’ll see you as they are.”

Blending into the festival, Mac smirked, It works!

Mac at the Festival

At the edge of the square, where the noise of the crowd softened, two children in green alien costumes strolled by, lost in conversation.

Mac followed, curious.

“Dinosaurs were so cool,” Nimbin said, adjusting his antenna headband. “Too bad they’re all gone.”

“Yeah,” Vail replied. “That was millions of years ago. Totally wiped out. Imagine being alive back then? Terrifying.”

They stopped.

A small lizard sat on a rock nearby, perfectly still under the sun.

“Look at him,” Vail said, crouching.

“What a life,” Nimbin said. “Just sitting there. No worries.”

Mac stepped casually ahead of them, gesturing toward the lizard.

“You don’t see… this?” he asked, his voice soft but curious.

The boys didn’t answer.

They didn’t even look at him.

Mac tilted his head, then stepped back as the boys stood and moved on, leaving the lizard behind without a second thought.

“It’s getting warmer,” Nimbin said as they wandered.

“It’s so hot,” Vail agreed. “Remember when Ms. Krause said the sun is going to explode someday?”

“Oh, yeah,” Nimbin said. “Billions of years from now. Way after we’re gone.”

Mac walked alongside them, glancing up at the sky.

“But don’t you see? The sun is exploding now,” he said, even more curious.

“Nah,” Vail replied, shielding his eyes from the sun and brushing the idea aside. His finger pointed up. “Look, it’s business as usual.”

The boys kept walking, their chatter drifting back to dinosaurs, the question already forgotten.

Mac paused, letting them go on ahead.

“They live in their stories,” he thought.

“Stories about time, where they imagine a past and a future, just so they can feel safe in the middle; far from any beginning or end.”

The lizard stayed on the rock, soaking in the sun’s light.

Mac smiled.

“For them, perhaps, that is enough.”

With a little shimmer, Mac disappeared into the air, leaving the festival behind.

The humans celebrated, laughed, and shared their stories over cups of lemonade, unaware of the quiet interpreter who had walked among them.

The End.