Dawn was breaking over the town of Southam as James Agoftos wandered his room excitedly… It was Science Week! The crisp air was becoming too much: it felt like a heatwave had hit. Wandering over to the steamed window, he caught a glimpse of something moving below; he ignored it.
On the other side of town, Lila Taylor was hoping the day to be over: she always hated Mondays. Lila got dressed and slowly walked over to her birch door, turning her heating off behind her; she soon saw something whizz past through the blur of her window.
Arriving at school, James gasped at all of the projects in satisfaction. As Lila arrived on the property, she gave a sigh as she found out that they were testing soil samples from ‘Mars’ a.k.a. Mr. Sullivan’s back garden. Sitting down with a smile, James was ready for the coming week, or so he thought… Suddenly, the lights went out and Lila gave a scream! Soon, the backup generators came on revealing something moving in the sample shared by Lila and James.
All of the soil started to float up and bunch together soon to swirl and create a portal. Many classroom objects disappeared into the vortex — including two children… Lila and James!
Cold was the night as Lila awoke from her slumber and began shaking James awake. Looking around, James realised that there were in some kind of vast, red desert… Mars
Starting to walk, Lila called out, “James! Follow me!”
Following Lily, James saw something quiver in the sand below so he leapt away as it started to swirl, engulfing Lila… James continued to walk; his legs felt like they could give way at any moment. Out of the rocky surface, a strange creature emerged: four wings; elephant legs; multiple sets of eyes.
James yelped and suddenly ran back to leap into the quicksand! He obviously had more chance of survival this way. Much to his surprise, he was alive and quite well: he was at the core… A whole civilisation had hidden there undiscovered for thousands of years: strange and magnificent beasts were everywhere… Then there was Lila…
For some reason, there was gravity, gravity at last. An oasis of water lay still in the middle with Spherisects flying everywhere and Monsoons swinging from vine to vine as the bioluminescent moss lit up the surrounding pools. Glavours were laying in holes dug into the wall. The beasts… the beasts were not attacking then? The Monsoons looked like monkeys with a wingsuit-like structure. As for the Spherisects, they were little red balls with no eyes but a good sense of smell and wriggly arms and legs with blue, bioluminescent bee-like wings lighting the sky. The Monsoons looked to be half a metre wide and one metre tall, and the Spherisects looked to be about 8 cm in height and just 5 cm wide. Wait until Mr. Sullivan hears about this!
Lila tripped into some green goo much like she had tripped into at the start when a rush of oxygen hit her; she had the answers for survival!…
But food… she hadn’t been hungry at all… Could her metabolism have slowed down? Could she survive? Could she tame a beast?… Would they ever get home to tell the tale?…