The Portal

Portal

-”Bye Evoliix!” my mom shouted from downstairs. 

-”Goodbye mom, bye dad.” I replied with my faked sore throat. 

-”See you tonight, son.” my father answered.

-”Take care!” I added before I heard them walk through the portal.The portal I’d seen them go through every day of my life, the portal I’d studied so intensely. I got up from my bed, took my yellow bag and hurried down the stairs. I threw myself through the portal just before it closed.

I woke up on an odd surface I’d never seen before. It were some kind of green pointy, but still soft, sticks that grew from the ground. Whatever it was we didn’t have it on my home planet Atox. I must’ve hit my head when I came through the portal because I couldn’t remember from where the portal threw me out. I decided to walk towards the buildings that I saw in the horizon, it seemed to be the most logical way to go to be able to find my parents. While walking I noticed the clean air and the ground full of life. Everywhere around me I could see plants of different beautiful colors and bigger plants with something that looked delicious growing on them. Back home it’s extremely polluted and we barely have any animals at all. 

                                                                          ***

I suddenly started to wonder where my parents had gone, they couldn’t be that far away could they? I continued walking towards the civilized area with the burning hot star shining from high above. I explored my surroundings carefully while searching for my parents. I tried to catch their scent in the air, but it were too many smells of fresh plants and living creatures so I couldn’t find it. I came to an end of the green material on the ground and a grey pavement took form under my feet. I once again took in my new surroundings, this time it looked more like home with high skyscrapers and asphalt on the ground.

I found my way to an industrial area with a river at the side of it, which in my opinion was a bit odd. I went to the river side to look at the water, we don’t really have much water at Atox and I wanted to see how clear the water were here at this planet since it seemed to be well-kept. I approached the side of the river, I could see the bottom of it and the water was almost crystal clear. When I were about to bow down to touch the water, someone pushed me from the side and together we fell into the water with a big splash. The river was deeper than I thought and I had a hard time to reach the surface. While I was trying to resurface I also had to fight the creature that pushed me down in the first place. It didn’t go well since this creature was determined to keep a hold to me. When we both had to catch our breaths we surfaced and breathed heavily. 

- ”Are you out of your mind?!”, I cried out to the creature who looked a lot like me and also had an attractive beautifulness for being from another planet.

- ”Are You?!”, a female voice shrieked back at me. ”I just saved your life and you, as ungrateful as you are, thank me by yelling at me?” she lectured. 

- ”You saved my life?! More like tried to kill me!” I answered with an irritation evident in my tone.

- ”Actually, yeah, I saved you, they could’ve seen you.” she told me as a matter of fact.

- ”Who?” I asked with no hesitation, now curious.

- ”Uh, I don’t really know who they are, I only know they’ve been here for a while. They come here every day and put some kind of measuring device over there.” she said and pointed towards a building beside the river. ”They’re very cautious and it’s suspicious, I think they measure the water level or something and since they showed up the river has sunk rapidly, it’s odd.” the girl trailed off while I looked towards the building.

- ”I’m Jasmine by the way.” the girl, Jasmine, introduced herself and stretched out her hand for me to shake.

- ”Evoliix”, I politely told her my name and shook her hand, rigid from what she just told me.

-”That’s an odd name”, Jasmine murmured. Before I could answer her I saw some figures walking around the corner from the building behind her. My eyes widened at first but then a confusion started to drag over me, I recognized that walk of theirs. 

-”Mom, dad?”, I whispered under my breath with a puzzlement. Why would they be here at this place if there were fishy business going on. They saw me and Jasmine and started walking towards us.

-”Don’t panic now Jasmine but there’re two people coming our way and I think I know them so please don’t hit them or run away, okay?” I instructed Jasmine, it was a bit odd to instruct her since I just met her half an hour earlier and did not really know her.

-”O-okay.” she answered me with an unsteady voice. 

At first when mom and dad walked towards us it were with angry and demanding steps but when they recognized me they stopped dead in their tracks before they started to walk again with uncertain and confused steps. Jasmine positioned herself next to me as my mom and dad went to stand in front of us.

-”Oh dear”, my mother started ”Liix what are you doing here?” my mother exclaimed worriedly using my nickname. 

- ”I came after you through the portal, you’ve been hiding stuff from me and never tell me where you’re going and I decided to find out by myself.” I stated. She did not seem mad at me, just worried.

- ”Oh Liiiiix, this is not good. Have you touched anything on this planet?” she seemed distressed when she asked me this and I got a bit confused by all this and I felt Jasmine shuffle a bit uneasy beside me.

-”Uh, I fell on some green pointy sticks when I fell from the portal and then...”

-”Portal?” Jasmine interrupted, fear laced her voice as she looked from me to my parents.

- ”I’ll tell you what’s going on”, my father offered and showed her away to tell her about the home we knew of. 

- ”Did you eat anything?” my mom interrogated me when they left.

- ”I tried some delicious looking small round colorful marble spheres growing from a big plant on the meadow and that’s it. Why didn’t you tell me about this place, what is it you’re doing here anyway?” I answered her question and asked back. She just got more worried when I told her I had eaten the very delicious spheres but she answered my questions anyway by telling me everything from the beginning.

- ”It was a secret mission that your father and I was assigned by our Leader. You know that our planet is dying and our Leader wanted us to try prevent the dying by getting water from planets nearby and transport it to Atox. That’s what we’re doing here, we measure the water and take some of it each day and try to build up the life at Atox again. We didn’t want you to know because we knew you would disagree with us, you would probably say that this would not be the right solution. We suspected you to follow us if you knew, so we didn’t tell you in case this would happen. This planet is dangerous for our kind, our immune systems aren’t built to be able to deal with the food they have here and because of that I’m not sure if you can come home again. If those berries you ate were poisonous for us it’s dangerous for you to come home, you will get sick and die because of the mix of our polluted air back home.” she told me and I could see tears starting to form in her eyes.

- ”Hey, mom, it’s okay. I’m okay” I reassured her. ”But as you said I don’t think you’re doing the right thing by stealing the water, it is not the best solution. While you and dad have been gone all days I’ve actually worked on a gadget. It doubles the water molecules and makes more water. It’s still just a prototype since I haven’t had time to show it to you but you can build it up. You don’t need that much water, a full test tube will be enough. The gadget is on my desk back home, present it to our Leader and try it. Atox will survive, try take care of the planet. I believe I have to stay here for my own safety, you can come visit mom, please come visit sometime. But don’t steal necessities from others without permission to take or borrow some of it, they need it as much as you do.”

A/N This was a short story I wrote for school but I'm putting it up here too. So yaay a story (: