Nya ran down the stairs and into her living room, turning her head in every direction, so excited to tell her dad of the hidden attic and the illusion telescope. Anything to take her mind off the past few months.
But looking around the living room, Nya stopped. The couch wasn't there before, was it? And that china cabinet had never existed, she knew that for a fact. All their old family pictures were gone. Nya swivelled around, shocked. Her dad couldn't change all this since she'd last been in there this morning.
And Nya's dad would never, ever, pack away the family photos. It would like be admitting that her mum might be, might be... No, don't think about that. Don't think about that. She'll be back. She was sure.
Meanwhile, Nya raced out of the room into the hallway. She now recognised differences she hadn't before. There was an old fashioned hat stand next to the front door. The wallpaper was a slightly lighter shade of blue with a faint floral pattern. Dust covered everything, like the house hadn't been lived in in years.
Nya was starting to feel a little scared. Something was wrong. Really wrong. And she had a creeping sensation that this place, so like her old house yet so different, was starting to remind her of the attic.
Suddenly, she remembered seeing her dad outside through the window of the attic, hanging out the washing. Nya walked down the hallway slowly, careful not to disturb anything in this creepy place.
The last difference Nya noticed was the door handle. As she put her hand on it to turn it, she felt the unevenly carved wood against her palm. Nya glanced down and saw that the handle was carved into the shape of a bear's head, its mouth open in a silent roar.
Nya silently prayed for her dad to be outside, that when she opened the door, everything, inside and out, would be normal again.
She turned the handle and stared out into a lush green forest so alive she could hear it buzzing. It was the world of the telescope. Under normal circumstances, Nya would be jumping up and down yelling, "MAGIC IS REAL! WOO HOO!".
Which was precisely the circumstances today.
"YES! WOOOO HOOOOO! I'M A WITCH! I'M A DEMIGOD! I'M A NINJAGO NINJA! MAGIC IS REAL!!!!!!!!!!"
Nya ran down the porch steps and spun around breathing in the forest air and feeling very, very alive. When she spun around to face the house it looked nothing like before. Gone was the light blue paint, the chocolate coloured awnings. In their place was stacks of wood, giving it the look of a classic log cabin in the woods. Like something that came right out of a book.
Suddenly Nya noticed that the door was boarded up, as were all the windows. She stared in alarm at the house before running up and feeling the boards. They were nailed on tight. But she had just come out of that door less than a minute ago. There was no way back in now.
Nya was struck with the reality of the situation. Sure, she was in a magic forest just having come out of a magic house with a magic attic, but she had nothing. No food, no water, no clothes, no possessions at all if she was to survive in a forest alone.
Except one. She felt in the pocket of her jeans pocket in relief. Her lucky stick was still there. Nya took it everywhere with her, ever since her mum had left, or 'gone missing' as she liked to believe. It was the only thing of her's she had, found in the deepest pocket of her favourite coat when she was searching for clues of her mum's disappearance.
Nya sighed. What had she done? Now her dad will have lost three family members. He'll never get through it alone. Looking at those boards she has remembered something important that the fictional worlds she read about had told her. Magic isn't always good.
She thumped back down and sat on the porch steps dejectedly. Magic might be real, but it wasn't giving her any help at the moment.
Footsteps pounded through the forest. The sound was so sudden Nya stood up and squinted into the direction of the noise, trying to glimpse the source, but it was useless with all the trees blocking the way. There was another sound too, gradually coming closer. Something that sounded like hooves. A sense of doom began to form in the air.
Without warning a boy burst through the trees into the clearing of the house. He seemed as shocked as a seashell to see her just standing there but didn't stop running.
"Run!" he shouted at her, "Run! It's coming!" Quite the dramatic.
Most people, she knew from her books, would have been 'paralysed' at this, or their 'feet would have been frozen to the ground' and they would have to wait for someone to save them. But Nya had more sense than that. She did the sensible thing. As soon the boy had yelled the first word, she was off, sprinting after him. He didn't look back to check she was following.
He veered off into the trees dodging left and right, following an invisible path through the trees like he did this everyday. When they were well away from the house clearing but still just in sight of it, he stopped abruptly and fell the ground clutching his side, trying to catch his breath. He looked like he had just run a marathon, which he probably had.
The sense of doom and darkness got stronger in the air, and Nya saw a streak of shadowy black, shaped a bit like a giant fat horse with horns, rush past the clearing, a wall of flickering orange following in its wake. She realised with a start it was fire. Wherever the shadow animal's feet touched the ground, fire sparked in its wake, burning everything around it to ashes before smouldering away.
"Umbra," said the boy, picking himself up off the ground and seeing grimly where she was looking, his eyes reflecting the red flames.
"That shadow horse thing?" Nya watched as the last burnt tree fell with a sickening crunch. She wondered what had become of her house, the log cabin.
"Yep, it means shadow monster. That one was a Bison, one of the less dangerous ones" The boy looked about as old as her thirteen year old self. His clothes were smoking and had a few burns in them, like he'd just run through a fire. Literally.
"Less dangerous? Wow" Nya gripped her lucky stick, thanking the ninjas that she hadn't been standing there when the Bison Umbra went past.
The boy looked at her strangely. "You're not from here are you?"
Nya took a deep breath. This was the time when she would decide to tell the native people that she was just from out of town or she actually came through a magic portal.
"Nup. I, well, I sort of accidentally transported myself here through some kind of magic from an attic. I suppose it's burnt to ashes now." She was always annoyed when book characters didn't tell the native people from the magic land the truth. If the people are from a magic land, they're probably going to believe in magic, right?
"An attic? That's different from what the others said. All they could go on about was bookcases and wardrobes."
"Wardrobes? I'm not in Narnia, am I?" Narnia would be great, but Nya was hoping she had found a world of her own.
The boy laughed. "Nope. No talking animals here. You're in Lar, but now isn't really the best time to visit. We're sort of under attack"
"Lar?" She hadn't heard of that one before. Nya didn't know if that was a bad sign or a good one. "You mean under attack from the Umbra?"
The boy sighed. "Yeah, it's been going on for a few months now but the attacks are getting worse. More dangerous shadows are being let loose and every available person is trying to help capture them."
"Even kids?" Nya was curious why they would let a thirteen year old go hunt dangerous monsters by himself.
"Even kids, when they're old enough. Dad didn't want me to go, but I know what I'm doing and kids aren't underestimated here." He looked at Nya, like challenging her to argue with him and say that kids should be kept cooped up inside, protected all their childhood. But he got no fight. Nya agreed completely. How else would she be here?
"Come on, we better get going. I'll take you back to the village. We'll go and scavenge that log cabin tomorrow to see if we can pick up anything of yours that wasn't burnt. Though I doubt we'll find anything, we never do. What's your name anyway?" He started to walk through the trees along the invisible path again and Nya followed beside him.
"Nya. You?"
He smiled. "Like the Ninjago ninja? I'm Lloyd."
"You're kidding."
"Yep. I'm Pat. Nice to meet ya"
They walked the rest of the way in silence, both contemplating their near death experience and Nya wondering which questions she should start asking first.
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Hi! I'm the author!
Sorry, I went back and changed the story from Nya's dad going missing to her mum. I'm really sorry, I know this is annoying and you'll have to re-imagine the story in your mind but I just realised I really wanted the mum to be the interesting one while the dad is stuck at home doing washing, just for a change.
Thanks for understanding, and thank you thank you thank you for reading my story!
Comment and vote and all that stuff.
- FranVader