Chapter 2

Just as she finished, she heard her mother clambering up the steps to tuck her into bed. Hastily, she stuffed the permission slip into her backpack and jumped into her bed just as her mother reached the final step. Elena’s mother walked in to find Elena snuggled into bed ,asleep, or at least that’s how it appeared. Elena heard her mother sigh and say, “If only you knew the truth.”

Knew the truth about what, Elena began to wonder after her mother had closed the door and left to go to bed. About why she can’t go to Earth or was there something else her parents were hiding from her. Elena took a breath and stopped to focus her thoughts, she knew the facts which were that her parents didn’t want her to go to Earth but the question still remained as to why. For a good few minutes Elena pondered this, and then she stopped. Whatever was going on she could find out when she got to Earth, after all her permission slip was signed with her mother’s signature. Upon realizing this Elena began to drift off to sleep, the next morning she awoke to the monotonous gray sky of Ultain. But it had a certain glimmer today, because today was the day she would travel to Earth. She arrived at school the same as usual except today she had a certain pep in her step, and that’s when she saw it, the shuttle that would take her class. It was gleaming metal almost too bright to look at, and yet still she stood there mesmerized until jarred back to reality when Eli “the ogre” ran into her. “Hey, watch where you’re going.” Eli said.

Elena’s cheeks flushed with embarrassment as she hurried on her way to English class. When she arrived her class was already there and everyone’s permission slip was in a neat pile on Ms.Carolson’s desk, Elena walked by calmly and placed her permission slip on the desk as though she had nothing to hide, even though she did. Next came a whirlwind of activity that Elena barely remembered, at one point she was sitting at her desk watching the teacher look over her permission slip and the next she was sitting in the very shuttle she had seen that morning. As they prepared for launch Elena looked around herself and saw all the students in her class wide-eyed slightly in fear and slightly in excitement. Elena took a breath and then awaited the launch, at first she didn’t feel anything then it all hit her at once. Her breath was knocked out of her and for a moment she couldn’t even comprehend what was happening, and then suddenly it all stopped just as fast as it had started. Elena peered out of one of the windows that lined the ship and saw that they had entered space, and it was beautiful. In fact, it was just like one image had been captured in time, Elena longed to sit here and just study the beauty of it all. But, the shuttle was already gearing up to enter hyperspeed. A voice crackled over the intercom and said,”We will be arriving on Earth in 5 ticks.”

Everyone tensed, no one had been to Earth before and all they knew about it they had read in books. Then a sudden excitement entered the cabin of the shuttle and everyone began to voice their curiosities and theories about what Earth would be like. In Earth time 5 ticks were the equivalent to 5 minutes so in no time at all the shuttle had reached Earth, and as the students awaited to see the barren, dry, land of Earth that they had about in books. They were met with a lush, beautiful garden of life and coming across were humans except they didn’t look friendly. In fact, as they came closer everyone began to feel afraid because eventhough these beings were humans. They had been abandoned on Earth, and they were not happy about it.