리틀팍스

The last thing I remember, I was standing in an endless field. Winds whipped over my head, carrying clouds of dust. I coughed and ducked low.

I certainly didn't recognize where I was then. There was nothing except for hard, solid ground and the winds roaring overhead.

A few yards away, I saw an enormous hill made of sand and dust. I climbed on top of it. The view was magnificent, and I saw everything. On the right side of the hill was a big....what should I call it? Let's see...a sandpit. Just the size of a frisbee.

It wasn't very strange to see a regular, teeny-tiny sandpit in the middle of some kind of wilderness. The only thing making it look wondrous was that there was an exactly-same sandpit in the left side of the hill. I felt strange and glided over to the left side.

Just as I thought, it was a regular, small sandpit. I touched it. It was a lot of sand: clear and simple. Finally, I decided it was a dream.

If it was a dream, everything will make sense. Everything is possible in dreams.

At that time, I never thought it would rain suddenly in the middle of a wilderness. But it did. Raindrops fell, scattering dry sand all over the place.

"Eek!" I cried. "There's nowhere to get away from this rain! And water is filling in this dry pit," I reached down to the pit once again. Water fell down to it, but didn't got mixed up with the dirt. My hand sank into the liquid.

I thought the puddle was not too deep, but my arm sank to my shoulder. Stunned, I stumbled, and my head went right into the pit! And you know what happens when your head goes into water. You lose your balance and fall all the way through.

That's what happened to me. As I gurgled underwater, I thought I heard a woman's voice-perhaps my Ma's.

"And she was grumbling so much on our way to the supermarket a few hours ago. And then, well...I should say my Sharon fell into a manhole. I'm to blame since I didn't watch where my darling was stepping. Now I'll-"

The rest of the words drowned away as I sank deeper into the puddle. I shut my eyes tight. Then I felt the water shrinking. When I opened my eyes, it didn't even came up to my knees. I jerked my head up.

There, I saw the most strangest place I have ever seen. There were lots of people from all over the world. But none of them was an adult. Everybody looked like elementary schoolers or younger. There was no buildings; instead, children went in and out of the bottom of an enormous tree.

I gazed around in awe. The air smelled and felt fresh and clean. Just then a girl looking about fourteen walked over to me, nudged her glasses up every few seconds.

"You came from adult world, didn't you?" she asked me in a very business-like manner. I nodded. "Who are you?" I asked. The girl's eyebrows shot up in surprise.

"Speak to me politely, I'm one of the oldest kids in Childworld." she said in a tone that didn't change at all. I nodded, but inside, I was filled with dismay.

"But you are so young!" I blurted out. The girl didn't look like angry or surprised, as if this kind of things happen every once in a day.

"Childworld is for kids age four to fourteen, though most of them are ten, like you,"

The girl's worlds made me jump. "How did you know-" I couldn't even continue.

'Do I look my age?' I wondered. Later, I found out that the girl's name was Mina, and that she was the gatekeeper of Childworld, the world belonging to children.