Phoebe T's 500wc

500 wc draft, Phoebe, Age 11

The coffee decides

Miss Lekta was extremely engaged in her morning coffee,  Clara noticed. Her pale Swedish face was extremely concentrated. Clara shifted from her crouched position behind the white, rickety and charmingly paint-chipped fence to get a better look. "Clara?"

What?! How had Miss Lekta spotted her? She decided to stay quiet.

"Clara. Quickly, poppet, come here!" Clara stood up, her face was flushed with guilt - but mostly red, actually. She gently pushed a flaky fence post to the side and stepped into the quaint little garden that Miss Lekta was beckoning from.                        

But instead of telling her off, Miss Lekta turned her coffee cup towards Clara. In foam, it read two clear, neatly printed words: It's time. Clara pinched herself. Oh dear. She was awake.

"Time for what?" she asked in a filtered voice. Miss Lekta gave a sympathetic wince at her and Clara fainted clean away...

She woke up and immediately felt warm. She forced her eyes open and tried to take in her surroundings : she was laid down on a fluffy, warm thing. She was speeding through a clean, bright, leafy wood at full speed.  And Miss Lekta was sat, gripping the ... fur? At her side. But she was wearing a green dress that she had not been wearing before, and, as Clara looked down, she realised she too was dressed in a similar garment. " Right, " she gasped as she sat up.

" I'm sure this must be a little confusing for you, Clara,"   the woman said gently. "You see, to put it simply, you have  been chosen." But Clara's mind could not focus. Instinctively, she looked down at the animal that was hurtling them through the forest. She almost fainted again when she saw it was a woolly mammoth.  

It was then that Miss Lekta launched into a detailed explanation of the situation.  Apparently,  Clara was being appointed to work for 'Nirturen' a secret cooperation that had used deeply complicated technology to clone every extinct or badly endangered animal since the dinosaurs. "For our surveillance unit," hastily explained Miss Lekta. "Like me. I recommended you after watching you watch everything else. It was fascinating." She finished her sentence just as they entered a clearing, brimming with extraordinary life and small, modern wood huts. If Clara had been speechless before, then she certainly was now.

Dismounting the Mammoth, Clara finally exhaled a long held breath and watched two Tasmanian wolves gallop across the sunlit path. She finally asked a question that had been impulsively floating around her head. "Why?" And then, "It's not a dream, is it?!"

Miss Lekta smiled at her. "Nu-uh, hun, this is real."

Clara sighed but she didn't think it was relief. She relaxed a little when she spotted professional looking scientists pottering about, and even more when she saw a tiger greet one with a lick. So they won't kill me, hopefully she thought. Slowly she began enjoying herself,  and didn't realise how far they'd walked 'til she gasped...