Special Outing

In the morning, Mika quickly got dressed. Today she was going to see the Portal of 19 Ways in person. She checked on Teru to see if he was getting ready. She knew how long he took to get ready for something.

Once everyone was ready, they headed out. Dad had to tell Mum that they were going to the park. The three walked to a very gloomy looking part of the town. There were many broken windows with graffiti. They entered a small shop and Dad began to whisper things at the wall.

~shape the world as how it is, carve the people to fit the world, certain people create circle Jaiind others grow fur~

This made absolutely no sense to Mika but the wall opened up. "Mika", said Dad, "You'll need to remember that phrase if you want to use the portal." She nodded and they all walked through the hole in the wall. It sealed behind them.

Mika was surprised at how the portal actually looked like. It was just an extremely long alleyway with other branching off alleyways.

Her father handed her a small white square of what looked like paper.

"What's this?" she asked.

"Your mask," replied Teru, "When going through here, you need to have at least your eyes covered. I believe if you tap that square, your mask will open up."

She did what he said and to her amazement, a white mask opened up in her hands. It was very simple.

Just a rather wonky smiley face on a plain white mask.

She put it on. There were no holes in the mask for her to see through, but she could see perfectly fine. Like it was transparent.

"Can you see fine?" her father asked.

"Yes!" she replied, "that's so strange though."

Her brother laughed and put on his own. His was a black mask with one glass eye and a rather devilish smiling mouth. Her father's was made of metal and had a big black cross on the front.

"Now," he started, "Where shall we go? Somewhere on earth would be great."

"How about that shopping centre that we went to when we were on holiday?" asked Mika.

"Good one!" her father exclaimed, "Now I will focus all of my attention on that place. Now Mika, remember, if you're using this on your own, you'll need to keep in mind that traveling somewhere far will use up more energy than if you're going somewhere nearby." She nodded.

They walked into one of the branching off alleyways. They linked hands as they carried on. It seemed dark at first, but it got brighter. Suddenly, Mika noticed that they were all standing outside the shop. She was surprised. She hadn't even noticed the transition from the alleyway and this place.

"How do we get back?" she questioned.

"Easy," replied her father, "When you are thinking of the place you want to go to, you need to remember to ask for a return."

"Ask who?"

"You just think it in your head. You can think of something like 'Send me to the entrance of Seiena and may I have a return'. It's that simple."

"Now if we want to go back, we need to go back to where we arrived and think, 'let me back'."

They linked hands again and were miraculously back in the portal. Mika was extremely impressed.

"That's enough for today," said Dad, "Let's go back. "Okay," replied both Mika and Teru.

They went back to the entrance of where they arrived, their father chanted the phrase again, and they all walked through the wall.

During the walk home, Dad told Mika,

"Since you aren't very strong, I'd say you can only go somewhere and come back once a day. So I don't want to receive a call from you telling me you're stranded. Got that?"

She nodded.

"Good," he carried on, "you can go anytime you like. Just don't tell anyone. Not even Mum."

He handed her a small paper slip of the phrase to chant and they walked home silently.