Jan. 19, 2020, 12:18 AM CST

Sioux Falls, South Dakota

Sandra was sitting at the kitchen table of her house, drinking some red wine, while reading a news article about her son's disappearance on her MacBook Air. She saw many articles online about her son's disappearance; it was one of the most trending search results on Google. She was reading the news article "South Dakota Teenager Captured by Mysterious Portal at High School" on The New York Times. Her eyes flickered left to right as she read the news article word by word, sad that her offspring were lost, running around in a different planet, while eager to learn about this strange portal at the same time. Everyone at James' school heard of his disappearance, and were concerned for him, but also thinking that a portal just appeared out of nowhere was the coolest thing ever. James wasn't the most popular kid in school, but he was just a little, due to his success on YouTube. His fans all across the planet were vastly shocked to hear such bizarre news about his disappearance. It was quite peculiar to have a semi-famous YouTuber just be captured by a portal.

Sandra picked up her phone—taking another sip of her wine. She reached for the paper that read Diana's phone number and read it. After she opened the Messages app on her phone, she typed in the same numbers in the same order as the piece of paper. As the numbers turned blue after she tapped the return button, she started to type.

"Hey Diana, it's Sandra from yesterday. Are you awake right now?" The message read as Sandra poked at the blue circle with a white arrow inside of it, sending the message. The small blue bar at the top quickly increased in width, and as it disappeared a fraction of a second later, the word "Delivered" appeared at the bottom of the text—signifying that the message was sent. She continued to read the article, placing her phone down on the kitchen table, by the left side of her laptop. She took another sip of her wine. Soon, the message she sent to Diana's phone moved up, as a gray text box containing three dots of darker shades of gray appeared—Sandra smiled, as the word "Delivered" turned to "Read 12:19 AM", with the word "Read" boldened.

"I'm awake. Do you need anything right now?" Diana's message read as Sandra started tapping the letters on her phone to reply to her message.

"I need someone to talk to. My children are on some other planet, I've been a single mother for 11 years, I just feel worthless. Hopeless. I feel like nothing Everything just feels empty and dead." Sandra has gotten a little moody with only her in the house. She feared for her children and the dangers of it that she was oblivious to. James came back and told her that he was killed, so anything else could happen to him.

"Sure, you can talk to me, Sandra." Diana wanted to help her out, but she didn't exactly know how. The school was closed; it was a Sunday midnight, about almost every single place was closed, except for convenience stores that were open all day long.

"I just don't know what to do, Diana. I just want my kids back." James, Shaun, Natalie, and Amelia were the only ones sucked in, and apparently, they came back to Earth when they "died," considering the fact that James went to another planet, and kind of lived to tell the tale. Sandra saw him get sucked into a portal, so she knew that what he was saying was true. And soon, the surveillance footage became trending. "I want to go to the school to wait for my kids to come back."

"It's kind of late, don't you think? Plus, I don't think the police would you just waiting for your kids to come back." Diana replied. "I mean, I can understand why you want to go to the school. I don't blame you. You have kids, and you want to protect them. But you've gotta follow the law, Sandra." Diana wanted in on helping Sandra find her kids. She didn't really care about her current job. She wanted something more out of it. Like an adventure. She didn't want to report things, she wanted to experience things. Feel things. She wanted to go to places. But instead, she had to see what other people's adventures were like. She reported the occasional crimes, but she didn't want to just talk about them. She wanted to solve the crime. She didn't really want to be just a news reporter. "Maybe those officers we saw yesterday will give us an update." Diana wished that she could find out more about the peculiar portal that abducted Sandra's children, but even if she was a detective, she probably wouldn't find any information leading to where James, Natalie, Shaun, and Amelia are.

"Okay, well I trust them, so I guess I'll wait. I just want them back home so bad." Sandra was a little disappointed, but still glad that someone was able to talk to her. "I should get some sleep. It's already midnight, and I'm tired. Surprise, surprise." Sandra didn't really sleep well last night. She only slept about 5 hours that night, scared about what might have happened to James and Natalie. They could've been kidnapped, killed, or worse. But she would've never guessed that a portal took them to another planet. She read two more articles on her son's vanishing before going to her bedroom to sleep.

That night, Sandra had a dream. She was reunited with her children. She was in a limitless, white room. Unaware of the fact that she was actually dreaming, she gasped, and came running towards her children, and hugged them so. James and Natalie felt the tiniest bit annoyed at their mother physically and emotionally expressing semi-childish love to them, but felt loved nevertheless. When she stopped passionately squeezing her children, something about them changed. James' hair and irises were orange, and he had wings. Natalie's hair and irises were light-blue. They faded away, while Sandra tried to stick her hand out, reaching out to them. "James! Natalie!" Sandra yelled as she was pulled away from her children fading away from her.

Now, she was somewhere else. It was nighttime. Not many people were outside, the moon was shining in its waxing gibbous phase, many, many stars were twinkling in the sky, and the temperature was quite cold. A solid 30° Fahrenheit, but at least it wasn't in the negatives. The last time she checked the weather, it was four below zero. She saw a building giving off some light, and she saw three "open" signs—two of which she did not recognize the writing systems they belonged to. She let herself in, to find a bar being run by a humanoid fox. James did mention humanoid animals during his stay at the unique planet. She was surprised, but not as surprised as everyone else in the bar, who could not see Sandra at all.

"I-I think that door just opened by itself." A female human said, eyes fluttering to the door and back to her table. No one could see Sandra; she was invisible.

"Oh, god. Could it be a ghost, perhaps?" A male basitin replied, nervously flickering his eyes from the door over to the female human.

"Umm… I'm right here…?" Sandra said, anxiously raising her eyebrows, unbeknownst to her, that every single noise that she made could not be heard by a single soul in the bar. She was visible to herself, but her appearance was a simple nothing from everyone else. Every sound she made could not reach anyone else's ears. She was nothing. She awkwardly walked away from everyone else and decided to head upstairs. No one could notice her, right? She was walking by the many, many rooms when she stopped in front of a particular room. She could detect life from two different rooms. Her children. She heard a quiet mumble from the room to her left, but then, as soon as she found her children, James and Natalie detected their mother, woke from their slumber, and exited the room. For a split second, James and Sandra's eyes met, before Sandra popped into her reality, and faded back to Earth.

"Mom!" James gasped, taking a quick step forward, placing his hands out in front of him. Natalie saw her mother as well and tried to grip her back to hug her. "Y-You saw that, right, Natalie?" James wanted to make sure he hasn't gone mad.

"Y-Yeah," Natalie nervously, hesitantly replied. "m-mom was right there! She was right there!"

"Okay, good. Good." Soon, Sierra walked out of the room, confused as to why James and Natalie were talking to each other in the hallway in the middle of the night.

"What are you guys talking about…?" Sierra asked as she opened the door, slowly taking soft steps towards the siblings.

"W-What the hell is that smell?" Natalie asked, waving her hand in front of her nose to repel Sierra's musky odor from waltzing right in her nostrils. "You kinda stink too, James…"

Sierra sighed out of embarrassment. "Fine. Tell her if you must, James." She put her head down in slight shame.

"Okay, so Sierra told me about this thing called 'heat', and I'm pretty sure it's when females want to… do that kinda thing." James explained. "Remember our cat Lilly?"

"Whoa, okay." Natalie got the central idea of what James was talking about. "So… you two… did you guys… you know… do it?"

"N-No!" Both James and Sierra said at the same exact time with the same exact stutter.

Back on Earth, Sandra shot up straight out of bed, gasping loudly. "James!" She yelled immediately after waking up, checking the time. She was only out for a mere 4 hours, but she didn't feel as tired—as empty as someone that got an insufficient amount of sleep after having a bad dream. She saw her son. She knew it was him. She knew that it was a dream—but deep down inside—she knew that her son was alive and well. She didn't want to tell Diana that she knew James was doing just fine, because she thought that Diana would think that the dream was just a desperate call for her son. Picking up her phone, she checked the time; it was 5:21 in the morning. She immediately put her phone down, and tried to go back to sleep—but she couldn't. Tossing and turning for 40 minutes, she had the motivation to get up and start her day off.