The Boy Who Had it All

The year was 2421 and my Mom and Dad had decided to take a trip to Africa.  Little did I know, my life was about to change forever. 

Over the past few centuries, most animals had died out and there were only animals in zoos and as pets.  You might want to remember that.  My name is Leo, and my Mom and Dad happen to both be really rich and famous actors. I have two sisters who love all of the fame and ‘glory’ that comes with having famous parents but I was always the odd one out.  I didn’t like to be on TV, being rich or going to the (apparently) really fun Red Carpet events. I enjoyed playing outside or playing a board game instead. Sometimes, I would go on hikes and adventures around the park, which was probably the most natural thing for miles and very close to our house. I’d pack extra clothes, a tent, matches, food, everything I would need and be gone for days without my family even noticing!  When I would run out of supplies I would go back to my house and they would come up with something like… “Did you have fun at the sleepover?”,  even though I told them I was going camping.  I was about to turn 14 but did college level school.

As we landed in Africa, we were greated by two armed guards. They were both extremely muscular and held large rifles.  As we justled and jolted across the dusty plains the old jeep bounced up and down towards the hotel.  Suddenly, we hit a small pot-hole and bounded up into the air and smash!….the window beside me shattered into a thousand pieces.  As my family panicked and my parents yelled at the driver, one of the guards looked at me with an expression on his face like he thought I had broken it. After the long drive, we finally arrived at our hotel - we had only been in Africa for less than a day and my not so tolerant family was already complaining.   Sherly (my oldest sister) was complaining that the heat was making her hair fry (she’s not the brightest!) and Mellony was so upset that she had to walk in the dirt because her shoes happened to get a little smudge on them. My parents were even worse. They kept on getting mad at all of the villagers for not knowing how to speak english apparently like an actual human. I explained to the villagers (in African) that they were doing a great job. Anyway, it was a dark, dry, cool night and we were all going to sleep. I decided to go outside and camp, because my family were very loud snorers, so I gathered my supplies and created a rope with lots of knots in it that could hold my weight and be tied to something and then undone from far away. I quietly attached it to my heavy backpack that was wedged between the window sill and a table and opened the window.  I carefully climbed out and when I was on the ground I yanked the rope which pulled down the back pack, the rope and table that thankfully was like the ones in the outdoor dining area and closed the window.  I casually stacked the table with the rest, set up my tent and hit the hay. You might be thinking right now ‘Weren’t you afraid Leo, that a snake would come and bite you or a lion were to come and eat you?’. Well the answer is, I have this gift that I can kind of talk to anything natural - plants, animals, water even the weather - also I treat nature how I want to be treated so I never get in any bad situations. When I woke up, the sun was rising and I could feel its warm rays hit the Earth and the desert flowers had started opening.  I packed up my gear and ventured to a little oasis that was nearby. However, when I had drank some water and started heading back to our hut, things seemed very different. There were many more animals and plants than there were before, even more than there were five hundred years ago. I looked all over, and finally saw a village. This village though was very small and the huts looked as if they were made of actual mud, clay and straw (this is not how it was when I went to bed the night before, the houses had been made of cement and metal). I had no food or water so I headed in that direction.  When I got there, there were no people and only five buildings.  None of the houses had doors, only small windows and large holes that fit boulders nearby and there was no fence around the village - usually there is one to keep out animals. I decided to set up camp and explore 

since I still had hours of daylight left. I passed so many animals. Now I know animals, even though I grew up in a time where they practically didn’t exist but some of the animals I saw were littereal dinosaurs.  I went to a little watering hole and gathered some berries, fruits, vegetables and had lunch.  A cheetah cub came and sat right next to me. He talked to me and asked if I would scratch his ear.  I did so but as soon as I touched him I felt a strange tingly feeling throughout my whole body. His Mom called him and I was left to eat lunch again, but as soon as I drank some water or ate a berry I felt the same feeling.  It wasn’t until a few minutes had passed that the feeling subsided, but I felt different. I watched a little elephant spray itself to cool down wished I could do the same thing, as it was quite a hot day.  Before I knew it I was an elephant spraying myself with water! I don’t know how I did it and got startled.  I ran towards the village, while.  After I calmed down and realized that I was perfectly fine and wouldn’t hurt anyone or anything if I wasn’t running around, I was a human again but I was very hot.

Shape-shifting for the first time had worn me down and  the next thing I remember was pulling my bag under my head and zoning out.  When I was asleep, I could hear the voices and footsteps of some people rushing to me and bringing me to one of the huts. When I woke up, I was in a wooden bed and a little boy had stood beside me and said “Special is you!” I didn’t understand what he meant until a man came in.  The little boy called the man ‘da’ so I assumed he was the boy’s father. “I read one of  your books and listened to your previous logs on you light-up device.” he said in almost perfect english with an african accent.

“Where  am I and how did you learn english?” I asked clearly confused

“I told you, I read one of your books and listened to you logs. I learned to speak you language.   Where you are? In my house. My family came back from hunting and saw you change from elephantis to boy.  We have been waiting for you long times, so we healthed you back.” He answered.   I realised then that he didn’t speak perfect english because he missed out small words and added on letters. I asked him why he had been waiting for me and how he knew I would come. He explained “Legend saw elephant into you, later you help our village with your powers of nature. You take us to all parts of world - underwater,  above in air, onto all of Samikiwas.” I asked him if there were any others like me and he said that I was the first different person ever.  I rested that night and when morning came I was awake at the crack of dawn and ready to adventure.  Since I  could shape shift now I decided to see what I could change into.  I walked over to a tree and sat next to a Cape Lion and thought about turning into a big cat. When I concentrated on the features of one and soon I was a large wild cat wrapped in leopard print. I backed up a few feet and bounded up the tree, to the top branches that would support a leopard's weight.  I turned back into human and climbed to the very tip top onto branches that a leopard would break and looked down.  This tree was very old and very tall, when I looked down it seemed as if the tree had grown hundreds of feet taller. I started sweating, I was most scared of - heights.  I fell off of a rock climbing wall when I was about 8 and broke my leg, and arm. But I knew I had to do this, I imagined a bird like a Peregrine Falcon and lunged myself off of the tree.  I kept falling and falling but when I was about halfway down I changed, my vision was better, I could see a mouse from miles away.  I could hear better too.  I felt the wind between my feathers and swooped up to avoid hitting the ground.  It was the most exhilarating thing I’d ever done. When I was a human again I decided to morph into an animal that I didn’t know as well.  I decided to turn into a Tasmanian Tiger - an animal that went extinct in the 1900s - so I focused on them and it took me a while but finally I was a tiger from tasmania. When I changed back to a human again, I went back to the villagers and asked them where I was. They replied with “You are in the Africanio part of Samikiwas.”

I asked what Samikiwas was and they said “Samikiwas is a planet like Earth (where you are from) but we humanos are less in dense population and animals are more plentiful.  Humans destroyed natural life on Earth but not here.  We call ourselves Samikians.  Our planet has many parts like: the Ice Age continental or the dinosaurus age.  Nature here does not go extinct and if our planet gets too full of life it grows to accommodate.” 

It was a lot to take in but I liked the idea of a planet that is mainly nature. That night I slept dreaming of the many ‘continentals’ this planet might have when suddenly I had a different dream.  It was as if I was visiting Earth. I saw my family sleeping and some people were in our house giving potions to them.  Those people were wiping my family's memories of me and I was ok with that, now they were able to do what they loved without me asking to go on a hike and what not. I woke up and the little boy was sitting next to me waiting for me. “You know what your help us?” he asked in english that could use some work. “No, I don’t know how to help you.” I responded 

“Come. I Okuncane you?” he answered. I followed him wherever he was leading me and I assumed he was asking me what my name was “I am Leo, it’s nice to meet you Okuncane.” I said. We stopped in front of a different house. This one was made mainly of rock and had paintings on the walls, one of which lookedlike this village with a herd of large rhinos coming and eating all of the villagers’ resources and scarring the animals away. “What is this?” I wondered out loud to the boy

“They come every year. During this time, they very mean and greedy.” Okuncane explained in his determined but rather broken english..., “Legend says, boy who different and morphs will save all from rhinosarasors and travel us to different parts of Samikiwas.”

With an astonished look on my face, I was about to say how mind boggling this all was when all of a sudden I felt something... a low rumbling came from the earth and the pebbles on the ground started bouncing up and down as if they were on a trampoline. Being able to shapeshift now, my senses were more alive and better than the average person’s. I asked Okuncane “Do you feel that?” He looked at the horizon and back at me with a frightened look on his face.  He started repeatedly yelling “Umhlane wabo, obhejane, bayazifihla!” which roughly translated to “They’re back, the Rhinos, take cover!”.  Suddenly, all of the villagers ran to their houses and shut everything as fast as they could. They had large wooden planks that fit into their doors and rocks to roll in front of them.  They closed the small windows with thick pieces of wood, the windows that weren’t covered in time shattered from the rumbling ground.  Okuncane’s dad came out and told him to come.  He ran to the house and closed the makeshift door.  All of the animals cried and went to their burrows, caves and homes. Even the plants had closed their flowers and poked out their now existing spines.  But for some reason, I had a compelling feeling to walk towards that danger. I scanned the horizon and saw the beasts. There were only four but they were about five times the size of a normal Rhino. I walked towards them and was starting to get nervous but didn’t back down.  This was the first time I had ever been scared of an animal and I was standing right in their path unable to run away.  I stood my ground, held out my hand in a stop gesture and when they were close enough I yelled “STOP” as loud and demanding as I could. The lead Rhino started slowing down and halted right in front of me.  I used the wind to lift me up to his eye level and asked him two questions. “What are you doing here? Also, why is everyone scared of you?” 

He answered in a very low voice to the unexpected little boy floating up to him asking questions, “Um, we,” he cleared his throat “We’re here to, to eat the vegetation here.” 

I thought about it for a minute and finally said “Ok, you may eat the vegetation. But only if you let me touch you first.” I persuaded.

“Ok, you may touch us if you must.” he replied. I floated near him and told the wind it was ok to drop me. I landed on his back and almost instantly he told his friends to turn around because he remembered there were more plants elsewhere. So with me on his back we soon disappeared, no longer a threat to the people or animals again.

The reason I knew that I should have ridden them, is because I had never forgotten a dream I had once had when I was about seven. In the dream, I rode huge rhinos in Africa and soon after I rode them, they came to me, even if I was halfway across the planet.  It never occurred to me before then that it would ever actually come true! 

That night I returned to the Village and built a fire outside, and told everyone (animals and plants too) that it was safe to come out.  I explained that the rhinos weren’t of any concern anymore and when they do return they won’t harm anything or one anymore.  They all thanked me and we danced around the fire, played games and I explained to the villagers what pets were and over the following days, they began to adopt a few homeless wild animals of their own.  As Time passed, I realised that the legend had finally come true and I was a part of it! I even discovered that I had new powers!  I’m not going to tell you all of them because there are a lot, but if there is a power in the world that is related to nature… I’ve got it.  I also realised that on Samilkiwas everything lives longer and age slower, so the people here could be 1000 years old yet to us, they would look like they were only forty or fifty!

After a decade or so, I started a family of my own with my own little powerful kids who could do all sorts of things from making the largest messes to flying into the clouds. We saw Earth how it should have been and I even became a teacher, doctor, vet, cook… etc. Every once in a while I would check up on my family and see that they were living their most favorite life.  Life is good and I learned a great lesson early on in mine: Lots of people say they are brave or courageous and are never scared but if they say that then they're either never brave or they're not telling the truth. Without fear we cannot be brave (no matter if you’re a lion, an alien, or a human) and without bravery we cannot be scared. Fear can either break us or make us and if we choose to, we can use fear to keep us aware and alert but to show us new possibilities and wonders of the world.  We all are scared of something and it’s better to confront our fears than to be scared of them and hide.  After all, it is exhilarating to go through a river of fear rather than simply trying to walk around it.  Looking back, something has always told me that the shattered window during that bumpy ride into Africa held more significance than I had originally thought!