Lifting a mottled brown and grey front limb over the uneven bark-covered ground, Tansel hopped hastily over to her brother, Treelo, who was waiting impatiently by a small bush. He bobbed his head from side-to-side as she approached, mocking her inexperience.
The elder-brother frog leant over towards his sister and whispered angrily into her tympanum, “You could have killed us both! You don’t know how much danger you put us in! I come with you to keep you safe, and when we’re supposed to be cautious and cross vast clearings as quick as possible, you fall behind and act as if you’re as safe as anything! I watched you just then lolloping around as if you hadn’t a care in the world!” The infuriated frog paused briefly to take a breath, and then concluded the explosive lecture addressed to his disobedient sister. “You do as I say from now on, or I’ll be ordering you around in a cat’s belly. Did you hear me?”
Tansel swallowed and nervously looked into one of her brother’s cross-shaped pupils, then nodded. She knew that crossing a section of the forest with no cover was dangerous—there were no shadows to hide in, so it proved easy for birds and other animals of prey to spot frogs like herself and Treelo with ease. Still, though, it was unfair of her brother to treat her like that. “Yes, brother, I heard you.” She croaked reluctantly.
Treelo glanced away. “Just follow my orders! I…I…” He reproached.
Tansel stepped aside, and, taken aback, waited for him to say more. When Treelo said nothing but instead leapt into the bush behind him, Tansel did the same, and the leafy undergrowth obscured her slimy brown body.
As the siblings exited the bush, they came across a huge old gum tree. Tan-coloured bark peeled in places to reveal the inside hollowed out by termites. Its massive trunk split in two at the base, and twisted branches hung from either one. The tips of them were gnarled where leaves hung long ago.
Tansel looked up at it in awe. “Home,” she whispered as much to herself as to Treelo. “Finally.”
Treelo turned to his sister. “Meet me over there,” he instructed. “See you soon.”
As he bounded across to the gum tree, a roaring sound filled Tansel’s ears. It sounded artificial; Tansel knew at once it was not a natural sound of the forest.
She looked around for the source of the awful racket, and when her eyes stopped upon a terrible, hulking beast, Tansel was horrified. Birds screeched in their nests; they, too, were frightened of the intruder.
Protruding from a large bush was a massive rusted figure, roaring with the noise Tansel had heard moments before. It made Tansel feel as small and terrified as an ant in the shadow of a boot. The body was made of harsh metal, painted red and beginning to rust. As the creature lurched forward on four rubber circle-limbs, exhaust billowed from a tube behind its right hind-leg-wheel. It was moving at an alarming rate towards Treelo and the frogs’ home.
Without wasting another moment, Tansel leapt in front of the beast, not caring if it noticed her. The only thing on her mind was her home and family. As she neared the base of the gum tree, Tansel heard herself screaming her brothers’ name. She darted around the bottom of the trunk, hoping to find him, but didn’t glimpse the Peron’s tree frog anywhere.
When Tansel peeked around the trunk, she panicked. The creature-engine was almost upon her. She looked back, a last chance for Treelo to show himself, and when she saw nothing but the bark of her home and its surrounding forest, Tansel had no choice but to bolt to safety.
Once she was hidden beneath the thick leaves of a stubby bush, Tansel poked her frightened head out through a gap in the leaves. What she saw then turned her mud brown with rage—they were chopping down her home!
Ten or so two-leg-humans had arrived, holding sharp-edged-hand-held-noisy things. They all wore fluorescent clothes, earmuffs and safety glasses.
One with shaggy brown hair stepped up to the tree and held up his handheld noisemaker. Soon, and to Tansel’s disgust, Tansel’s home began to be more of a pile of branches. It was all she could do to keep from raging over to the rusted monster in a wild fury.
Tearing her eyes away from the mess, Tansel crawled out of the bush and crept past the deafening engine-beast, then started to jump as fast as she could to the pond, where Treelo might have fled to upon hearing the noise of the monster.
Twigs snapped as Tansel leapt onto them, over rocks and under leaves, hurrying to the pond with immense determination powered from an unknown source. Could a frog really be filled with so much love for her family? Yes.
At last she arrived on the edge of a dip, her skin pale again, and looked down expectantly. She saw mud, littered with brightly coloured bottle tops, straws, chip-packets and uncountable pieces of rubbish.
If frogs could cry, Tansel would have cried a river. Again her skin turned dark, and she scanned the eyesore for her brother, without success.
What has happened in the short time we were away? Tansel asked herself, just as she heard voices and the crunch of dried leaves. She looked ahead to see a score of two-legs march over to the opposite edge of the parched lake, donned in boots and carrying buckets filled with nets and tubes. They murmured to each other, but their words were inaudible to Tansel.
For some reason, these two-legs did not fill the frog with rage, or the desire to flee. Instead, she felt the urge to hop over to them, and so she did.
Tansel stood about five metres from the closest two-legs, and she wondered whether to make herself noticed or wait for one of them to notice her. Usually she would have been terrified to be so close to a two-legs (Peron’s tree frogs are usually very shy, and frogs in general do not usually come bounding up to humans in such a manner), but something told her that these particular two-legs would not harm her.
Tansel listened to their conversations and heard only particular words and phrases. “Deforestation, and…” “…denuded, yes…” “Pollution, mmhmm, a big problem…” “…outrageous…”
Then she was discovered by a two-legs wearing tan shorts and a grey t-shirt. He pointed at Tansel, and muttered to his friends before applying a pair of blue-plastic-gloves.
Kneeling, the human-two-legs picked up Tansel very gently and placed her in a pewter-coloured square-box, where she waited anxiously for a very long time until the lid was removed and light poured into the shadows in the corners.
A kind two-legs-hand placed her into a mini-forest with leaves, twigs and a small pond. Gratefully, she dipped into the water, soaking up the moisture through her skin, and feasted on a cricket before she hid underneath a leaf to be safe from predators.
All is well for now, Tansel thought as she blinked sleepily. I’m safe for the moment… And not a minute later she had drifted off into a realistic dream, where she was back in her home-tree with her family…
*
Suddenly, Tansel was wide awake.
Where is my brother? She thought, and as if in answer, she heard a rustling of leaves and peeked out from under the leaf that concealed her.
She almost laughed with delight when she saw Treelo before her, swallowing the remains of a cricket.
“How did you…Are…How…” she asked him, but what she meant to say was much different in her head than when she worded it out.
She re-phrased her question, and listened in awe as her brother explained how he, too, had heard the monster-engine and fled to the pond, where he was unable to find his sister, and of how he had continued further and hopped into the path of the kind-two-legs group. He told of how he was put into a square-box, and ended up at the same place as Tansel.
“Where are we?” She asked her brother, not unkindly, when he had finished his story, and she had told of her own.
“It’s mysterious.” He croaked slowly, as if to build suspense. “There’s an invisible barrier that stops us from leaving.”
He took Tansel to the edge of the leaves and bark, and showed her that he was unable to go further, that there truly was some invisible force holding him back. Dumbfounded, Tansel tried to push past the barrier, only to find she had the same result. The siblings looked out past it where the mini-forest ended so suddenly it was as if it was another world. The planet beyond looked unreal. Everything was white and shining, and big-machine-boxes lined a wall to the right. And everything was unnaturally quiet. No birds tweeted their good-evenings, no bugs screeched, nothing. Silence. Everything was so unusual, and Tansel wished for her home, and then was saddened to remember it had been destroyed.
“What of mum and dad?” she asked aloud, looking away from the barrier.
Treelo thought for a moment, and then his face became set with a determined expression.
“We’ll find them,” he assured his little sister. “If it’s the last thing we do, we’ll find them.”
Tansel looked over her shoulder again past the barrier, and watched as a two-legs slipped into the room-world. A black-square-box on the opposite wall came to life. Figures danced across its screen, and music erupted from speakers behind it.
“Whoa!” cried Tansel. “Look at that!”
Treelo turned his head towards the screen in amazement.
“You…you can see other worlds from it!” he exclaimed. And then, in a quieter tone, and more to himself, he thought aloud: “I wonder how many worlds there really are…”
The screen switched black for a fraction of a second and then another world could be viewed. This time a lady-two-legs sat at a wooden table behind a silver-screen-type-viewer. She had long blonde hair and spoke clearly so it was easy for Tansel to understand her words: “…have been forced to replant after sightings of endangered species of frog and native plants…” An image of Tansel’s home flashed on the screen and she blinked with amazement.
“Did you see that?” she asked her brother, who nodded without looking away from the television. The lady-two-legs continued:
“…and all animals found at the site will be given tracking devices, so when the trees have been planted, they can be returned to their original habitats.”
Tansel smiled happily. “We’re going home!” she laughed.
*
Tansel awoke to the sound of metal clanging against metal, and lifted her head to find herself in a darkened box, similar to the square-box she had been in earlier. It was night-time, so she was soon wide awake. Treelo was beside her, observing and listening grimly.
“We’re moving,” he grunted simply. “I think we’re being relocated.”
Happy as Tansel was to hear that information, she worried for her parents’ sake. How long will it take to replant the trees? She thought to herself as the box was carried around a corner, and she used her sticky-padded toes to keep from slipping. And when we get there, back home, will it be too late?
A vivid memory of what the engine-beast and its drivers had done ran through her mind and she shuddered.
The two were silent for a while, and when they finally stopped moving and the lid was removed from the square-box, it was nearly morning.
Tansel and Treelo were let out of the box and soon its two-legs-carrier had disappeared. The frogs hopped away to explore their new surroundings.
Tall skeletal trees reached out with bone-like branches shaped like clawing hands. Screeching birds darted from place to place in a frantic mess of feathers. The shadows were eerie in the sun which was just above the horizon.
Tansel shivered. “It’s not the same.” She whispered.
“No,” was Treelo’s brief reply as he, too, shook at his surroundings. “It’s definitely not.”
A huge black crow darted towards the forest floor and the two dived hastily under a pile of leaves, before the beady-eyed bird noticed them.
Tansel huddled next to her brother, full of questions. “T-Treelo,” she stammered, thinking of how to phrase her question, “how will…how will we stop it?”
“Stop what?” her brother asked, closing his almond-coloured eyes.
“The world going mad, madder than it already is,” she replied.
Subject: Assignment I had to do (sorry it's long) 
Wed Apr 13, 2011 4:50 am
It's soo great.
