“Come on, or you’ll make us late too!” shouted my friends from the gate of my house.

“Wait, I’m coming! Bye mum, bye dad! We won’t be long at the gaming arcade,” I called out while picking up my bag and running out of the house.

I saw my friends in a peculiar car. Danish, Amjad and Saim were sitting in it and all of them seemed impatient. I found the car’s appearance strange. I sat in the car and closed the doors and we were off. It was a Saturday morning and, as usual, I and my friends were going to a gaming arcade to play some games and have some fun.

Saim was driving the car and the journey began. I quickly noticed there was no noise of the car engine, and Saim was not holding the car staring wheel.

“Saim, whose car is it? Where is your old rusty one? Don’t tell me your father bought a new car for you!” I asked, surprised at the car.

Saim, replied while turning back in the car seat towards me, “I don’t know man, it has been outside my house since last night. It wasn’t locked and the keys were also inside. Dad asked me to take the keys and lock the car so when the owner would come, they would probably knock our door and we would hand them the keys. Today, when nobody turned up so I thought to unlock the car and see the papers of the car to know the identity of the owner.

“Just when I was searching for the car’s papers in the dashboard, the car locked itself and drove away! Can you imagine it? And it didn’t stop until it reached Amjad’s house and then moved on to Danish’s. It drives itself! Look, I am just sitting on the seat and doing nothing,” Saim narrated with amazement.

Yes, it was true, he was doing nothing, just chilling on the seat and talking with everyone. All the friends seemed excited, but hearing about the strange qualities of the car, I became nervous instead of excited.

My uneasiness proved justified when soon the car zoomed up in the sky and the speed was so fast that all of us were horrified and felt dizzy. The only thing we could see were clouds and suddenly there was the sound of a blast and all of us fainted.

Slowly we came back to consciousness and noticed that we all were laying on the mushy ground and there was no sign of the car anywhere. We were surprising all perfectly fine, with no sign of having experienced any kind of a mishap. But we were in a place we had never seen before.

“What is this place?” asked Danish, looking around.

“Where are we? What is this smell?” asked Amjad while getting up.

Then we noticed the aroma of desserts of all kinds. We stood up and looked around.

Suddenly, Saim shouted, “Wow! look over there!” and we turned around to see.

We all turned and saw a big pool filled with melted chocolate and on the other side there were stairs leading up into the sky, towards some big fluffy stuff which seemed like ice cream.

As I was about to ask who would want to go with me towards the chocolate pond, I realised there was no one beside me. All my friends were running in different directions!

Then I noticed a lot of sweet and scrumptious stuff, such as brownie mountains, ponds of custard, jelly and molten chocolate, candy trees, marshmellow flowers and what not. It was like a garden made of desserts! It all made me drool and yes, the aroma was all because of that.

I also ran from one spot to another and soon we were literally going crazy, eating our favourite sweet things as much as we wanted. It was a dream come true. After a long time of filling ourselves till we could eat no more, we sat down to rest. So we came near a strawberry jelly pond and lay on the soft grass. The grass also smelled so nice that if we had picked it up and eaten it, I was sure it would be sweet too.

“Oh boy! I have never had so much chocolate before! Won’t it be delicious if we took a dip in it? Maybe I will give it a go once I get some rest,” Saim expressed.

“Don’t be so greedy! You will look so funny all covered in brown chocolate!” Danish rebuked him and we all started laughing.

It was then that we noticed soft music coming from somewhere. We looked around and saw a beautiful light shining from one side and soon noticed a beautiful girl along with some cute little people coming towards us from that direction. She wore a beautiful sea green dress and looked like one of the princesses in Disney movies.

She came closer and asked, “Don’t be afraid dear children. I welcome you to my wonderland. I am the princess who rules this sweet land. I hope you have enjoyed yourselves here. Would you guys like to introduce yourself?”

We stammered a bit then introduced ourselves to the princess. Then she asked, “Well, it’s nice to meet you all, but how did you guys come here? It is a planet far away from Planet Earth.”

Then we told her about the car which brought us here and had then disappeared.

After listening to us she said, “Oh well, that was our teleporting car which was lost on earth when some of our boys took some cars there recently. Anyway don’t worry we’ll provide you with another so that you can go back to your homes, till then you can enjoy as much as you want!”

We were so happy and started playing and eating different things, suddenly my foot slipped and I fell down, I heard someone yelling my name…

“Wake up Talha! Wake up.

“Saim, Danish and Amjad are waiting for you outside…,” my mum said and I jumped up and looked out from the window, I saw my friends sitting in the same peculiar car….

Published in Dawn, Young World, September 17th, 2022