Excerpt: Pages (working title)

Lyn sat down at the table. The front door slammed. She poured herself some Cheerios, picked up the spoon and made a hole for the milk to go in. It looked like the top of a volcano. There was a sound like a bear with a bad cough from outside, and her mother's car pulled out of the driveway.

“Bye,” she said. When she looked at her reflection in the spoon, she was upside down and a funny shape. Maybe that's what the people who lived in the volcano looked like, she decided. They hung upside down from the ceiling so that they didn't fall into the lava, and they were all warped from the heat. When the volcano erupted, they would ride the lava like surfers, on surfboards made of obsidian, but they wouldn't stay up on the surface for long because they preferred warm, dark places. Once the ash had cleared and the magma cooled, they would retreat through secret passages back into their volcano and hang upside down again until the next eruption. Sometimes it could be hundreds, or even thousands of years between eruptions, but they passed the time by playing cards.

The clock said half past seven. She was late for school, and her cereal had gone soggy before she could take a single bite. That was OK though, because Lyn didn't like Cheerios. She tipped the entire mess into the bin, imagining the little surfers riding the milky waves on obsidian surfboards. She hoped they would like it in there – it was warm and dark, after all. There might be rats, but the volcano people would be OK as long as they offered them cheesecake.