The flames kept getting bigger. The rain came down harder. The thunder got louder.
“Dad?!” Angel cried, looking around desperately.
Lightning split the sky… and her father. He was gone in a flash, literally… but not before she saw the look of sheer agony on his face.
She decided to try someone else. “Mum?! MUM!”
No good. Her mother disappeared as well, plunged right into those violent waves, into the bottomless ocean.
“Help!” Angel tried to call. “HELP!”
Her voice came out low and hoarse. The smoke was suffocating her. Nobody would be able to hear her. Nobody would be able to save her.
Wait! Someone could hear her! Someone was calling her name!
“Help!” she rasped one more time.
“Angel!” that voice hollered again.
Angel’s eyes flew open. She sat upright with a jolt and a gasp. Her eyes darted around the room. She was in HQ. She was surrounded by the Octonauts: Captain Barnacles, Peso, Shellington and Dashi. She was safe.
“Easy, Angel. You’re safe”, the Captain assured her gently.
“Yeah”, the child breathed. “I know.”
“We heard you calling for help”, Peso explained. “You were having that nightmare again, weren’t you?”
“Yeah”, Angel repeated. She’d been on the Octopod for almost eleven months now. Her nightmares hadn’t completely gone away, but, thanks to Peso’s medicine, they didn’t occur quite so often. Although, her sleepwalking and sleeptalking occurred much more often. The Octonauts could have filled a book with the weird things that Angel had said and done in her sleep. Plus, the medicine made her the heaviest sleeper any of them had ever known. She wouldn’t even wake up if the Octo-Alert went off in the middle of the night!
…And sometimes, she even found it hard to wake up when she had her nightmares.
“I’m okay now”, she declared shakily.
“Are you sure?” the Captain questioned doubtfully.
Well, she was as okay as she would ever be. “Yeah. It’s pretty scary, but at least I don’t have nightmares about getting eaten by polar bears anymore.”
“What was that?” Captain Barnacles wondered.
“Nothing!” Angel answered hurriedly. Then she went on, “I just… I still can’t that really happened.” A lump sat uncomfortably in her throat. Yet, she just still couldn’t cry. She hadn’t- she couldn’t- since that first night. “My whole family’s dead. My home was destroyed. All my stuff is… gone.” She swallowed hard.
“Are you sure it’s all gone?” Shellington mused.
“Well, the boat caught fire and it’s been sitting at the bottom of the ocean for nearly a year.”
“You never know”, Barnacles pointed out. “Some things may have survived.”
Angel lit up. “Really?!”
“Maybe”, the Captain answered emphatically. He didn’t want to disappoint her, but he didn’t want her to get her hopes up either.
The ten-year-old looked awfully excited, though. “D’you think, maybe, we could find my boat? We’re in the South Pacific, right? Well, that’s where we…” She trailed off.
Captain Barnacles consulted the map. “Well, right now, the Octopod is here.” He showed her. “And the island where Shellington found you is… here.”
YOU ARE READING
The Ocean Deep is the Life for Me
Fanfiction"Anyone who reads the first book will know there's a happy ending." But is this really the end? Angel wondered. She loved the Octonauts and it looked like she was going to have many more adventures with them. Was this what came after happily ever af...
