The Last of Its Kind (#PlanetOrPlastic)

Year 2050, told in the perspective of a young seahorse.

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Where am I?

The surroundings were dark. Funny objects were swimming around me. I could not see any of my kind around.

Is this really the place I grew up in? I remembered the picture painted in my mind: crystal clear seas, colourful corals lined along the seabed, schools of fish swimming around me. Was that all a fantasy?

Where is my family? Where are my friends? I was frantic, swimming around in circles, but all I saw was a murky dark sea all around me. This was not the place I knew of.

I have to get out.

I remember in my mind's eye on how my parents would feed me and play with me in a wonderland. But I was all alone now. I had been swimming aimlessly around the musty cloud, not finding a single plant in my sight.

The polluted water was starting to choke me. I might just be dead soon.

No, I cannot die now. I have to get out. I need to find my family, my friends, my home. I have to get out. It was a chant in my head while I struggled my way through. I did not even know where I was going to.

Alas, I could not hold through anymore. Every ounce of my energy had been spent, I could not move anymore. I fell limp, floating with the current of the water carrying me away. I am going to die.

Maybe death would not be as bad. When I closed my eyes, I would see the wonderland I longed to find. I would gladly go into its arms.

Farewell, farewell to this cruel world. Farewell to the dirty seas, farewell to the unfamiliar objects in the sea. I was closer to my wonderland now, to my heaven.

A large, thin object was floating before me. I curled my tail around the object, feeling the cold hard body of the stranger to the ocean. It would not be a stranger anymore, but I would be.

I closed my eyes again. There was the wonderland, clear as day. I felt myself letting go of the object. I saw my family. I saw my friends. They were all swimming towards me.

"Come join us. You'll be happy again. Forever." they beckoned to me.

Why not? Now that I had found my wonderland, I would be glad to leave here.

I would join them.

(22/10/2018): Marine animals all over the world face endangerment and extinction. Ironic as it may be, we humans are the ones disrupting the marine ecosystem while saying we would protect it. All of these is caused by the plastic waste we throw on beaches and into the sea. They may seem insignificant, yet these tiny objects turned us into murderers.

We do not want the ocean to turn into a wasteland in the future. Planet over plastic, before fiction becomes reality.