Little Friend | #PlanetOrPlastic

Little Friend

I WAS BORN OUT of my father's pouch, sprayed alongside my thousand siblings.

Reeling over the force of Father's release, I hurtled toward the surface of the ocean, my tail flicking out to grasp onto anything. Although my head spun, I saw the world as it should be for the first time.

Clean, pristine. The sun glittering on the ripples of water. A vast, endless blue and green. And the thin silhouette of human land in the distance.

"Wow," I breathed.

"Don't be too amazed, little one," Mother told me. "Someday the world can betray you."

I didn't believe her.

As a fry, I drifted from my family, seeking a new habitat.

I made friends. Sea turtles, dolphins, fish, rays... I passed them a lot. My heart burst with happiness each time they greeted me. There was so much goodness in this world that I often wondered if my mother had been wrong.

For many months, I lived with naivety in my blood.

I watched the ocean turn grey.

I heard the sea turtles had gone far into the shallows and gotten strangled. I never saw Manta Ray after she'd swallowed the strange food falling from the surface. Soon, my friends were no longer with me. I was bereft. Suddenly the world had gotten a lot darker, indeed.

•¤• 

Every soul longed for a friend, so when I stumbled upon a floating pink stick, I couldn't help but say hi. "Where did you come from?" I asked him. He didn't respond. Perhaps he was voiceless. "You must be very lonely. Me too. Want to be friends?"

It bobbed in the water. Yes.

We became best friends, the pink stick and I. We fought through difficult months. However, each time I got too close, pain would surge through me, pounding my head, dropping my pulse. I thought it was a matter of aging.

The reefs dimmed. They became bare, and nothing thrived anymore. Famine hit, though the loss didn't seem to affect my little friend. I grew weaker. Often my friend offered me bits of his white fluff to feed me. I thought it would ease my hunger momentarily, but it only seemed to make my illness worsen. I vomited ceaselessly, till my body was stripped of energy.

Though battered, my friend still looked the same.

Tides pushed us nearer to land. I saw more of his kind alongside drifting translucent things. My friends' bodies caught in them.

The truth was dark, brutal.

"Are you hurting me? The ocean?" Pain fogged my vision. "Why?" I croaked. "I've only ever wanted to be your friend."

Cruel silence answered me.

I had to escape this graveyard. But the tide swept me closer; something chained me. Something sharp, gleaming, bloodstained.

My heart stuttered. My last breath caged.

Still, I didn't allow myself to admit Mother's words true. There was good to keep the rest of the world from dying. I believed it. I held onto that fragile hope.

I closed my eyes and exhaled.