For how long?

"How are you feeling?" She asked him. He was hurt, she could tell. But he had to be strong, because if he wasn't, she wasn't sure she could carry the weight they had left for much longer.

"Huh?"

She waited, she didn't want to say it out loud. That would make it true. She was holding on to the last expectation, she was waiting for her to come back, to rise again from the floor and move along with them, by their side. She was so small and vulnerable. Their daughter, their beautiful and young daughter.

"What a fright we've had..." The words came out of her mouth in a sigh, like it cost her a lot to even separate her thin lips. She could see the sparkle in his eyes, even down here, where everything was a little bit darker, a little bit colder. However, it wasn't a hopeful sparkle. It would never be again. "Don't cry, we're okay now"

It wasn't a lie, at least not an absolute lie. It was all she could say for the moment. She didn't know if they were safe, what was safe anyways? They had lived in the least safe place in Earth. Full of trash, full of plastic. What claimed her that she wouldn't have to be through the same? Her daughter had eaten a lid, and her tiny throat hadn't been able to tolerate it. "Humans are too selfish," she thought. "When will they realize the chaos that they are creating? When will they think about us?" She swam closer to the father, the father who had just lost her last daughter, their last daughter. His scales were silver-colored, just like hers. She got as close as she was able to, until their fins were clinging.

"For how long?" He asked, destroyed.