The Seahorse and her ear-buddy

50 years ago, I cling onto vegetation so that I won't get washed away by the current. I eat, mostly crustaceans, 50 times a day while waiting for the right male mate to multiply for the future children of the humans. The ocean is clean and fresh as it could be and many of us are still alive. That's a good sign for us Seahorses, it means that the humans care for the nature and the creatures both on land and in sea.

Plus, there are few humans who visit us to check on us whether or not we can be kept by the humans themselves as pets. Rumor has it that some of us, Seahorses, go missing. We all didn't know that some of the humans are seahorse-napping us to be kept as pets in a "human tiny ocean box". We all hope it is only a rumor and not the truth.

50 years later, humans are multiplying much faster than my kind. There are more plastics than ever here at the ocean. There are no more vegetation to cling to. My kind are being snatched away by cruel humans almost each and every single day and male Seahorses are either being caught or dying. Our kind are almost extinct, but some of the humans are trying to fight for our cause against their kind, because we don't have our own voices to speak up. Now, I swim alone. Well, sort of. I'm swimming alone with something to cling on to replace the vegetation that was long gone. A pink thing with cotton on both sides of the end of this pink thing, so that I won't drift away by the current.

Oh, there's a human with their much too many equipment to swim out here in the ocean and with their "sea-camera" and I think that this specific human is looking at me with their "sea-camera" and I think they took a photo of me with this pink thing that I'm clinging to. How I wish I have a voice to say "Hello" and a piece of my mind on how humans are already heading down the path of destruction and what-not.

Suddenly, I heard a tick and a hiss. The human took a photo of me and my pink thing. I'm still hoping that humans can change each other's mind of taking care of other species, like me, and I wish that I could come up the surface to see what humans really looked like on flesh. But for now, I'm just swimming under the sea waiting for my male mate just to multiply. For the sake of the future.

If there is one.