Silence.
All I heard was silence. Not even a ringing noise, just sudden silence. A dark deepening quite fulfilling peace, the one that leaves you dead inside. Or perhaps that is what I am.
Dead.
Or dying.
I didn't feel anything, not even pain. I couldn't even feel my own organs and cells breathe. And I know it should've hurt getting blown up. But it didn't. I felt the fire. I felt the pain. But it was quick. And it ended short. I couldn't see or feel, taste or smell. Maybe, just maybe I did die. And this is what death feels like. And endless floating world of darkness and quietness.
No currents, no air, no water, nothing.
I wondered to myself endlessly as minutes turned into hours and hours turned into half a day. How could I possibly be alive? I can't be existent like this, there's no way! But yet, life has its ways. And strangely enough, it found me.
I felt a tingle at first.
Then a wiggle.
A sudden jolt of electricity ran through my veins and up into my flippers with ease, awakening my senses. A flood of intense pain came next, which immediately flashed into my back flipper. I wanted to scream, feeling the heat drag the life back out of me, but somewhat, I pushed through, until I felt every bone and every muscle in me. And that's when my eyes flashed open.
I blinked twice in the 10 seconds of my returning body. One for adjusting my eye sight, and one for just plain confusion and surprise. I should be dead. But why was I not? After the feeling of my body came back to my soul, my surroundings started to arrive to my senses. I felt roughness. A strange roughness, not like soft or smooth pebbles, but large and spiked chunks of the earth piercing my hide. I stood still, trying to make the best out of my surroundings. I felt a dead plant. Then some more rocks. Then loosely built soil flutter in the water, waving around my flippers like the wind. But I still couldn't see, though I did notice that my eyelids weren't closed. So I was in the darkness. And based on the weight upon my shoulders, I was buried. Buried in a way, but I didn't know how deep. Or how bad. I struggled to move, and when I did, more weight seemed to pile upon the original, until I finally felt my chest begin to cripple up. I was really stuck, trapped in a darkness unable to be seen or heard of. But I knew instantly that it was an invisible killer in which did sought out for me to die.
"Help!" I cried out through the cracks, "Someone help! I'm down here! I'm down here..." I cried out a bit more into the deathly sea, seeing if there was a sign of life. But just like before, there wasn't. I felt a sort of aloneness that terrorized me from the inside out, and chilled my bones all the way to its whitish core. The loneliest sign that slid clear through me and tore me apart slowly in a decaying matter. In a few minutes I lost my voice. And minutes after that, I began to cry, realizing that nobody was coming to my aid, and no hero is coming to my rescue. As the darkness closed up around me when I stopped fighting nature, I thought of a deep griefing and regretting feeling of wishing to not be alive right now.
And that's when something strange began to happen in my mind.
I didn't know how to explain it at first but changed me.
Changed me entirely.
Some type of voice dripped into my ears out of the distant shadows, a cry to my mind, and as I struggled to hear it, it became louder and louder. Was it help? I was about to roar out to the heavens to that voice, but I already lost my own. A hoarse squeal only emitted from my jaws. And I couldn't show a sign of help either. I was buried deep. But the voice I heard was different. It sounded as though it didn't exist in this world, it thrived in my brain. The voice echoed louder and louder, until words fuzzed up to sentences. Full sentences that I could understand. And soon the voice became recognizable.
"Get up Blue," I heard Dad's call moan loudly in a demand. I went silent and still, listening to my dead father's sound. It was incredulous to me to hear my father, and I thought it was only a reimagining in my mind, only then when the voice came back again.
"Blue get up," I heard Dad again in the darkness, "This isn't over yet." I felt silly to respond back to something I couldn't see, but alas, I wanted to speak to someone I haven't seen in years.
"You're just a voice in my head," I grumbled to myself, "Just my imagination. This isn't real." I tried to strangle myself out of the debris, but nothing significant resulted.
And yet the voice continued.
"You need to stop giving up on yourself and others. I thought you were more credible than your mother."
"I thought you were dead!" I growled, shifting my body, "I don't know who you are,.......but you need to leave......and get out of my head."
"Yes you do," the voice muttered, "I'm your father."
"Then prove it!" I snapped angrily, "Prove how you're truly my father."
Silence. A dark silence.
"I can't," It said.
"There we go," I whispered, "You're probably a fish, or some illusion I have stuck in my head. Which I need to get out. You aren't my father copycat."
"I am!" The voice thundered, ringing my noggin, "And I'm trying to help you but you won't listen."
"I won't listen because I don't believe you!" I snarled back, "I know my father and mother! They wouldn't pop out of nowhere to aid me, they'd be there every step of the way! My parents wouldn't argue with me, they'd accept me and my thoughts! They wouldn't baby me, they made me stronger and independent! And my parents especially don't pack up their lives, their ego and their selfishness and leave me out in the middle of the ocean like some lost child and never come back!!" I yowled out. But then I realized that I went to far.
Way too far.
The voice went silent once again, but a longer silence than what I expected. For the first time now, I actually wanted the voice to return. And regretfulness soon soared over my heart. My eyes ran red with sorrow and anger, and the need to hear my father's voice was like a stormcloud over my body.
"Dad..." I called. Nothing. I twisted my body, feeling the rocks quiver.
"Dad come back..." I choked, "Dad come back to me....." But nothing in return came.
"DAD?!" I could feel the prescense of fear reach me next like a claw through my sadness, "Dad please!" I stranged hard, grunting and gasping as I tried to push my way out of the rocks.
"Dad come back to me!" I sobbed, "Please come back!" Then I felt regret follow after my fears. And threw out what I've been hiding from the inside.
"I'm sorry!" I felt my own tears dissolve in the water, "I'm so sorry! For everything!" I strained my back to escape the weight, and in response, ripped my flesh, tore at my flipper and snout, and fought my own self.
"C'mon!" I cried out, "C'mon Blue!" I let out a screech of pain as a fiery flash of agonizing pain flooded into my eyes, and with a heave of strength, thrusted my back upwards. First the rocks rumbled above me. Then they fell. And then, the ground shook for a second as I busted through the rocks into the open ocean. Pain devoured me all over, and I saw a trail of blood stream and flooded from my flipper. Or what was left of it. It was half there. A stump. I gripped my jaws closed as I stared at small bits of gushing blood flow into the ocean water like a mini stream. Agonizing fire scorched my scales, making me feel sick in my stomach. A throbbing faint began to flow upon me as well, especially since my vision was fogging up a bit from the loss of blood. Too much blood. I felt myself beginning to sink to the ocean floor as the pain rolled around, finally closing my eyes manually. And everything went black. I couldn't feel once more. But I could hear, hear the rolling thunder of the volcano in the distance, the water that moved through its catastrophic sea. The silence that deepened endlessly with no life. I sank lower and lower as the darkness grew evermore darker. And then, I felt a flutter near me. Some strange tickle. I wasn't coming back, I knew that by now for some reason, but I felt it in my head. Through my ears. And a voice that I've forgotten spoke once more, sinking thoughts and actions into my mind.
"I could see in your mind," he muttered, "How much pain you're in from my mistakes. How much hatred you sought out towards us. And for that I'm sorry-"
"No...." I sobbed back, "I'm the one that's sorry.....I'm so sorry....." I felt a deep regretful strike burn through me like fire in the trees, "I'm so...sorry.....because I couldn't save the one thing that I cared about most...." I felt a spasm of tears and salt evaporate into the ocean as I cried, and I felt the need to hug myself. I felt his presence nearby, which made me ever more sadder.
"I turned my back on you for 10 years....and now that you're here.....I regret every moment I never thought about you..."
"Hush now..." His voice comforted me, "It's both of our faults, we now know that. But sobbing won't make a difference, it was the past. You have a future to save."
"What future..." I sniffed, "There is no life in the ocean anymore."
"That's not necessarily true," He responded in my head with an echo, "But it will be if you keep pouting. It's not the end of the world yet. You still have time..."
"How?" I countered, "Time's done with too! Everything is gone! I can't swim without a flipper! I can't do anything to survive dad....it's already over."
"Over means you quit. And no, it's not over. There is still life out there! You're life! And you need to take it to your fullest potential. You need to get up, face your fears and survive. Nobody's gonna do it for you anymore. This is real life Blue, not the life you had before." I slowly began to open up my eyes again, taking in the sight of a beautiful, calm and empty blue ocean. My heart shattered. Is there even life?
"What do I do?" I asked. A huffed fluttered from his mouth, and then he responded
"You need to get up..." He began, "And start swimming."
"I can't..." I merely answered, looking back at the stump on my flipper, "I can't-"
"Yes you can!" Dad growled, "Stop doubting yourself!" I listened to his voice cautiously, breathed once, then finally twisted my muscles alive. But the pain was intense, and forced me back down.
"C'mon Blue!" I cried to myself, "C'mon!" I gritted my teeth as I hauled my large body above the earth, until it successfully hovered over the rocks. I usually would flap both flippers at the same time to start moving, but the stump, would it even do anything? As soon as I got enough height from the ground into the ocean air, I thrusted myself like how I always do.
I only moved a few centimeters.
"Dad....I can't..." I felt myself beginning to doubt again, and swallowed the rest of my sentence to the back of my throat for later. I thrusted again.
Still didn't move. A full out feeling of terror and worrisome fear flooded through me. What if I literally die from being unable to move?! Or go nowhere! I went in circles clockwise, and when I didn't, counterclockwise the opposing way. Dad wasn't going to help in my head. So I had to help myself.
"Think Blue," He stated, "You know what to do..." And it started with the foliage of seaweed and large underwater leaves that flowed in its currents. I allowed myself to sink a bit to where it was, and quickly snatched it with my teeth. Ideas struck me hard, but the once that stood out was going to solve how I could swim again. I twisted the soft delicate plant, until it covered up my bleeding stump. Then with the strange large leaves, I piled them upon each other with some algae and locked it to where my other flipper was supposed to be. Once I finished, I was pleased with myself. And for a test, I flapped them strong and forwards. And believe it or not, it worked!
"Dad, did you-" I cut off. His voice was gone. I stared at my homemade flipper, dangled around with it, then began floating away. But where too was another question that stopped me dead in my tracks. There was no food where he was, nor were there was some back in the upper portion of the ocean. But what about the equator? That idea sparked bright and true, and stuck with me until I left the volcanic eruption area. The equator was way warmer than now, and less acidic, and perhaps more animals and dinosaurs were there! With a deep hope and thoughts of a pride that I couldn't see or foretell, I swam my way southbound towards the all known equator in the middle of the world. In the middle of everything.