It was a warm sunny day. The birds were chirping, the flowers were blooming and everyone was happy. Bella’s family was at the beach. As Bella wanted to get away from her exam stress, her family decided to go for an outing to the beach. The water was clear, with a slight tint of blue, and it was cool, making everything more exciting.

For some reason, they were the only ones there. Something was fishy, but it was probably the water, so Bella was calm and didn’t seem to care. She sunbathed for a bit and then decided to go splash around in the water.

When she reached the water, she saw a beautiful and stunning seashell, sitting on the shore line, completely untouched. She was quite a fan of collecting seashells, so she could not possibly spare such a unique one.

As she was about to pick it up, the water around the seashell moved and surrounded it in a semicircle. She was bewildered and puzzled for she couldn’t understand how anything like this was possible. But she was curious and brave, and tried to pick it up again. This time she successfully caught it.

Right as she was about to shout to tell her family, the current pulled her into the water. She tried to dig her hands into the sand to stop herself from going completely into the water, but she couldn’t win against the force pulling her. She kept her eyes shut, but when she opened them, she couldn’t believe what she saw.

The world around her was magnificent and unexplainable. Bella was surrounded by rare corals and fishes. But there were things in the underwater world that were not what she expected. Trash cans and plastic bags were floating all around. Bella started to tear up after seeing what her fellow human beings had done to this once mesmerising place.

Seahorses were stuck in nets, fishes in cans and sharks in hooks. She couldn’t bear to see such things happening to innocent creatures. So as any good human would do, she started to help the marine life. Bella thought to herself that this was her one chance to help, so she should do it willingly and start immediately.

And Bella started with the seahorses. Although it looked easy, it wasn’t. The seahorses were restless and the nets were jammed in between their fins. Even though it was a struggle, Bella set the seahorses free. As they swam away, they seemed to thank their saviour on the way.

Bella then decided to go to the cans. Several small fishes were crammed up and stuck inside, helpless, and they looked injured. So, Bella helped them too. The last creature on the list was a shark, Bella was pretty scared, because, naturally, she didn’t want to lose a limb. Bella gathered up all her courage and slowly approached the small hooks stuck in between the shark’s teeth. She very carefully removed the fishing hooks, and after she did, Bella celebrated with excitement that she saved so many sea creatures. But she didn’t want to stop there so she planned to take this up as a mission when she went up into her own world.

After this, she closed her eyes and let herself float, and in no time the waves took her up and softly placed her on the beach where she had seen the seashell.

Published in Dawn, Young World, May 13th, 2021