Ocean Wonders

• Jessica Mcdonald, Grade 5
• Short Story
• 2021

The water glistened and glowed as I stood on the crumbling edge of the cliff, I clenched my fist...3...2...1!

I held my breath and took in the clean deep scent of salty, fishy, cool sea air…I waddled a little closer to the edge and jumped. I felt the weight of the air pressing against my skin as fish filled water was in reach. SPLASH! I slowly sank into the cool lagoon as the weight of the water pulled me down, into a forest of hot pink and fluoro coloured corals with tropical, striped and spiky fish and frozen crimson coloured starfish sitting on the flat rocks of the shallow waters behind.

This feeling was surreal. I’d never gone so deep before. It was like a hidden gem just waiting to be found! I slowly laid on my back and let the fish sway around. Then my face turned red and my eyes grew bigger than they had before! My teeth were chattering loudly as a silver shiny mega stingray slowly approached, gliding through the silver and blue schools of fish. I’ve always hated stingrays! Especially after what happened to my Dad!

I was sick in my stomach and felt as if I was going to have a heart attack. I tried to swim away but I was weighted to the floor and I couldn’t move. I curled up into a tight ball and laid against the slimy green rock. “I’ll be okay, I am powerful, stronger than my nerves!” I screamed to myself! The water rushed as a heavy current pulled me around! SWOOP! My body came loose and I was spun twirling in a life or death situation, my flippers flopped, my snorkel gear shook as my goggles filled with salty water. Slowly approaching, was the menacing stingray. I looked around to see the sand swishing about creating deep sandy wet holes in the seabed below me. By now I had let my body loose as I fell into one of the holes. Suddenly my flippers were getting buried! A cloak of sand covered my whole wet body as my eyes suddenly shut. I couldn’t hold my breath any longer. I was suffocating slowly inside as I was sinking deeper and deeper, my surroundings now a blur… until my body hit the shore? I stood gob struck. I panted, heavily breathing on the hot, soft, powdery sand as others stared on. This was one of the luckiest days of my life!