Slowly Moving On

1. Slowly Moving On An Original Story By Emma Willey

2. Prologue My beautiful babies, at least they will be in a few weeks. As I was staring at my white eggs gleaming in the sand as I buried them, I wondered how many would survive. It brought back memories, this beach, and it saddened me to remember my brothers’ and sisters’ sad, tragic fate. Finally done, I headed back to sea, my tears blinding me to the shark fin in the distance.

3. And blood pooled into the sea…

4. Part 1- The Beginning Dazzling bright light peaked through a crevice in my egg. Sticking my head out of my own egg, I looked around and saw most of my siblings eggs already open. “Hello?” I squeaked. Looking around the sand, I didn’t see anything but sea for miles. Something, deep inside of me, I’m not sure what, told me it wasn’t yet time for me to go into the great expanse of water. I buried myself in the sand, but don’t ask me why.

5. “Most of the eggs were already open. Only a few were not…”

6. “Hi there.” “Aaah!” I yelled. You would too if you heard a voice out of nowhere in the complete dark. “I think this one’s messed up,” a new voice said. “Am not. Who’s there?” I asked the voices. “I’m your brother Flip and here with me is our sister Shelly. What’s your name?” The first voice asked. My name! I’d been so excited about the day’s activities I didn’t have time to give myself a name!

7. “Uh, I...I don’t know.” “You don’t know!” The voice named Shelly said, shocked. “Well, think of something unique about yourself. One of my flippers is very large, and Shelly has a very pretty shell.” Flip advised. “Don’t worry, you don’t have to rush.” “I’ve got it!” I suddenly called out. “My name will be CeCe, because the first thing I saw was the sea.” “Genius!” Flip yelled. “Brilliant!” Shelly said. And at that moment, I had another gut feeling.

8. Part 2- Going into the Sea All three of us started digging upwards at once. There were so many! At least 100! I kept saying over and over as I headed towards the light. “Hi, I am CeCe. Hi, I am CeCe.” I couldn’t help it, I wanted to get to know my siblings. I heard a mixture of: “I’m Shelby” “I’m Sheldon” “I’m Sandy” “I’m Emerald” “I’m Algae” “I’m Aqua” “I’m Clyde” “I’m Coon” “I’m Frog”

9. “We all started digging up at once…”

10. And I heard so many more. I was so happy, until I saw a turtle with one large flipper in a bird’s mouth. “Flip!” I yelled. I started yelling at the bird, but it didn’t seem to understand. Then it turned his ugly, devilish eyes on me. At that moment, Shelly waddled towards me yelling, “It’s the circle of life, CeCe! You have to keep going!” So I did just that. I was relieved to see that most of my brothers and sisters had made it. But then, I saw Shelly getting devoured by a HUGE fish. I thought to myself, “It’s the circle of life, you have to keep going,” over and over again and not just on that day. But like Shelly’s words, I also never forgot the look of sheer terror and pain on her face.

11. “My siblings and I headed out to sea…”

12. Part 3- My Followers I kept going for a while, and then I stopped. It felt like someone was following me, watching me. I turned around and there I saw two of my siblings swimming behind me. “Hi,” the smaller one said breaking the awkward silence. “I’m Emerald.” She had a high pitch voice, and was a brilliant, dazzling green color. “And I’m Frog,” the second one said. This one had a deeper voice and was bigger, but he acted more timid.

13. “I’m CeCe. The first thing I saw was the sea,” I explained. They were obviously the two runts of the litter, even I was bigger than them. “I...I’m named Frog beca... because the fir...first thing I saw w..was a Frog,” he stuttered. “Don’t worry!” I said. “I’m your sister, not a shark!” “Can we travel with you until we get bigger? As you can see, we are quite...small.” Emerald asked me.

14. “Umm...I don’t know. I’m not that big myself.” I told her, but the truth was I was afraid to get close to another turtle. Shelly and Flip’s deaths had been so sudden, and it scared me to think about how young they were. ”What would Mom want you to do?” Frog said suddenly, startling Emerald and me both. “How ‘bout this,” Emerald said, recovering quicker than me. “You take us to Mom, and that’s all we want.” “Umm... I guess” I said hesitantly. But we have no idea where she is.” “How big could the ocean really be?” Emerald replied nonchalantly.

15. “ I will take you guys to Mom…”

16. Part 4- We Find Out How Big The Ocean Is So the three of us set out together, looking everywhere for Mom. Several days later we were sure we would never find her. Emerald was getting annoyingly positive, repeating over and over again. “We’ll find her any second now.” The only bright side was that Frog started coming out of his shell. Literally! We decided to take a small break to plot our next course. It was at that time we saw an older looking turtle swim by. When he looked at us he stopped still. ”You,” he said pointing his flipper at Emerald. “You’re Emmy’s daughter.”

17. “He pointed his flipper at Emerald…”

18. “Me?” Emerald asked puzzled. “Yes, you.” He said in a raspy voice. “You have the same shell as her. Emmy was short for Emerald. I should know; I’m her only surviving sibling.” “What?”we all said startled. ”Yeah, we were the only two survivors. The rest of our sibling’s eggs were eaten by a pack of raccoons. I guess they got full before they got to us.” He was getting choked up now, “We were pretty close to getting eaten, too.”

19. I suddenly felt guilty for feeling sad over Shelly and Flip’s death, seeing what my mother went through. “I’m sorry.” Frog said. “Don’t feel sorry for me, it’s your mother you should be sorry for.” He said with tears in his eyes. “WHY!” Emerald screamed. “I’m sorry to tell you kids, but your .... your mother was eaten by a shark just seconds after she laid your eggs. I’m sorry.” He told us. “It‘s not your fault.” I said, barely able to get the words out of my mouth.

20. The now brave Frog replied, “CeCe, the one next to Emerald, said she would take us to Mom, but now since she .... passed away. She can’t.” “I’ll look after you!”, our uncle said, he was obviously lonely. “Yeah, It will be great!” Emerald hooted. “You can look after us until we’re big enough to look after ourselves.” Then her face saddened, “So I guess you don’t have to travel with us anymore CeCe.”

21. “I haven’t taken you to Mom, yet have I?” I smiled at her. These guys were my brother and sister, but they were also my friends. My only friends. They had grown on me, and I didn’t want to see them go. Even if something happened to them like what happened to Flip and Shelly, I would at least want to know if it had happened. “You mean you’ll stay with us!” Frog yelled excitedly. “Of course! I can’t imagine living without you guys!” So together we set off, just passively migrating. We were as happy as could be, but several weeks later, everything came crashing down.

22. “We set off happily together…”

23. Part 5- The Scariest, Saddest Day of My Life It was a warm day, so I teased Frog by saying, “I think someone has a bladder issue.” We all laughed and started searching for food. We found a large, web like thing that looked like food, so Uncle started chowing down. Uncle had never told us his name, and we had never asked, so we just called him Uncle. Right before we started eating with him, Uncle started choking. We were so shocked and scared, we didn’t know what to do.

24. Within a few seconds we came to our senses, but by that time he had already choked, sputtered, and died. His lifeless body sank way, way down. He was now only food for the bottom feeders. We simultaneously broke into tears. We cried our eyes out for at least an hour before I remembered Shelly’s words, “It’s the circle of life, you have to keep going.” I told my siblings this and they agreed with me. We had to keep going. By this time we were super hungry, so we found some food and solemnly ate.

25. “We cried our eyes out…”

26. A few hours later, another tragedy happened. Well, it almost happened. We were swimming through a dense seaweed forest when Emerald yelled, “Help! Help me!” This time Frog and I know we couldn’t waste anytime. We had to act quickly, and we did. Emerald was caught in a net. We pulled her hind flippers until her head popped out of the net. She was out of breath, to say the least. But she survived.

27. Epilogue That single day created a lifetime of worries. We never left each other. We stayed with each other for more than 50 years. Of course we found mates, had children, and went back into passive migration over and over, but we still stayed together. None of us ever forgot our childhood or Uncle. I never forgot about Flip or Shelly. And most of all, I never forgot Shelly’s words, “It’s the circle of life.”

28. The End All photos were taken by Ashley White, 6th grade teacher at Rockfield Elementary. They were edited and used with her permission.