environment

I had never liked the ocean, and that was before I fell off the boat and into it, headfirst. My dad and I were on one of his boating trips. He was a scientist on climate change, and every few months, he ventured out into the deep Pacific waters, and took a temperature of the water, with a tool called a thermometer. This was the first time he had let me come along, I was ten years old after all, and despite my great dislike of the water, I had always been eager to see what he had done on these mysterious trips, and when he walked into my room the prior Sunday and asked if I wanted to come along, I had jumped at the opportunity. Now, though, gripping the bar that surrounded the seats, as the boat rocked back and forth on the teetering water, I wasn’t so sure. My dad unlocked a cabinet beneath the control panel, and pulled out a bin, in which he kept all of his gear. He pulled out his thermometer from the bag, and placed it gingerly on his palm. He grabbed my hand, and helped me steadily to my feet, and he lead me slowly across the deck to the slide door where he took the temperature. “You’re okay, Tara.” He soothed, pushing me gently down onto the cushiony seat, and carefully opening the slide door. “Let’s take temp, okay?” He looked up at me, and I swallowed the lump in my throat, and moved my head in what I hoped was I nod. I was so scared and seasick, I didn’t know exactly what I was doing. He held my arm with one hand, and with the other, he slowly extended his fingers into the dark, murky water, with the thermometer clenched tightly in his hand. He stopped when his elbow was completely submerged in water. “That’ll do,” he said, and glanced at me “Last time I checked was last month, in September. It was 64.6 degrees Fahrenheit. Let’s hope it’s changed.” He sighed, and pushed a tuft of graying hair out of his eyes, resuming his grasp on my wrist. It was silent for a moment, except for the rhythmic slosh of the small waves against the side of the boat. Suddenly, there came a beep! from down below. My dad and I automatically turned towards it, like a puppet string connecting us both. My dad reached down and pulled out the thermometer. The reading blinked on and off, in black, digital font: 64.71. My dad heaved a frustrated sigh. “It’s only a little bit more than last month.” I offered soothingly. “Tara,” he said, in a clipped voice “.6 degrees of an increase isn’t a little bit, not in a span of a month.” The next moment seemed to happen in slow motion. I moved towards the slide door, crouching down onto the bumpy white surface of my dad’s boat, and slowly extending my hand outwards to feel the water. My dad moved across the deck to the steering compartment, and pressed the ignition as soon as my hands dipped into the water’s murk. I felt the surface of the boat beneath my bare feet slip away, I felt myself plummet into what felt like ice, my legs kicking beneath me. My head dunked below the surface, and a mouthful of salt swallowed down my throat. “Dad!” I screamed, gasping for breath “DAD!” My dad’s boat was fast, and while he had just ignited the engine moments ago, he was already some fifty yards away. Somehow, the wind carried my words over to him. He turned around, and his face contracted, seeing me struggling in the water. “Tara!” Without a second’s hesitation, he put the boat in reverse and revved up the engine. He brought it ten yards from where I stood, and as though he did this every day, dove off the boat from the bar. He had a rope with him, and as soon as he got a few feet from me, threw the rope to me. I immediately understood, and grabbed the rope with all my might, my breath coming in rasps. He pulled me behind him, with so much strength, strength I didn’t know my father even had, and we got to the boat in seconds. “I’m sorry, T.” Dad sighed, and rubbed a hand through his ruffled hair. “Dad, that was actually pretty cool!” I told him, and has I thought about it more, it was. “I mean, I’ve always wanted to see what you do. You and your colleagues have probably fallen in before! I remember the stories you used to tell me. Remember Mike? He fell in taking the temperature!” I grinned, the sun warming my back. Dad shook his head, smiling “I don’t even know how that happened.” I laughed, and moved to the other side of the boat, where the sliding door opened. “What’s that?” I asked curiously, pointing to an invisible piece of dirt. “What’s what?” Dad replied, hurriedly walking over. He bent down “Where?” In one fluid motion, I slide open the door, and pushed him over the side of the boat, laughing. He grinned before he even hit the water- he must have been used to it. “Smooth move, Ex-lax!” he teased, catching my ankle, and pulling me down with him. “Hey!” I called, but I was laughing as I hit the cold water, that didn’t really feel that cold anymore. Happiness that I couldn’t even describe lit through me, warming my body despite being in the icy water. That evening when we got home, my mom was waiting for us. She wrapped me in a hug, but after a moment pulled back. “Why are you so wet?” She asked in amusement. She didn’t sound angry, just a little amused. My dad and I looked at each other “A little water fight.” I answered, and we both burst out laughing.

The sky was smashing and attractive. It was the hue of tomatoes, marmalade and freshly picked lemons. Cumulus clouds were slowly drifting by and the sun was just about to go hiding behind the endless mountains. Of course, you only see that kind of stunning site on TV nowadays where rich companies just make winsome backdrops of impossible sights and post them to make humans think that they are living in an appealing world. The cruel truth is, we are not. Living in a lively world. We are living in a pile of junk. In every corner of the Earth is piled with garbage. Grandpa always tells about when his grandpa was small, Earth used to look like what it looks like on TV now. “There were these creatures called animals back then, and plants and trees and mountains and oceans,” he says. “My grandfather was a great man. He was a farmer and he had a great life with his cows.” My twin brother and I cannot imagine that. The world today is hopeless to be in the shape of its past again. The past is the past. It’s gone. It will never be the same. In my bed, I tossed and turned just to think of one question that’s bubbling up. How can we make the world back to what it was? However, there must be a way and we just don’t know it yet. I tossed my spoon in my cereal bowl and whizzed to the front lobby part of our house. Mom tossed me and Cade our black air helmet from a drawer in the lobby. It’s for breathing because the air outside is polluted very badly. The last gasp of clean air outside ran out before I was born and rich people use to buy air for a good fortune. Nowadays, we all have clean air inside our houses and heavy machines to eliminate the bad air. “Be thafe! ” Dad called from the kitchen in his weird accent. When we were all set, Cade and I go into a glass door that leads outside. It keeps the clean air on the inside. The glass door siren makes a beep, indicating that someone’s going outside. The outside layer of the glass door popped open and leads us to the mighty world outside. Like always, the world was colourless. Houses sat across from ours looks identical. There were no trees, no grass, no anything. Just people walking on streets with air helmets, looking down at the ground as if there were money laying on the concrete. We don’t talk on the way to school. We looped around a corner to Main Street, where our school was located. After going through the same glass doors, the busy hall in our school was presented. I took off my air helmet and left Cade and walked to my locker to put my stuff down. As I stuffed my things into my locker, I see my friend Eliana standing beside my locker in the corner of my eyes. We blab and walk towards homeroom as the bell went. I almost dozed off with Ms. Trevelyan’s soothing voice in history class. It’s the most boring class ever even though Ms. Trevelyan did her best to make it interesting. Everybody is aware that the past is glory and it hurts to look back from what we have now. Ms. Trevelyan knows, too. She ’s not brainwashed by the blinding world. She took a glance at our class and slammed the thick history book shut. Then, she rapped her metal desk with her hand. “Everyone! I know this is boring so we are moving onto another topic!” she said, slapping her poor desk while everyone in the room snapped back into reality. “We will discuss how humans will change the situations we are in right now!” Santos, the nerd of the class was the first to poke the silence. “I don’t think we can do anything really according to the damage we have done and research shows that—” “I agree with Santos! This is why we all hate history class! It’s because we all want to go back to that time where there were things called trees and breathable air! We gotta be thankful for how long we have lasted without the Earth dying completely, but we will die soon!” all of my classmates seem to agree with me. “No, you are wrong, children! We will survive!! Just believe in it!” Ms. Trevelyan corrected us. Soon, we made history class into a debate. We split into two groups on each side of the classroom while Ms. Trevelyan was doing her best job to calm us down but it was as useless as letting a cow learn how to play the piano. “We can’t change the environment!” I shouted, as the captain of my team. “Yes, we can! Even Ms. Trevelyan said so!” said the Marjorie, the captain of the other team. Perhaps only Santos noticed Ms. Trevelyan’s face. Her face turned as red as a ripe apple! She seems to have steam coming out of her ears. “Guys! Calm down!” Santos bellowed. But no one heard him. We still kept sending crossed words across the imaginary ocean. “Who cares about what she says! She’s an idiot!” I shrieked. Oh wait— maybe that was too loud. The room suddenly halted to a stop. It was like I can even hear a needle falling to the ground. I can feel everyone’s eyes located on my face and Ms. Trevelyan’s eyes burning on my colour-drained cheeks. You know, saying one word that is offensive these days in school can make you stand in the corner of the classroom for the day or even be sending home a note about your behaviour! I felt my face burn like fire roasting wood and can also felt my self-esteem drop into a dark abyss. “Excuse me, Ms. Cohen?!” she scowled at me, eyes wider than a tarsier (I

https://soundcloud.com/user-28081890/liliths-quest-by-sabrina-guo-13 Once upon a time, a young girl named Lilith lived in an igloo with her family, a pack of polar bears. She loved to wear her hair in braids and make her family icicle sculptures.  She also loved to eavesdrop, and one morning, as she was hiding behind an igloo, she heard her pack leaders talking about the problems facing their pack. “There isn’t enough fish to feed all of us–” “Sooner or later–” “Climate change will be the end of us–” Crack. The ice under Lily’s feet creaked loudly. “Lily, come out,” The pack leader said, sighing and shaking his white fur, golden from the sun. The girl stepped out, cheeks flushed from cold and embarrassment. “This is none of your business,” he said, pointing back to Lily’s igloo. She nodded meekly and headed home. She’d noticed that there hadn’t been any storytelling meetings or feasts with fish, and that the bears weren’t coming out of their igloos as much recently. She’d assumed that everyone was busy. She wanted to help but she was so small. What change could she possibly accomplish? Maybe she could help her pack by asking for help. It was worth a shot. She bowed to the ground and sent a prayer to the arctic gods, wishing for her pack to be safe, as well as all other animals. Just then, Lily heard a buzzing near her ear. She opened her eyes to see a tiny fairy with blue wings coated in light frost. Her hair looked like small tendrils of dust. “I am Nina, the most powerful fairy in the arctic. How can I help you?” the fairy said. Lily said immediately, “I want to get rid of climate change!” Nina nodded, “You and everyone else. All the animals have petitioned to the arctic gods for their help. I have a list of their signatures, but I am missing one. I would get it myself but it’s not within my power to meddle in this. Humans have caused this issue; they must fix it.” Lily’s eyes filled with hope. “I can get it!” “It will be a tough journey. Many other animals have tried before. You’ll have to travel far over dangerous waters.” “I’ll be okay!” Lily’s voice wavered but ended on a strong note. She would do anything for her family and the other animals. “Okay. I need you to get the signature of Anika, an arctic fox. She’s always busy with her children and doesn’t interact much with the community, Also, because she doesn’t understand the science behind climate change, she’s not aware it’s a pressing issue. She lives at the very tip of that glacier,” Nina said and waved her wand. A magnified image of the glacier appeared between them. Lily started to worry, “How will I get there?” “In a boat,” the fairy said. A whirl of shimmering colors appeared and suddenly, a sailboat was docked at the water’s edge. Lilly inhaled sharply. “Okay, I’ll leave now.” Nina said, “The ice slab with the other signatures is in the boat.” Lily nodded and ran to the boat. Luckily she knew some tricks about sailing. She sailed for days through rough waters and winter storms. She passed icicle caves and glaciers, wolves and seals. She sailed as fast as she could to keep the precious ice slab from melting. Finally Lily arrived at the glacier. She looked around, hoping a white fox could somehow stand out among the endless snow. Instead, she saw snowy owls searching for prey.  She needed to hurry. She knew her pack must be worried about her. Then she saw fox footprints leading into a den. She slowly adventured in, hearing shouts and playful growls. “Excuse me?” she whispered. She could hear fur rustling against fur. Two gleaming blue eyes appeared from the dark, and a white fox approached her, snarling. Lily stepped back. “Are you Anika?” Lily asked. “What do you want?” A husky voice asked curtly. Suddenly, the sound of a stampede rung out, little paws running full speed.  Lily knew that sound anywhere–the little cubs from the pack used to do during playtime. Lily stepped out of the den, out of the way. A blur of white fur poured out of the darkness of the den. Ten little foxes tackled each other. The mother followed, scolding her children for rushing out so fast. “Could I please have your signature for–” Lily began. “Max! Don’t hurt your brothers,” Anika interrupted. Lily cleared her throat. “As I was saying, I need your signature–” The mother rushed over to her children and separated them. “If you could come back tomorrow so I can sign the… uh… taxes, that’d be great—“ Lily spoke quickly, “I need your signature on the climate change petition. The ice is melting all around us, and it needs to stop or else I don’t know how we’ll survive!” The fox blinked, then completely ignored her, but concern flashed over her face as her cubs started to venture into the water. “Hey!” She scolded, as they giggle and retreated back. “Anika. All I need is a signature. Please, “ Lily begged. “I know there was a community meeting about it where everyone signed a petition, but I was too busy to go. Is climate change that bad?” the fox finally answered casually. “Yes! All the animals need your signature, “ Lily exclaimed. Anika paused then said, “Come back tomorrow.” “No! This is urgent!” Lily broke off an icicle from the den’s roof. “Here.” Anika grumbled under her breath, but hastily picked up the icicle in her mouth, and signed the ice slab that held the other signatures. The tip of the icicle scraped against the ice. “Thank you so much, Anika!’ Lily clapped her hands. She watched as the fox ran after her children, and then she hurried back to her boat, giddy and excited to share this great news with her pack.