“How are you? ” asked a feeble voice from the other end.
“I am barely alive” She replied.
“What do you mean?”. He asked.
“I breathe. I exist. That’s all I can say”. She said, almost breaking down.
“I am sorry I am not able to locate you. I am sorry I can’t be with you at this time. I am still trying. I really want to be there”. He said.
” I can understand. I know you would have been here if you could. ” She said sobbing.
There was silence. He cleared his throat (and thoughts) and spoke to break that awkward pause.
“You know that we are the longest living species on the planet, don’t you?” He said from the other end.
“Yes I do.” She started laughing and that made all the tears in her eyes pour out in a hurry.
He did this all the time.He tweaked his questions to ensure that the answer would be an “I do”.  That was like a reminder to both of them of the wedding wows that they had taken 105 years ago.
They were happy and just married then. They swam all over the pacific together. LIfe was all about finding some food, swimming and laying eggs. They visited the beaches or the shallow regions only during nesting seasons. SInce they did not have a tradition of returning to the nest after the eggs are laid, they would resume their journey as soon as the nesting season was over.
Unlike others in their species, they never went looking for other partners. They stuck to each other until this recent incident.
It was almost a week since they had seen each other. She was entangled in an ocean of debris within the ocean, not able to move. They had visited this part of the ocean so many times in the first half of their life. It used to be  beautiful green waters in that part of their habitat. She wanted to swim in those waters once more.
Swimming in the deep, they were unaware of  the kind of exponential growth that was happening on the remaining 30% of earth (the land). The way the supposedly most evolved species on earth was prospering and achieving many heights was not known to them. They had no clue that the entire living species was bearing the brunt of the unmanaged exploitation of every resource on earth.
He tried frantically to locate her. She had entangled herself in the huge mass of debris that was thrown into the ocean by a passing ship. The noise from the ship resulted in the two of them losing contact and once the ship was gone, there was so much of floating objets all around. Finally, when they could hear each other, they just could not locate the other. In an effort to come out of the junk, she completely got entangled. What she did not know was that he was also dying due to some of the strange zooplankton like objects which he had eaten( The remains of plastic that was dumped into the ocean a decade ago which resembles zooplankton) .
Both of them took their last breath thinking of the good times that they had spent together. The only regret they had was that in spite of spending more than a century with each other, they had to die apart.
The End.
I saw both the sea turtles rise up into the sky. They looked at me and said:
“This is how our lives ended. We sure did not deserve this tragic end. Nor does any of our fellow inhabitants. We urge you to be mindful of your actions and take the necessary steps required. Today, it was us. Tomorrow, it is gonna be YOU. ”
I did not know what to do. I stared into their eyes which were still full of life. I asked them with teary eyes , ” How can I help you ? ” .
They looked at me one last time with their piercing eyes and said ” Be mindful of your actions. Minimize your contribution to the mess. Tell people about our story.  We have all the right to live here and die a natural death. It is our life , don’t mess with it. ”
They disappeared and I was woken up by my morning alarm with the responsibility of telling people their story!

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