Today's #flashfiction #OlliesJourney

“We can rebuild him, we have the technology.”

All The Kings Horses, And All The King's Men* #quote

CJ is came over today as planned so yay! Anyway onto the flash fiction!

Ollie's Journey

        Go high up. That's what I decided to do after I dreamed about following an air bubble to wherever it goes. In the dream I never found out, so the dream instilled curiosity in me so I must follow it. The other octopuses told me my mission was folly and that the ocean never ends. But another who said he came from a place called the coast told everyone that there is a surface, but they called him a liar.

      Ollie, you fool! The elder told me as I started to go up. And up and up. I didn't stop unless I needed to eat or adjust to water pressure. I needed to do it more and more. Even with my soft body I could feel that moving too fast messed with my system.

        A strange phenomenon happened as I rose. My curiosity originated from wanted to follow where the air went. But now I saw the Great Light grew above and its light grew stronger. Is it a thing? Something I can touch? Is it a place? The tales passed down say that the Great Light is the floating souls of our dead there to light the ocean. But I'm getting closer to it. The it's light is getting brighter.

        I want to touch it. I'm getting tired. I need to sleep. Tomorrow then...

        My usual predators aren't here, but neither is what I usually eat. Sleeping took an strange maneuver of sleeping while swimming. Difficult to figure out but I managed. Seeing the Great Light grow larger and what floated in the ocean around me change compelled me to figure out how to keep going and finding more and more.

        Then when the Great Light looked so bright my eyes began to hurt but I didn't want to close them my head broke through some sort of barrier. What was this? Is my head inside some giant air bubble? I dive back down. This air bubble. It goes on forever. Is this the surface the octopus from the shore talked about? An endless air bubble that touches the ocean as far as I can see? I shoot ink out at it to pop it and the ink goes straight into the strange bubble and falls back down.

        I stick my arms into the bubble and it won't pop. I don't like it. The Great Light. Is it beyond this bubble? Is it in it. I don't understand. What's over there? Is that a moving rock? Brown...no it's some kind of creature! A large mouth like a jellyfish that was scooping up piles fish. I need to get out of here. I've gotten too close to the Great Light. I need to get out of here!

         I swam back down. Swam as fast as I could to get away from the giant predator. I felt calmer once I got far down enough. Fear gone, curiosity gone. I just wanted to get home. And when home I wanted to kill the octopus from the coast for letting me go.

        “Why did you let me go to there if you knew what it was like?”

         The octopus from the coast replied, “I wanted to know what it was like. I lived close to the end of the ocean. But I never dared to leave it.