The glaring bars of sunlight penetrated my vision as I squinted my swollen eyes. Trying to move my limbs, I felt something slimy and slippery slither across my body.
I tensed.
Raising my head as slightly as possible, I glanced down and saw a bed of bottle-green seaweed glittering under the midday sun. Relieved, I scrambled to stand and felt the seaweed peel themselves a way from me.
Staring at the horizon, images of last night’s horrifying events poured into my mind as I vividly recalled being violently thrown about by the roaring sea and smacked my torrents of howling rain under the obscured moon. Now, with the sea calmed and the sky cleared, the storm seemed to never have happened, the only evidence being the broken pieces of my boat that now lay defeated in front of me.
Sighing, I turned and looked toward the heart of the island. For as far as my eyes could travel, the beach was overflowing with seaweed instead of sand. With my legs buried a foot deep in the abundance of seaweed, I trudged along slowly towards a clump of coconut trees.
Suddenly, a sharp pain shot up my toe and I gave a muted squeal. Holding back tears, I bent down and discovered that I had hit a cloudy glass bottle that was buried in the seaweed. In it was a piece of paper slightly torn and tinted with age.
Instinctively, I removed it from the bottle and unfolded it.
“Brew seaweed, make soup, cures diseases, hunger and boredom,” I read aloud. Skeptically, I eyed the slithering seaweed beneath me. Oh well, it is not as if I have any other choices, I told myself.
Forty years later…
Walking down the streets, there was not one wall that was not covered in flashing green posters. “Island Seaweed’s Best Healing Paste”, “Drink this seaweed juice and stay young for life!”, “Tested: Magic seaweed bun keeps you full for the rest of the week” and many other similar phrases jumped up at me as I smirked my way through the streets.
After two decades of depending on the island’s bountiful seaweed for life, a search team finally found and rescued me from the lonely island. Needless to say, I was not going to put my many years of research and experiments on the seaweed to waste, so I brought them all back and introduced its extraordinary benefits to the awestruck folks of the country.
Strolling down the bustling lane, I distinctively heard the subdued voices of crowds cheering, “All hail the seaweed!”
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