Dirk and Sally both circled around from behind and popped their beaks out of the water.
We go now. We go now.
She looked at John. “Are you ready?”
“Yep.”
With that, the dolphins disappeared below, and Alison and Clay rolled forward, kicking their fins.
It was a clear day which provided the most sunlight and brilliantly lit up the beautiful coral below them. They hadn’t gone very far before Clay’s voice came over the speaker.
“Wow, Alison!”
She turned her head as they descended. “I know, right?!”
He stared, transfixed on the scene below them. The deep colors and vibrancy of the coral were almost unimaginable. “I’ve never seen anything like this.”
“Me either. This is what they pilgrimage to every year.”
Clay remained in awe as they drifted lower still. The amount and the variety of sea life were incredible, and he’d never seen underwater vegetation so encompassing. “I’ve never even seen this on a postcard before.”
Alison laughed.
Above them, Lee and Chris leaned over the small table together, trying to block enough sunshine to view the monitor clearly. The area was much tighter than their Prowler, but it was still a nice boat.
While they listened to Clay and Alison’s exchange over the speakers, Lee turned to Chris. “Are you going down again?”
“Heck, yeah!”
Lee laughed and looked around the white fiberglass cockpit of the catamaran. “Mr. Clay has a nice sailboat, eh?”
“He sure does. He needs a coffee machine though.”
Below the boat, Clay reached out and grabbed Alison’s hand. He kicked hard and accelerated, pulling her along with him. Still following Dirk and Sally, they glided over a small falloff in the coral, giving them a brief sensation of flying.
Several hundred yards behind them, the largest plants swayed rhythmically in the gentle current. Beneath the vegetation was a small crack in the coral. Very gradually, and almost imperceptibly, something small emerged from the crack barely a millimeter across. It slowly floated free and rose just a few inches before the bright, glowing green bubble popped and dissolved into the swirling water.
And if Clay and Alison had been able to view the reef from the air, the two would have noticed a strangely symmetrical shape. As though something large were buried beneath it.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Michael Grumley lives in Northern California with his wife and two young daughters. His email address is mgrumley@gmail.com, and his web site is www.michaelgrumley.com where you can also find a supplemental Q&A page for this story.
ABOUT DEEANN DRAPER
You might be interested to know, that while a fictional character in this story, DeeAnn Draper, is in fact, a real person. And much like the character she has inspired, the real DeeAnn is also very intriguing. Her education covers everything from science, math, and chemistry, to psychology and English. She spent over seven years working with Koko at the Gorilla Foundation in southern California.
Over the years, DeeAnn has enjoyed SCUBA diving, riding motorcycles, exercising and fixing up houses. She served as the subject matter expert for Dulce and much of the primate related elements of LEAP.
The few factual liberties I’ve taken were for story line reasons.
Message from the author
Thank you for taking the time to read LEAP. I hope you enjoyed it. As some of you may know, I’m a part-time, self-published author, with the hope of one day being able to write full-time. I still have more Breakthrough stories stuck in my head. Not surprisingly, a self-published writer’s only real means for accomplishing this is through reviews and referrals. I know leaving a review can be a bit of a pain, but if you could please spare two minutes to leave a review for LEAP, I would be very grateful.
Thank you,
Michael