There was this little girl living in a little house, in a little village on a little island. Her daily life wasn't anything interesting, it was the same thing day after day, boring old lectures and the elders trying to pass on their "wisdom" to the new generations. She didn't like that one bit, no siree, she did not. She found reprieve in her escapades to the ocean coast; she'd go there every afternoon to forget her boredom after finishing her classes.

She loved collecting sea shells, especially the little ones, and loved watching the little crabs skitter this way and that, and loved watching the little fishies swimming near the shore. You see, she was the shortest girl in her class, so she was always fascinated with little stuff; she found it cute. The elders didn't like that, they thought she was wasting her time. Time and time again they would tell her to "not waste valuable time" that she could be spending "learning how to cook" or "learning her arithmetic" or "her time tables".. But she didn't listen to them one bit. In fact, she thought them rather boring and snobbish. Hmmph! Who were they to tell her how to spend her time?

Anyways, one bright, sunny day, as she was going about her usual routine of playing with the little crabs and collecting little shells for her little murals in her little room, she noticed that something was afoot. She had a strange feeling, but she couldn't put her finger on what it was. All of a sudden, she noticed it. She gasped. It was the ocean. The ocean was angrier than it had ever been, it was roaring a cry of anger.

She ran back to the village as fast as her little legs would carry her and she frantically told the villagers that the ocean was angry. "Don't be silly, the ocean isn't alive, it can't be angry," the elders told her. "Yeah, don't be daft, it's probably some whales you heard."

But she knew the ocean well, and it was nothing she ever heard before. She was adamant in her refusal to cooperate with them. She kept demanding they leave the island, in case the ocean gobbled them up for dinner.

The elders for once decided to go to the shore with her to see what was going on, and to show her that she was simply imagining things. When they got there, they saw a huge wave spanning the entire horizon approaching the little island from a distance. Their faces went white as ghosts.

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"Quick, evacuate everyone to the highest peak of the mountain. We must not let the ocean swallow us." The elders sounded the alarm, and everyone scrambled for the mountaintop. The villagers barely made it to the plateau on top of the mountain when the wave crashed on the little island, destroying everything in sight. For a short while, the entire island disappeared, and it seemed as though the ocean had eaten the island like it was one huge cookie, with only the top of the mountain remaining.

The elders were all astonished. They were aghast. They were taken aback. They could not believe their eyes. More importantly, they could not believe that one little girl had saved the entire island from an imminent death.

--------------------- 10 years later ---------------------

There was a little island in the middle of the huge, wide ocean, and this little island was special. Every day after school, the village elders would take the children to the ocean to learn about the ocean and its behavior, and about the little fish and the little crabs that dotted the shore in the ponds which were created on the beach during low tide.

This time was reserved for learning about the ocean and educating the next generation on the ways of using the atmospheric shifts to tell what the weather would be like later that day or the next day, so that they may prepare accordingly. The elders were all very grateful for this new change, since now fishing and diving for shellfish were easier, mostly due to the ability of the people to foretell what the ocean would be like before venturing onto it.

And all this was headed by a young woman with a vibrant and cheerful personality. You see, the village elders did not come to the ocean with the schoolchildren to chide them and impart old, outdated and forgotten wisdoms, but rather the elders were there to learn from this young woman all there was to know about the ocean and its murky depths.

One little girl was late to the fray that day, and she ran as fast as her little legs would carry her, towards the ocean. She beamed when she saw the woman teaching the young children about the ocean, and ran towards her.

"Moooooooom, I'm here to play with you!" she screamed at the top of her little lungs.

The woman looked towards the little girl and smiled.

The End