The Chocolate House Voyage

My name is Una, and this is my sister Finalive. We are daughters of the Sea God, and we live in a castle at the bottom of the ocean.

The first thing I want to say is that it's hard to explain how life under the sea works. Everything seems very strange. For example, there are no fish in the ocean. Instead, all of our food just sort of appears for us whenever we need it. If we're hungry, it just shows up on our plates. If we're thirsty, someone brings us drinks. And if we have to urinate or defecate, a magical toilet appears for us! So sometimes it's hard to remember that when other people ask us about things like life under the sea, we have to be careful about what we answer with. In order not to seem crazy.

So back to my story...

We had been living in our underwater castle forever, ever since I can remember. It was a big place, with hundreds of rooms and dozens of floors. Our father had built it for us when he first married our mother, and one day he would give it to us as a wedding gift too. He already had a wife above the water - she was his human wife - but she could never live down here with him because she was too fragile. She didn't last long under the sea: only two months before she passed away and became an angel above the waves. But that was okay! Because now she watches over me and Finalive wherever we go, like a guardian angel.

We were happy living in our underwater castle together with our father, but one day something happened that made me not so happy anymore....

It was late at night when I woke up from my sleep - which is easy to do when you live underwater because everything down there is so quiet! The whole palace was silent except for a scratching noise coming from outside my bedroom door. I got out of bed and opened the door cautiously: there stood my sister Finalive with her hair all messed up and her eyes wide open, looking around in shock at the moonlit hallways beyond her bedroom window! "What's wrong?" I asked her quietly so as not to wake up our father upstairs; "What do you see?"

"Look!" she said breathlessly, pointing out into the hallways; "Look at all those stars!"

I looked over where she pointed: there were indeed lots and lots of stars everywhere! The whole hallway was glowing with them! "What is going on? Where did all these stars come from?" I whispered back softly; "This has never happened before ... what does this mean?"

"I think ..." said Finalive slowly; "I think... I think this means..." But then she stopped speaking in mid-sentence and shook her head in disbelief instead.

And then suddenly I realized what she meant! My eyes widened too as the truth dawned on me: "Does this mean... Does this mean.... That.... That..." I stammered excitedly; "That maybe today is Christmas Eve?!"