Disclaimer: I do not own Dinotopia. This fanfiction is only for entertainment purposes and is not for profit in any way, shape, or form.
An Ocean Angel
Gracie slowly opened her eyes. Blinking against the sudden brightness that presented itself to her vision, she blearily brought one hand up to cover her eyes. A sudden voice broke through the otherwise too quiet room.
"Ma'am? Ma'am are you all right?"
Gracie moved her head slightly to see the person speaking and still block the light at the same time. The navy uniform combined with a doctor's overcoat made her realize that the man could only be a naval doctor. As her sight focused she was able to make out his ID tag. It read: Senior Medic, Dr. Basin of the U.S.S. Pendelton.
Abrupt memories resurged from Gracie's mind. A small inflated raft drifting across an endless sea in the midst of a ferocious storm. A rescue craft pulling her family aboard and speeding them away to the naval ship that had been searching for them. And before that, a nice, kind voice over a radio. It had been a boy's voice, somewhere in the later years of teenagedom. Calm and steady, he had reassured her when all had seemed lost and had, against all hope, managed to contact the Pendelton for her. A gentle voice who had, in his final transmission, given her family the hope they had desperately needed to fight for the last few hours against the storm. He had said he was adrift like her, but that he couldn't tell her where he was.
"Did you find Carl?" Gracie asked, ignoring the medic's question.
"Carl?" Dr. Basin asked, totally confused by her question.
"Carl Scott! He was the one who contacted you! He told you where to find us!" she exclaimed, worried now about her rescuer's safety.
"We were under the impression that one of your family had given us the coordinates to find you," the doctor said carefully.
"No!" Gracie yelled, fighting to sit up in her bed despite her weakened condition. "He was adrift like us, but he didn't know where he was! He had a stronger radio than we did so he transmitted you our coordinates so you could rescue us! But what about him! Did you leave him out there?"
"Ma'am, ma'am calm down! You won't do anyone any good if you use up all of your strength! You need to rest! You're still extremely weak!" the doctor soothed, pushing her back down on her bed to rest. "Now tell me exactly what you remember of this Carl Scott."
Gracie frowned as she concentrated on remembering her conversation with the boy over the radio.
"He said he had flown into the storm with his father and brother. He said they were all together but that they were adrift."
"That's good. Did he tell you the plane number or name?"
"N-C-7 something. I can't remember."
The doctor picked up a glass of water and tipped it for Gracie to drink from. She gulped the water down greedily, not having realized how thirsty she was until that cooling water hit her parched throat.
"You need to rest," the doctor urged. "I'll look up everything I can on Carl Scott and his family. You go to sleep now."
"But-"
"No buts! The best thing you can do now is sleep! I'll see what I can do about the Scotts."
Gracie's eyes had begun drifting closed against her will. She had already expended all of her limited energy talking. Slowly, she drifted off into restful sleep.
"Scott…" the doctor murmured to himself. "Where have I heard that name before..?"
The doctor then made his leave to inform his captain of this new circumstance regarding their rescuees.
Gracie started fading back into consciousness after what seemed like barely a moment of sleep. Her brain was bleary only for a moment before jumping right back into panic for the Scotts.
She was about ready to get out of her bed and seek the doctor when he suddenly came into view, walking slowly to her bed.
"Well?" she asked, "Did you find them!"
"Miss, are you sure they said their name was Scott?" the doctor inquired, hesitating about the name.
"Yes! Yes, I'm not going to forget that name! He saved our lives!" Gracie exclaimed. "Why?"
"Well, you see, a plane being flown by Frank Scott did crash around the area we found you. His two sons Carl and David were on board with him at the time."
"And did you find them?" Gracie urged.
"Ma'am, they crashed over a year ago."
……
A year ago? They crashed a year ago? How… How could anyone survive a year on the open water?
"A search and rescue was conducted when they failed to return from their flight, but all that was found were some torn up pieces of one wing drifting in the water a few miles North of where you were picked up. Nothing else was ever found of them."
Gracie's mind whirled with this new information.
No one could survive for a year in open water. It was simply impossible.
A year ago.
The boy that had been so kind to her, that had helped save her whole family, had crashed into the ocean a whole year ago.
"There's something else I think you should hear," the doctor said, motioning another officer forward.
The officer was carrying a portable laptop and laid it on a little table next to her bed.
"This is the recording of the distress call we received," the doctor said, hitting a key to start the recording.
"Pendelton, Pendelton, come in Pendelton. This is a Mayday from the survivors of the Southern Star. Do you read me? Over."
"That's him! That's him, that's Carl!" Gracie exclaimed, jumping a little in her bed to lean closer to the laptop.
The doctor waved her quiet to listen to the rest of the call.
"Southern Star, this is the U.S.S. Pendelton. Are you alright?"
"Pendelton! Thank God you're out there!"
"What's your position?"
"Um, um, Southern Star is sunk and we're five people in a life raft. Our last position was 12 degrees North, 22.7 - by 4 degrees West, 24.2. But, um, that was a few hours ago."
"Can you give me a reading now?'
"No. Our GPS is down. But," the boy's voice hesitated slightly, "we're drifting east."
"You're heading into a big storm."
"Yes, I know this, I know. If you can just, uh, please hurry up."
"Go over to channel 22 and keep transmitting. We'll home in on your signal."
"Roger that, give me one second."
The radio recording cut off there.
"I don't understand," Gracie said, looking up at the doctor. "What's the point of listening to this? I mean other than proving that Carl Scott is still alive."
"I'm taking out the speaking, both voices. Now listen to the background noise…" the doctor ordered, typing quickly on the laptop for a moment, then hitting the play key again.
The sound of the harsh water hitting against rock filled the speakers. But there was no thunder or rain. There was, however, a beautiful ringing tone that vibrated through the speakers, clear and beautiful, it was quiet but peaceful, and easily audible thanks to the increased volume. Many would consider it impossible to make a song with only one note, but that tone proved everyone wrong. It was a song unlike any ever heard before. Delicate and insubstantial, like gossamer wings shifting through the light filled air, shimmering across all senses at once in beautiful harmony.
"That sound," the doctor said, "does not match any sound in our database." He sighed, bringing up infrared pictures of the storm from high orbit. "Satellite pictures show a year round storm in that portion of the ocean with no land inside it. And the closest island is 300 miles away."
The doctor sat down heavily in an open chair by the table.
"The Scotts are dead, ma'am. There is no way anything can survive past a few hours once they enter into that storm," he sighed. "I don't know how, but we got your coordinates from a ghost."
Gracie sat back in shock. That kind boy who had reached out to her when all hope had seemed lost, who had urged her to hang on just a little longer. He had given her the hope to believe that her family wouldn't meet their end out in the middle of the ocean. His gentle strength had pulled her through the most difficult ordeal of her life.
And she would never get the chance to meet him.
A boy who had been dead for over a year had leant his hand to save a different family from a similar fate.
A part of their conversation came to her mind unbidden. She had hoped to thank her rescuer in person, but had done it immediately over the speaker in joy when he had informed her he had been able to reach the Pendelton and had given them her position.
"How'm I ever gonna thank you? You saved my life!" she had exclaimed into the microphone.
The boy's voice had hesitated before replying, "Well y'know I guess, um, we might call it even then."
It was the last thing he had ever said to her. They had received no further transmissions from him.
It hadn't made any sense at the time.
Maybe his soul had been stuck. Maybe he had wanted to prevent the same tragedy from happening again, to any others. Maybe he could move on now that he had done what he had wanted.
Maybe that was what the music meant.
Maybe he could find peace now.
It had taken her weeks of begging, but Gracie was finally able to get a folder on the Scotts. She paged slowly through the file, reading about the bad boy life Carl Scott had lead. It was a comprehensive file, containing even the lists of schools he had been expelled from and the reasons why. His picture showed a streetwise smile on an utterly charming face. Blond hair fell lazily into his eyes in a comfortable looking style with the kind green color of those eyes showing through.
He'd been almost nineteen when the plane had crashed. The same age she was when her family's boat had sunk, leaving them to be tossed about in a small raft in a seemingly endless sea.
Despite his history, Gracie felt he could have achieved a lot in his life.
Maybe it was fitting that his apparently greatest action had happened after his death- saving others from joining him in his fate.
There was only one thing Gracie could be absolutely sure of.
She would be grateful for the rest of her life to the boy who had given her hope when she had given up, whose kindness had overwhelmed her and helped her family survive.
He was truly her ocean angel.
A/N: This is a one shot so there will not be anymore chapters. I was watching the Dinotopia series and when I came to this episode this story just popped into my head, so I wrote it out. Hope you guys liked it!