'' It’s dark and wet, it seems that it’s always like that now, Alice thought to herself. Her grandmother would tell her stories of how beautiful the sky used to be before everything started to change. Alice couldn’t understand why she couldn’t go outside to play without a life jacket or being strapped to the frame her house was placed on. She couldn’t understand why her house was different to the house her grandmother used to have when she was 12 years old. Her grandmother would show her pictures of herself as a little girl and say,

 

‘That’s where I used to live when I was your age. We had our own house with a great big green garden with flowers at the front and bug trees at the back! Me and your Uncle Carl would go out to play and ride our bicycles. He would always tease me making me angry at him. Then he would go and buy me a lollipop from our local sweet shop so I wouldn’t tell on him to our mum and dad.’ She would then sigh, ‘Those were the days.’

 

Alice would look around her and see her ‘house’. Everything was rusty and old, the so-called windows surrounding her 15-square meter home would be shattered making her feel cold from the breeze they would let enter the space. She would soon go with her father to the nearest surviving scrap yard to find other ones in better condition if they can, to replace them with. Winter was coming soon and she knew how bad it could get with the unforeseen snow storms that seemed to get worse with each passing year. Just the thought made her shiver and wrap her small arms around herself.

 

She would look outside the shattered windows and see large metal beams with ropes across them carrying doors, tables, chairs, anything you can think of, to the next big structure next to where she was living. That was how supplies and food were provided to the floating structures. Although everything was old and cracked she would stare at the other small homes next to hers and think how pretty the different coloured materials would look despite their age and state. She would also think how impressive the huge beams with the small houses looked reflecting across the vast open waters with the red sky fading into the background. 

 

She did like her house, despite its awkward design, it was all that she knew after all. She just couldn’t understand why and how the world had changed so much since her grandmother was a little girl. Why don’t we have big gardens and birds?, she would think to herself. 

 

‘Why is our home floating above water? Why isn’t our house like your house was?’, she would ask her grandmother.

 

At that moment her grandmother thought that it was time to tell her the truth of the world, 

 

’My sweet Alice, no-one ever thought the earth would change so much. Everyone thought the sea level would only rise a few centimetres and then stop. No one actually believed that entire countries would sink or that the temperature would continue rising every year causing food and materials to be so precious and little. We underestimated all the signs that were telling us to stop and we had to rush out of our homes and cities to find refuge. Now we have to accept the circumstances and try as best as we can to do what’s best for everyone and the planet. Hopefully, one day everything will be as it was again.’ 

 

Now, Alice was even more confused. She thought, how can anyone be silly enough not to see how the world was changing when it was happening right in front of their eyes? How can entire countries disappear without anyone realising to make it stop? How did they not see that food was running low? And she was right, how could people be so naive but yet so smart at the same time? 

 

At that moment she made a life-binding decision with herself. She was determined to do everything in her power to improve the world she currently lived in. She would help her father gather materials from the scrap yards and exchange with others whatever she could spare or did not need to help anyone she could with even just small gestures at a time. Trying to make her home and others' homes as beautiful as she saw them to be because in her eyes there was beauty in everything in the world. Although she did not have a big green garden or live in a great big house like her grandmother once did, to her, what she did have was just as special and with every small gesture she made, made it even more extraordinary. 

 

As the years passed and circumstances were becoming even more challenging, her determination led her to learn the craft of building and design trying to improve everything she could with as little or as much as she could.

 

Because, however, big or small the gesture was, because of her dedication and love for the earth, she would make the planet even for a moment a better place for everyone. ''