"Pssst! Hey! Over here!"
Marley sat up in bed. The voice was coming from the bathroom. And nothing in the bathroom was supposed to talk at night.
He tiptoed over and peeked in. The little green potty — the one Mum had put in the corner last week, the one Marley hadn't even looked at — was glowing. A soft, sea-blue glow. And it was rocking, very gently, like a boat on the water.
"At last!" said the potty. "I've been calling you for three nights. I need a captain, and I need one urgently!"
"A captain?" blinked Marley. "But you're a potty."
"A potty?!" The little green thing wobbled with indignation. "By day, fine, I'm a potty. But at night? At night I am the Wavecutter, the fastest ship on the Sea of Dreams! And tonight we have an important mission. Hop aboard!"
Marley climbed on — and that very moment, the bathroom floor turned into ocean. Silver waves lapped against the bathtub, the stars floated on the water like hundreds of tiny lanterns, and the Wavecutter shot forward — whoosh, how fast she was!
"Hold on, Captain!" cried the ship. "We're sailing to Nappy Island!"
Nappy Island was soft and white, and on its beach sat a huddle of very round, very sad little seals.
"What's wrong?" asked Marley.
"The nappies!" sniffled the smallest seal. "The big children used to wear them, but the big children use potties now, and all the nappies got left here with us. And there are too many! There's no room left on our island!"
Marley looked around. It was true: mountains of nappies, everywhere he looked.
"Well, that's easy," said Marley, in his most captain-like voice. "Let's build something out of them! What do you seals like doing best?"
"Bouncing!" shouted all the seals at once.
So, with Captain Marley in command, the seals built the softest, springiest bouncy castle in the whole world out of the nappies. It had a slide, a tower, and a trampoline that could bounce you all the way up to the stars. The seals squealed with joy, and they made Marley Honorary Captain of the Island, forever.
"You see?" said the Wavecutter on the way home, while the waves rocked them sleepily. "You don't need nappies any more. The seals turned them into something much more fun. And you — you have me. Your very own ship. Every time you sit on me, you're one wave closer to being a real grown-up captain."
"Will you come again tomorrow?" asked Marley, already yawning.
"Captain," said the potty solemnly, "a ship never abandons her captain. Tomorrow there's a new mission: the Star Lighthouse is flickering, and we have to fix it. But for that, you must come to me bravely in the morning too. Do we have a deal?"
"Deal," said Marley, and gave a proper sailor's salute.
The Wavecutter rocked him home, right up to his bed. His duvet was as soft as the clouds over Nappy Island. Marley's eyes fell shut, and in his dream he was already sailing towards the Star Lighthouse, while the sea murmured softly: sssss-hhhh… sssss-hhhh…
In the morning, Marley ran to the bathroom first thing. The potty stood in the corner, green and perfectly still, as if it knew nothing about anything.
But when Marley sat down, very quietly — so quietly that only a true captain could hear it — it said:
"Good morning, Captain. Shall we set sail?"
The end. Sweet dreams! 🌙