Chapter Text
The cove was patterned with the beautiful shadows of water ripples. Fish swam by in droves, their vibrant hues of magenta, aquamarine, and verdant green shining across the walls. Kelp beds sparsely dotted the hard rock surfaces, springy lichens pillowing the remaining exposed surface area.
Further inside the cove, a dark-haired girl lay sprawled on the soft bed of oceanic plants. Grumbling as a fish nibbled at her silver-scaled legs, she sat up, heaving a yawn. Her fins snapped open, releasing her previously hidden diaphanous membranes that swayed lightly in the gentle current. The fins glistened under the faint moonlight that bounced around the cozy nook, scintillating with lights that put the other fish to shame.
“Heavens above, is it already time?” Startled, the girl leapt up from among the mosses, darting for the open seas, only to be stopped by a fair-haired young man standing guard at the entrance.
“I see you’re a bit late today, Mona.”
“I had many affairs to tend to in the past day! Of course I felt a bit tired. I’m not like you, Albedo; I can’t go weeks without resting.”
Albedo chuckled, pulling Mona by the arm outside the alcove with his crustacean claws. Balancing on the thin ledge of the niche, Mona wistfully gazed towards the surface, towards the vortexes that were the mysterious skies, towards the stars dotting them like the elegant swarms of luminescent fish in a deep, hungry chasm. Unfortunately, the stargazing would have to wait, for she had business to attend to.
Stepping off the ledge, Albedo floated downwards into the inky darkness the weak moonlight couldn’t penetrate. Before she drifted down to the chilly ocean floor with Albedo, Mona took one last glance of resignation towards the ever-shifting surface shimmering with promise before cautiously landing on the fine sand that blanketed the deep. Albedo soon followed suit, his armored joints groaning in protest at his more sudden descent. Mona cringed at the sound.
“Please treat your legs better!”
He only smirked. “See this?” Using his claws, Albedo rapped his barnacle-adorned decapod legs, only eliciting a small clank. “Almost indestructible, my shell.”
Mona sighed, putting one scaled hand to her forehead in futile hopes that Albedo would stop mistreating himself. Even though his claws and legs were encased with chitin, they could still be shattered with enough force; who knew how Albedo could survive if his inner flesh was exposed? Shuddering, Mona thought back to the time a reef shark had taken her for a tasty morsel and took a bite at her leg. Fortunately, she was able to avoid injury, but a few days earlier, she had seen it tear into a poor white bass. She never quite was able to get the image out of her head. What if that bass had been her?
Albedo’s call brought Mona out of her daydream. Warily flitting about the sandy floor, Mona followed Albedo, scanning the ground for anything that could tear her fins. His hair swaying in the meager waves down in the chasm, Albedo slightly scoffed at her caution. “You can swim higher, you know? Then you wouldn’t have to worry about all the rocks.”
Mona playfully scowled back. “I’m not taking the chances of getting lost. You don’t know how much you blend in with the sand. When’s the last time you removed those barnacles from your legs, anyways?”
“Quite a while back, and I should probably do it again. Anyways, hurry up. Rhinedottir isn’t the most patient creature down here.”
Chuckling at Albedo’s retort, Mona took his suggestion to mind and actually swam to him instead of treading. The cool rush of water streamlining against her body gave her system the shock it needed to fully awaken, and suddenly the deep sea exploded into a symphony of lights, colors, and sounds. Her silvery eyes dilated, adjusting to the newfound explosion of sights and voices. Corals whispered, kelps giggled, schools of andaman chattering quietly like the whispers of wind above the ocean she could only wish to ever feel blow through her hair.
Mona’s augmented vision granted her full view of her destination, a smooth slab of dark rock contrasting against the otherwise vivid landscape. Albedo beat her to it, lifting the heavy boulder with ease; the strength of his pincers was no joke. With a mock bow, he gestured with the armored appendages growing from his back for Mona to enter the cavern.
“After you, milady.”
Mona shuddered. “I have only ever seen that phrase being used in Rhinedottir’s novel collection, and I can’t imagine it being used in a positive sense, given the sordid contents of those things.” Despite all of her complaints, though, she descended into the gaping maw of the hole with little hesitation, quietly thanking Albedo once he entered as well.
Illuminated by stingless bioluminescent jellies, the pair navigated the sharp edges of the grotto, Albedo scuttling over the razorlike rocks with the help of his three extra pairs of shelled limbs and Mona retracting her fins to avoid tearing them on spikes of rock. Deeper into the tunnel, the water felt fresher, the ceiling holding some pockets of air. Coming to a halt upon spotting the telltale shiny stone above his head, Albedo grunted and, using all of his appendages, heaved the thing upwards to heave himself into the spacious, airy cavern.
A voice croaked from a dark corner of the laboratory, “By the Seven, you’re late, Albedo!”
Having just popped her head out of the water, Mona winced at the scolding. “Apologies, Rhinedottir, but I didn’t notice the time while I was resting.”
Shooting a glare at Mona, Rhinedottir sniffed. “I didn’t ask you, I asked Albedo. Even if you did sleep in, it’s Albedo’s job to make sure you get here on time. Now, get to work!”
Albedo and Mona shared a rueful grin. Using his claws, Albedo gently caught hold of Mona’s wrists and lifted her out of the water and onto an absorbent kelp towel, one of his newest creations. Rhinedottir hated it when her things got wet, so precautions had to be taken. While Albedo towelled himself off and donned a moist cloak, Mona, having already dried herself, dragged herself with her forearms to the corner where her crutches and bubble device stood against the wall, blenching in pain as a stray glass shard or pebble scraped a scale off her legs. Whimpering in pain, Mona grabbed the cloak of water from its hook and promptly draped it over her torso, her burning gills welcoming its icy, oceanic embrace. As she regained her wits and rose to her full height using the crutches, she grumbled, “Drat! That tore off a scale. Do you still need any, Rhinedottir?”
“Clumsy of you,” Rhinedottir snorted, “but I could always use an extra in case this test goes awry.” After tossing the pearly scale to Rhinedottir, who immediately rebuked her for tossing things around the lab, Mona hobbled over to her own humble corner and plopped onto her cushioned lounge chair. Unlike Rhinedottir, who was obsessed with finding the truth of the world, and Albedo, who wanted nothing but to find for himself Rhinedottir’s secrets to creating all forms of life, Mona only studied the starry skies… although she never had gone to the surface herself. After all, what could an ocean creature that longed for the skies do if it couldn’t breathe above water? The only prototype of Mona’s above-water breathing device had to stay in Rhinedottir’s lab, for Mona had no faith that its delicate membrane could survive the crushing pressure of the deep. She could construct another one above water, but where would she store it while she built it? Not to mention, Rhinedottir had told both Mona and Albedo multitudes of tales of storms and winds and burning ashes that clotted out the sky and made it impossible to breathe - there was absolutely no way that Mona could ensure the apparatus was safe even if there was a place to store it.
But what if there was a material strong enough to resist the pressure of the deep, yet porous enough to transmit the saline solution to Mona’s gills?
After tottering around to assist Albedo and Rhinedottir with their various rather explosive experiments, Mona finally had time to plan out the perfect water-retaining mantle for the various exploits she planned for when she could finally exit the ocean for longer periods. Time flew by in a flash, and Albedo’s whisper roused Mona out of her frantic scribblings of prototype blueprints, all constructed of this imaginary supermaterial that had all the right qualities for the perfect breathable water cloak. “Mona, I think it’s time to go. Rhinedottir has been sending you dirty glances for a while now.”
“Stars, it’s been that long?” Mona craned her neck to look up at the distant miniscule aperture in the rock miles higher than them that provided fresh air for Rhinedottir and Albedo while they were outside the waters. Sure enough, she could see the tiniest sliver of orange-blue skies and a pinprick of sunlight. “I’ll be leaving then, Rhinedottir!”
Rhinedottir sniffed, ruffling her mud-colored fins before slipping into the freshwater cavern behind the lab. Unlike Albedo and Mona, Rhinedottir had resided in multitudes of places from land to swamps before finally settling down in this underwater grove she had come upon by accident. Mona had pestered her about the possibility of getting above water through the cavern, but Rhinedottir had only scoffed at the idea, snidely informing Mona that “You would be lost in those twisting tunnels in a heartbeat, so you best not try.” Mona wished that Rhinedottir would express the fact that she didn’t want Mona in danger in a nicer way, but she supposed that was just Rhinedottir’s way of doing things.
Taking a breath through her gills before hanging her cloak on the hook and propping her crutches on the wall, Mona quickly dragged herself over to the water and plunged into the icy depths once more.