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“For a big, brave seadweller, you sure are a cluckbeast!”
“I ain’t no such thing. You’re the wweird one, wwhat kinda wwacked-out troll likes bein’ underground all the time anywways?”
Aradia laughed. It was that bubbly sound that always made Eridan’s bloodpusher melt into diamonds. How he had ended up with this beautiful girl as his moirail he would never know, but she was the best thing that had ever happened to him.
Even when she was dragging him underground to go… do something. Splonking or some stupid word like that.
The girl forged ahead, her battered, heavy boots somehow always landing with solid footing despite the fact that the ground was mostly made up of a bunch of rock bits that never stayed where Eridan’s feet wanted them to. He slipped and slid after her, cursing with every step and wishing that they were back at Aradia’s hive watching a movie or jamming or doing pretty much anything besides going into a big dark cave and getting themselves lost.
“Come on, fraidy-fish, hurry up!” Eridan muttered some more choice words and followed the sound of his crazy moirail’s voice.
After a while, though, even Eridan had to admit that the cave was pretty cool. It wasn’t as dark as he had expected, what with the glow-worm ceilings in some of the chambers and the way some of the rocks glittered just enough to let him see in others. Being nocturnal, trolls of course had good night vision, and seadwellers were even more so, to be able to see in deep, dark waters. Even though she was as far from seadweller as she could get, Aradia never seemed to falter in the darkness, only turning on her flashlight in the darkest of tunnels. Eridan was content to follow, allowing the Trolliana Jones wannabe to have her adventure but there to back her up if necessary.
But with Aradia, it was always necessary in some way. I shoulda known there’d be a reason why she dragged me down here, Eridan thought morosely, staring at the dark pool. “No. No wway in all the bonefishin’ hells, I am so not going dowwn there, Ara. Nuh uh.”
“Yuh huh,” Aradia said, that sweet smile on her face, paired with the light in her eyes, that said You are going down there whether you say yes or no because I am definitely the dominant troll in this relationship no matter what you like to tell yourself. “I’ve never made it past here because I can’t tell how far the water goes. If it’s too long or a dead end, then that’s that, but if it’s short, then you can tell me and we can keep going!” She was almost vibrating with excitement.
Eridan sighed. He knew how this was going to end. Sooner or later, he was going to be up to his gills (and past) in creepy dark cave water, doing dumb adventure things for his dumb adventure moirail who couldn’t do things like breathe underwater. Landdwwellers.
But really, he would do anything for this landdweller. Hopping into a puddle while a few miles underground was nothing. So he whined and complained, but really it took no time at all before he was unwinding his scarf (Aradia always took good care of it) and tugging off his cape, folding it neatly before putting it, along with the scarf and his glasses, into her backpack. Then he turned to the pool and jumped in.
***
Aradia watched her moirail dive into the water that had so often blocked her path on her underground adventures, and then settled down to wait. She tugged a battered notebook from a side pocket in her pack and began detailing the behaviors of the glow-worms she and Eridan had seen before, feeding and mating and traveling through a darkness always made slightly less dark by their own dim light.
She wasn’t even halfway through when the water rippled, bubbled, and burst, revealing a very wet seatroll. Eridan sloshed out of the pool as Aradia jumped to her feet and promptly sat down on the rock beside hers, at which point she sat down again. “So?” she asked, eyes bright. “How was it? Can a lowly little land troll get through, or is it for seadwellers only?”
Eridan huffed a laugh, taking his glasses as she handed them to him. “It’s not far at all. I bet you could make it, easy, ’specially with your great big lungs, all worked out from yellin’ at me an’ Sol all the time.”
Aradia laughed, swatting at his shoulder. “Oh, shut up. But that’s wonderful! I’ve never been able to get past this pool. Now we’ll be going into unexplored territory!”
Uneager as he really was to go into “unexplored territory,” Eridan helped Aradia sort through what could survive the watery trip with them, ending up with not much. Aradia had brought along a waterproof notebook with the hope that the pool would prove to be traversable, and there was a waterproof pencil to go with it, but the flashlights, along with Aradia’s handwritten map and the snacks they had brought, would have to stay behind in the pack. They would just have to hope that there was enough light on the other side to see exactly what it was that they had discovered.
“Scared?” Eridan asked as they stood at the edge of the water, staring into the dark.
Aradia nodded. “A bit. I’m definitely not made for water, but anything for adventure, you know?” She continued. “There’s still that little bit of me that thinks that you’re going to leave me to drown down there, that thinks ‘seatroll’ and wants to run in the opposite direction.”
Eridan’s bloodpusher tightened. Aradia was never afraid to say what was on her mind, but sometimes it was painful. Once upon a time, he might not have hesitated to do such a thing, just to rid Alternia of one more filthy landdweller. If he met his past self now, though, he would strangle himself right then and there.
Aradia hadn’t finished talking. “But the rest of me tells that bit to shut up and go choke on its own bulge, because I’m busy having an underwater adventure with my awesome moirail!” She grabbed his hand in hers (warm, rust-red blood running fast and hot against his slow, cool violet) and jumped in with a shriek, dragging him (that undignified squawk was definitely not his) with her.
The dark cave water splashed with their entry, but in moments it had swallowed them, leaving no trace of the rust-blooded adventurer and her violetblood sidekick.
(Eridan would resent that term, but what he doesn’t know won’t hurt him)
***
As Eridan swam through the tunnel, gills rippling as the water flowed through him, he was painfully aware of that warm hand in his, the air-reliant body it was bound to, the way landdwellers writhed as their bodies gave up the fight and took in the heavy water instead of the air they so desperately needed, the bloated shapes of drowned trolls deep beneath the surface, blank eyes wide and unseeing.
What if he had been wrong? What if Aradia couldn’t make it through the tunnel? What if she drowned, down here in the dark, and her last thought was that he had done exactly what that fearful bit of her had claimed he would, that he had never changed from that idiotic, murderous coward he had once been, before she had come into his life and beaten him into shape with sheer stubbornness?
But before he could well and truly panic (how foolish, the seadweller being the one to panic when they were deep in cold, dark water while the land troll swam along happily beside him), though, the light changed and then they were bursting into air. Eridan sneezed as his body switched respiratory systems, still holding tightly to Aradia’s hand as she coughed and gasped beside him.
“All right?” he asked, helping the rustblood out of the water and onto dry ground, sitting beside her and patting somewhat hesitantly at her back as she coughed.
She nodded, water still streaming from the heavy dark coils of her hair. “Fine,” she panted. “A bit long to go without breathing, but I’m fine. Really,” she added at his disbelieving face. “Like you said, I’ve got strong lungs. I’ll have to thank you and Sollux for being such idiots and making me yell at you all the time.” That got a little smile out of her moirail.
Now they turned to look at where they had ended up, the place Aradia had wanted to explore for so long, and both were so awestruck that neither one could say a word.
It was a cavern, bigger at least twice over than any of the ones they had passed through on their way to the pool, and the entire massive place gleamed softly with light. The ceiling streamed with glowing worms, greater in number than any cave Aradia had discovered before, and their light was reflected and magnified by the masses of crystals sprouting from the floor and walls like sharp, glittering grass.
It was beautiful.
Slowly, Aradia stood, and Eridan followed the girl as she stepped carefully between the crystals, dodging the few glow-worms on the floor, wandering aimlessly through the cavern. Suddenly, without warning, she turned and flung herself into his arms, nearly knocking the seatroll off his feet.
“Ara – what –”
“Thank you!” she burst out. “Thank you thank you thank you!” She pulled back, beaming at him and entirely ignoring his baffled look. “I’ve wanted to come here for so long, and it’s beautiful, and I could never have done it without you!” She hugged him again.
Eridan laughed, only a bit self-consciously. “It wwas your idea, Ara. You think I’da ever come down here on my owwn? I nevver wwoulda found it myself, it wwas all you, really. But yeah, it’s pretty.”
They sat down, or mostly Aradia sat and dragged Eridan down with her because she wouldn’t let go of him. “Just think,” she sighed, eyes going that milky, dreamy shade as she drifted off in that way that always both awed and scared Eridan, as if she was beyond an ordinary troll, was some kind of goddess, so far beyond him and everything he knew. “Think. We’re probably the first trolls ever to set walking appendage in here ever. There’s no other entrance besides the water tunnel. Seatrolls wouldn’t care about exploring a cave like this, and land trolls couldn’t get through that tunnel on their own.
“Only a team like us could have made it. Land troll and sea troll. Both of us, together. That’s what this place is for. It’s only for us. For ever.”
***
Later, Sollux would comment on Aradia’s new necklace, a piece of violet-purple crystal wrapped with old rusty wire and threaded on a chain strong enough to withstand adventure but beautiful enough to wear to an archaeology conference. She would smile that little smile and think of a long tunnel and a cold hand holding tight to hers in the dark.
Feferi would see Eridan’s new ring and say how pretty it was, how the rusty-red stone sparkled so beautifully in its silver setting, gorgeous but subtle, and he would laugh a little and remember the way a dark cave lit up with glowworms like stars, how eyes that sometimes shone with an unearthly, godlike light always returned to their soft rust, and the warmth of a hand in his.