Archive of Our Own

Ginnie Springs, Florida 1970

Nicky had been right. Looking up from the Devil’s Ear spring, the surface of the water looked like a church window – if you squinted a little bit.

Above her, the ochre flow of the Santa Fe river mixed with crystal clear water from Ginnie. It created an opalescent surface resembling painted glass when the sun shone through it. Lying on an old log wedged halfway down the Devil’s Ear, Andy was in the perfect place to appreciate the splendor of it. After the endless years she’d spent on this planet, very few sights were new to her anymore. Scuba diving was introducing her to a few of them.

Even Nicky had to win a bet sometimes.

She sat up on the log and stretched. Above her, the painted glass slowly changed as the sky got darker. Time to go.

Measuring only at 20 feet at the bottom, the ear wasn’t truly deep enough that she needed to decompress, but she took her time nonetheless. Coming up from a dive was slow, it had to be. This was something she’d learned the hard way in the 50s while doing sea rescues.

Besides, she liked taking her time. It was one of the only resources she’d always had plenty of.

By the time she was toweling her hair, Joe and Nicky were coming out of the water as well. Joe was the last, shaking his curls in a deliberate attempt to spray water everywhere. He managed to get most of it on Nicky, who swore at him. Joe blew him a kiss and dumped his scuba gear into the trunk of their Jeep.

He motioned for a towel. Andy threw it approximately 3 feet left of him so Joe had to scramble to catch it. He flipped Andy off as half of it ended on the ground. She winked.

“Well?”

Andy sucked on her teeth and turned to look at Nicky who was pretending he wasn’t smug.

“Well what?”

“Don’t start,” Nicky said, and fished out a pack of cigarettes from the front pocket of his shirt. “It was beautiful and you loved it. Pay up, please.”

Andy sighed, before digging through her pockets and handing Nicky the contents: a whole five dollars and sixty-four cents. Nicky damn near beamed as he put away Andy’s money and took out his lighter.

“Andy,” Joe said, squeezing his hair into the towel, “I found something.”

Andy snatched the cigarette from Nicky’s fingers right as he managed to light it and he made a mournful sound.

“More wet rocks?” She asked and took a drag. The cigarette was menthol. Fuck, but Nicky had bad taste sometimes.

“Technically. I found a cave.”

Andy looked at Joe, and there was a very telling gleam in his eye. Interesting. She lifted one eyebrow and Joe carried on.

“At the bottom of the Devil's eye. It’s where the spring water flows from. I had my flashlight, so I looked through just a little bit and it kept going. The flow is strong but the opening is big enough to fit though. I could have easily swam further.”

“So, it’s a cave. I know you’ve seen those before.” Andy said with a shrug.

“Not under water,” he said, lifting his scuba mask. ”Before now we could have never even dreamed of going in there. Now it isn’t even a struggle. There could be anything in those caves. We might be the first people to ever see them. How long has it been since the last time you went somewhere truly new?”

Andy took another drag of the cigarette and considered it. Joe was right.

She glanced over at Nicky who raised his eyebrow and shrugged.

“Well?” Joe asked and poked her in the leg with his toe.

“Well…” Andy blew out smoke. “What do you suggest?”

“We fill up our tanks, get everyone a flashlight and come back here to look into it tomorrow.”

“Solid plan, I like it. What about you Nicky?” Nicky frowned thoughtfully around a new cigarette and crossed his arms.

“If Andy is coming with you, I think I would rather stay on land,” he said. “Booker is not well and I think we’ve left him alone for long enough today. That, and our neighbors said they needed help with their garden tomorrow. Besides, I don’t much care for enclosed spaces. If you find something, suppose I can always join you on another dive, no?”

“You and Booker can have a garden adventure by yourselves then,” Joe said and Nicky snorted. “Oh yes, he’s going to love that, weeding with strangers.” Nicky reached over to tuck a wet curl behind Joe’s ear fondly before standing up.

“Right, let’s go home. We all need to eat tonight or nobody is diving anywhere tomorrow.”

Together they packed up the gear, loaded the truck, and prepared for departure. As Nicky hit the gas pedal, Andy saw from the corner of her eye Joe twisting around on the back seat to look at the spring one more time before they were off. She felt a stab of fondness at the sight.

Nearly thousand years, and he still had the same joy in him, the same curiosity for life as he had done the first time they’d met. Had she been as excited about the world when she had been as young as he still was? It was hard to remember that far back. It had been long before meeting Lykon, before she’d even met–

She breathed through a sudden ache. Pain in her chest rose as the dusk started to bleed into darkness and the streetlights slowly flicked on around them. It was quiet. Streams of lights passed over and through the car in steady orange waves and she focused on counting each one. The motor hummed and groaned, and for a long moment, grief was another passenger in the car with them.

Nicky reached over to turn on the radio. It crackled for a moment and then settled on a patchy signal transmitting voices of dead jazz singers. For the rest of the drive she tried to listen to the song lyrics through the noise and did not think about being young or what it had felt like to be curious about life, so long ago.

———

It was early in the morning as their car pulled to a stop by the springs again. Joe had been uncharacteristically energetic, out of bed at the first sight of sunlight and preparing his gear in record time. They had been in the car and on the way to Ginnie before the sun had even finished rising.

Getting out of the car she could not help but sigh. The spring was still just as beautiful as it had been yesterday, the water just as crystal clear. The morning sun speckled through the leaves around them, dusting everything with flecks of gold. She could feel Joe come to stand next to her as she took it all in.

“I cannot believe he chose weeding over this,” Joe said, and Andy snorted.

Once they were done with gear, Andy sat on the edge of the spring and lowered her fins in. Next to her, Joe submersed himself, and the surface became dotted with the bubbles coming out of his regulator. Andy followed.

Together they swam to the Devil’s Eye and started descending to the bottom of the basin. Following Joe down the spring, Andy had a good view to appreciate his form. Out of all four of them, Andy was the one with the most scuba diving experience, but Joe wasn’t far behind. She was proud of him. Diving was a skill he had been honing for years, and he was incredibly comfortable in the water. He’d even held one beginner scuba class a few years ago during an extended summer break at Mallorca. That had been quite a disaster, but in fairness it had had nothing to do with Joe’s diving skills and a lot more to do with the type of tourists that he’d lucked into.

Joe turned around to give her a cheesy little wave when he reached the bottom. Then, he pointed to one of the edges of the basin and motioned Andy to follow him.

There, at the base of a dark limestone wall, was the mouth of a cave. It was wide and low. She saw how the white sand of the spring abruptly disappeared into darkness. Once closer, she could feel the flow coming from the opening – the source of Ginnie springs, somewhere deep inside stone.

Joe gave her a thumbs up and she returned it. He nodded, then turned and began to push himself in. As his fins faded into darkness, Andy followed.

They had to turn on their torches almost immediately. In their pale light, a narrow passage was clear. Somehow, the limestone here looked very different already. It was white here as well, but looked porous like a sponge and the crevices were full of dark brown and red stains. The flow was strong and they had to kick hard to make progress. It made the lamplight shudder and bounce off the walls, making the whole passage look even more strange. It was already like no cave she’d ever seen.

After a while of pushing through, the cave finally opened up. The new room was larger and there were large, sharp rocks jutting out of the bottom of the cave. The floor was covered in silty sand, much finer than in the spring above. As Andy swam down, it swirled around her fins and as she reached out to trace the floor, her fingers created little dust spirals in the water.

They made a few stops and starts, trying to find where the cave continued, going so far as to swim into at least one dead end before finding the passage forward. The cave kept changing its shape. Now, the ceiling was very high up and the cave had gotten narrower though not uncomfortably so. They were swimming between two massive stone walls. It looked bizarre. The walls had ledges protruding towards each other in the middle, almost like alien balconies. It was like nothing she’d ever experienced before. She chanced a glance at Joe and saw her building excitement mirrored in his eyes. He was just as enthralled as she was.

The water was clear and pristine here, same as it was on the surface. This made sense, and yet it hadn’t been what she’d pictured. Caves, in her experience, were usually dark and grimy, all the water in them murky. Very few caves she’d ever visited had anything at all like these gleaming white limestone walls, this crystalline water. It was dark of course, but with her torch she could see in perfect detail how clean and smooth the cave was, how the relentless flowing spring water had carved it almost soft looking. At parts it almost resembled a man made tunnel, wide and clean. At the edges of the reach of her flashlight the water first turned to a beautiful dark blue before becoming inky dark. In the light it was also easy to actually see the flow, sand and other bits moving past them and behind them in the endless stream. It was otherworldly and gorgeous.

Joe had definitely been right.

Then the cave changed again and for a moment Andy forgot to breathe. The passage did not just open up, it disappeared all together. The tunnel they had been following to what she could only describe as a hall or a ballroom.

The space was massive. Huge bumpy limestone slabs reached up from the floor towards the ceiling that disappeared far further above their heads than any had done before. The walls were wider here too, though not nearly as far apart as the floor and ceiling were. On their left Andy could see caverns and pathways reaching into the darkness beyond her lamplight’s reach. Ahead of them, the room continued on.

The bubbles from their regulators spiraled above them, slowly dancing their way towards the ceiling where they when the light hit them right. It was all so much more beautiful than Andy could have ever guessed on the surface.

Had anyone ever been here before? The thought that they were possibly the first two people to ever see these formations, these incredible, unearthly spaces, was making her head spin.

Andy caught Joe’s gaze and knew that he was thinking the same thing. She reached out and he grabbed her hand, bringing it close to his chest. She could see tears at the corners of his eyes, could feel matching ones in hers.

Overcome with gratitude to be here now with him, she moved to wrap Joe in her arms, and he embraced her back.

Together they stayed in place for a long while.

Eventually, the flow forced them to separate, and they resumed their exploration. It was a big space and it continued forwards a long way. The flow was coming from somewhere even deeper in the cave. Joe motioned towards checking out something on the left side of the room and Andy nodded. For her part, she set off towards the end of the room to see if she could find where the flow was coming from.

As she got closer to the far end, the space got smaller again. The ceiling caved in and the floor rose up and soon she found a small but wide opening between two slabs of rock that the water flowed from. It brought to her mind the mouth of a massive stone giant.

Andy peered through, her flashlight grazing the sandy floor of the cave on the other side, and considered the opening. It was a tight fit, but she was fairly sure she could get through. She was very eager to find out what was behind the bend. Just one more corner and maybe they would find the source of the flow.

Then her flashlight hit something on the other side. Something that wasn’t limestone or sand.

Something that was bright orange.

She’d made the decision before she’d even thought about it.

Grabbing the limestone ledge, she started to push herself forward and through. It was difficult against the current. Her tanks made an alarming sound as they dragged along the stone. She tried to adjust for a better position, only for her grip to slip and in one quick motion a sharp stone cut through her skin. The gash formed and healed in an instant. Little bubbles of blood floated past her and away, down to where she’d come from. She grimaced at the sight.

Avoiding the sharp part, she began to pull herself again. It was slow and uncomfortable, but with some effort, she managed to squeeze through.

On the other side, the room was much the same as the others had been. There was no start to the flow in sight, just more of the cave continuing on into the distance. She did not care about that right now though. Looking at it from this side, the strange object looked even more confusing. An orange something was sticking out of the silt at the bottom of the floor and she could not make sense of it.

Adjusting her buoyancy, she sank down to get a closer look. It was only just enough for her fins to touch the floor, but as soon as they did, she realized she’d made a mistake. From the movement of her fin, the silt at the bottom of the floor immediately swirled up, creating an opaque cloud of dust. It spread fast, but with a quick dive she managed to grab the item before it was hidden. And then her breath stopped.

It was a scuba mask.

Only her long years of experience with death kept her hands from shaking as she looked up and tried to see the body it could have belonged to. Unwilling to swim deeper, she stayed where she was, kicking to keep herself in place against the flow and shined her light forward into the dark.

There was nothing. A cold pit opened in her stomach. Whoever this mask had belonged to, had to be dead. They were bloating somewhere deeper in the cave, a waterlogged rotting corpse, swaying with the movement of the water. The flow must have picked up the mask and carried it here.

They were not the first people here after all.

Her breathing was shallow and fast and her heart hammered. She tried to will herself to calm down but no matter what she did the pressure in her chest didn’t loosen. It was getting harder and harder to draw a breath. It didn’t make sense, she knew how to calm herself, she didn’t just start hyperventilating, no matter how scared, unless–

Andy reached for the J-valve to click it open and immediately felt the air flow freely again.

Fuck.

How was it possible she was down to just backup air already?

A memory of Nicky mentioning something about how many minutes of air was left in the tank after triggering the J-valve flashed in her mind, but she could not think of the answer. It had been two days ago, Nicky had been wearing those ugly purple shorts and she’d really needed to pee, and how the fuck were those the only things she could remember?

Gingerly, she fastened the plastic mask to her dive belt and turned around. Getting back out was much easier than getting in had been due to the force of the flow pushing her out, but her heart hammered in her ears much louder now. The airflow from her tanks was fine again, but there was a pit in her stomach and it was growing bigger. It was making her breathing fast and anxious, wasting precious air.

She pushed herself out of the mouth and back into the large chamber. On a quick glance, her flashlight revealed no sign of Joe anywhere, just darkness and old limestone. Swallowing down her anxiety she pushed forward through the limestone pillars looking for any sign of movement. A flash of light hitting an air tank, a shining ringlet curl, anything at all that would let her know where he was.

She forced herself to focus. Joe had swam to the left from the entrance. At the other end of the room, there was a passageway in that direction. Heart hammering in her ears, she pushed in.

This new passage continued for a bit. Suddenly there was another opening on her right, and then another. It was like a hallway with a row of doors. In all of them she saw nothing but dark and more spiraling passageways.

Breathing was hard. She could not tell if the pressure in her chest was the rising panic or lack of oxygen anymore. Where was Joe? Had she turned this way already? On a whim she took one of the passages, but everything looked the same, and soon she realized she had no idea which way she had come from anymore.

All that was around her was darkness and stone. Closing in and pressing down. It was like being in a catacomb.

Or a coffin.

She stopped swimming. It was like there was ice in her stomach, crawling up through her chest, making her nauseous.

She could not do anything like this. She had to calm down. She had to think. She owed it to Joe, who was lost somewhere and needed her. She owed it to Nicky and Booker who were waiting for them on the other side.

She owed it to Quynh to not get stuck down here too.

One deep breath. Good. Slow. Another deep breath. She was in control, she had to be. Another deep breath. The pressure in her chest was definitely the lack of air again. Another deep breath. She could not focus on that.

She started swimming again. In the glow of her flashlight every passage still looked the same, all full of darkness that gave way to polished white limestone, all identical, except–

In one of the passages, the light stopped. It was almost like it hit a wall, but there was no white limestone it was reflecting off of. It took her a moment to realise what she was seeing, and when she did her heart leaped.

It was silt. A wide impenetrable wall of silt had risen up from the floor of the cave and created an entirely opaque barrier that blocked all light. It was swirling towards her. Here at this separate part of the cave, the pull of the spring was not strong and the silt did not dissipate like it had earlier but it stayed put in front of her. A great barrier of sand.

It could only mean one thing.

She swam in.

Immediately her flashlight became useless. The silt was so thick she couldn’t see it, even if she brought it next to her face. The only way forward was through touch.
She kept one hand on the wall as she swam, using it as leverage. The passage was too wide to really feel the other wall and she dreaded letting go of this one, there was no telling if she’d be able to keep swimming in the right direction in all this silt if she let go. She had to just keep going. One push, then the next, then the next, on and on.

Time warped. She had no idea how long she had been in the silt, never mind how far she’d gotten. It felt like she had been swimming hundreds of meters, though she knew she could not have left the passage they had been in. With every careful stroke she feared what she would find. Joe could be so far along that they’d both run out of air before getting to him. He could be stuck somewhere, trapped between the walls and trashing. What if he was on the other side of the room and she’d already swam past him in the silt? Maybe the cave had collapsed on him and he was somewhere under the rubble, endlessly dying and reviving.

There was a possibility she would never find him at all.

Breath rattled in her ears now. Her chest ached and she knew she was running out of time. She could always turn around and come back with more air later to look for him but– no. If she came back the silt might have dissipated. She would never be able to recognise which passage this was, and clearly Joe was so far down this way that she would not be able to see him from the corridor, silt or no silt. And Joe would be dead and not be able to make his own way towards her. Finding him would be near impossible.

It had already been hard enough to get this far. She could not leave now. A few more minutes. Just a few more minutes and she would have to find him. Whatever it takes.
Her hand skimmed rock for what felt like an eternity. An endless wall of cold hard limestone, until suddenly–

There was an arm.

She grabbed it, frantic, and it jolted. The hand reached for her and Andy reached forward, finding also a body; arms, shoulders and a head of curly hair. Relief flooded her body. She felt tears in her visor, though it made no difference in the dark of the silt. The ache in her chest persisted, but the coldness wasn’t overwhelming anymore.

She had him. They were going to get through this.

She grabbed hold of Joe’s hand. She squeezed hard and he squeezed back.
Slowly, focusing very hard on finding the right direction, she turned around. Then, she started swimming back to where she came from, pulling Joe behind her.
Joe was slow, sluggish, hard to drag, and every once in a while he would grow heavy and limp, before jolting back into movement. Every time he did she would clutch him a little tighter.

With the hand that was grazing the wall, she took a hold of her flashlight again. It was completely useless in the silt, and she could barely even tell that it was on, but she shone it forward anyway, because she would need eventually when they–

The light hit white limestone wall. She pulled Joe forward towards her, trying to get him out of the silt as well. As he emerged, she finally got a good look at him and–

Fuck.

One of the tubes from his air tank was ripped open, and his regulator was just gone, leaving him completely without air. Andy pulled him in just as she saw him struggle through what looked like another in a long line of painful deaths.

In her arms, Joe drowned once again, and she held his body as it fell limp against her. Then there was a pause that felt like an eternity, before his body jolted back to life. She reached for her own regulator so they could share the air but– no. There just wasn't enough in the tank. Joe would be breathing hard, if he could breathe at all. He needed her at her sharpest so she could navigate them out. There was no other choice but to keep the regulator to herself and try to conserve air. His tear stained, exhausted eyes found hers from behind his mask and she felt tears in her own eyes.

They were getting out of here. They had to.

She turned around again. All of the passages still looked the same, but there was a way out. She just had to think.

She had passed the main cave and turned to the right on her way back from the mouth. If she could get back out to the big hall with the pillars she would know to go right and back the way they came. The flow would be stronger there. This was clearly a side route, far away enough from main flow that it was possible to create the sort of silt-out they had just experienced. However, that meant if they could find the flow again, they would be able to follow it out.

She started swimming forward, clutching Joe’s arm tight.

For a long time she couldn’t feel anything except a burning sensation in her chest. No flow, just pain. Soon she also felt lightheadedness settling in. It was almost like there was a bubble between her eyes, warping everything and making it hard to focus on any details for too long. She had to hold on. Joe was in no condition to get them out. It would have to be her, and they did not have long.

When she finally felt the pull of the water, she was so dizzy there was no room for relief. There was no time left. She had to grit her teeth and force herself to stay upright, stay moving.

She followed the pull and soon enough, they made it back to the bigger ballroom area. There were spots in her eyes. They had to turn right. Christ, but there were still so many rooms on the way up. Joe was heavy and limp behind her, but she focused on gripping him tight as the flow pushed them forwards, towards the exit.

She could make it. If she could just see properly.

The flow was strong. She had to trust it. Where else could it go but up?

They turned this way and that. She still couldn’t see, but it didn’t feel like the same way they’d come from.

Had they been through this tunnel?

It was hard to see where she was going anymore. The flow was pushing them, so she followed. There wasn’t anything else she could do. Holding Joe was the only thing she was sure about at this point.

They were in a tunnel and it was going up.

She was sure they had not been here before. It was too narrow, too vertical. She could not see. Why could she not see anything? Nothing made sense. It had not been this narrow before and–

They couldn’t turn anymore, the flow was pushing them on and on and on, the tunnel was tight, too tight, they were going to get stuck and–

She was pushing with her free hand, and the walls were crushing them, pushing the rest of the oxygen out of her lungs but–

Is this what it felt like for Quynh?

The spots were taking over her vision now, she couldn’t see, she couldn’t breathe, her heart was deafening in her ears, she just had to keep holding onto Joe, and then it was almost like there was light ahead of her, brightness cutting through some of the dark. If she could push through just one more moment, if she could hold on just a little bit longer–

––

There were colors above her.

So many colors, more than she could understand. Like a burst of fire, or light through glass.

A church window.

Andy blinked her eyes once, twice, and came back to life at the bottom of The Devil’s ear.

And she wasn’t alone.

Andy blinked again and this time, it was Joe who grabbed her hand.

Together they broke the surface.

Andy tore her regulator out of her mouth and next to her, Joe vomited mud and water. There was a cry from somewhere on the other side of the spring, then a splash, and suddenly two pairs of arms were dragging both of them out of the water. Then she was lying on the grass next to the spring and Joe was being hauled next to her.

Booker was there. So was Nicky. They were both fussing, crying and yelling and making all sorts of sounds she wasn’t able to parse right now. Beyond their frantic moving bodies, she saw Joe laying on the ground as well. Their eyes met.

And then Joe – tired, crying, exhausted, Joe – smiled at her.

Andy smiled back, and then cried and then smiled some more. Still laying on her back, she reached for him just as he reached for her, and they did not let go of each other for a very long time.

—

Blue Hole, Dahab, Egypt 2024

Nile felt both very excited and very silly in her new wetsuit. She was probably carrying far more gear than was strictly necessary but she had wanted to go all out. They were certainly able to afford it. It was the perfect moment.

She was halfway across the beach already when she spotted Joe further along the shore. He was lounging on a striped chair, wearing those big, bright, pineapple themed plastic sunglasses that Nicky had picked up from a tourist shop in Cairo a few days ago. He looked very relaxed and just a little bit ridiculous.

What was puzzling though, was the complete lack of gear with him. She decided to investigate.

“You’re not diving with us?”

Joe looked up from his book and smiled at her.

“Not this time no, I’m enjoying the beautiful Egyptian sun and some classic literature,” he said and laughed at Nile when she wrinkled her nose at the Nora Roberts paperback in his hands. “Why? Did you want me to join you?”

“I mean, I guess I had kind of pegged you more as a sporty adventure type of guy than a book on the beach type of guy,” Nile said with a shrug.

“Time for a life lesson Nile, everyone contains multitudes,” he said and grinned. ”But seriously, I am not very good with diving these days. I might take a snorkel and go explore the reef at some point later today but that’s it. You should go have fun with Nicky and Andy. ”

She frowned.

“You can’t dive?”

Joe shrugged. “I don’t want to.”

“You’re seriously telling me you don’t wanna explore down there? See the arc?” She asked. It was confusing. Joe was both adventurous and loved beautiful things. These were the main two things she knew about him at this point. Here was a natural wonder a few hundred feet away from him that would only require a little diving to get to see. And Joe would rather read cheap supermarket paperbacks on the beach.

Joe raised one quizzical eyebrow and looked at her pointedly over his novelty sunnies. “You’re going to the arch?”

“Obviously, since we’re here and everything.” Joe stared at her hard for a moment, before carefully dog-earing a page corner and putting the book down.

“How much diving experience do you have Nile?” Joe said, now looking very sternly at her. She flushed under the scrutiny, feeling suddenly like she was being interrogated.

“Uh well I’ve done it a couple of times with some friends in Florida,” she hedged.

“Right, and would you, after a couple of Sunday hikes, try an attempt to climb Mount Everest?” Joe asked with an unimpressed frown.

“Well, if Mount Everest was a hundred feet from me and I was immortal, I might consider it.” Nile said, pursing her lips and stared right back at him.

Joe held her gaze for a while. Then he sighed and rubbed a hand across his face.

“Nile…” Joe said. “I get where you’re coming from. I do, really. And normally I’m all for taking risks, but in this case you don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Nile crossed her arms. “It’s a natural wonder. It’s right there. I have the gear. I literally cannot die, what could be the downside?”

“Sure, it’s going to be gorgeous, and sure, you wouldn’t die permanently no matter what happened. But…you won’t be able to appreciate the wonders of nature if you traumatize yourself in the process,” Joe said, gazing down and running his thumb along the edge of the book.

“That place is no joke. If you die there you won’t be able to make it out without help. Dying trapped is one of the most terrifying things that can happen to any of us.” Joe looked up at her with sad eyes. ”I know you know this. I’m sure you’ve felt it in your dreams.”

Nile felt a stab of cold in her gut. Flashes of pain, anger, cold darkness and resulting many sleepless nights. “I guess I… I hadn’t thought about it like that, ” she said quietly. Joe nodded.

“If you really want to see the arc, you should ask Andy or Nicky to teach you, they’ve done it many times. You’ll be much better equipped to do it safely after some practice.”

“They didn’t go through… whatever it is you went through?” she asked. Joe shrugged and leaned back on his beach chair.

“We all go through things differently,” he said. “I haven’t been able to do scuba since. The way my breathing sounds when I have scuba gear on makes me go into a panic attack every time. Nicky didn’t get quite as involved so he is less affected in that sort of way. Andy didn’t dive for a while after either, but she could not resist it forever.” He looked towards the water with a fond smile. ”No matter what she claims, she’s the most curious out of all of us. Besides, she has a very good reason to try to keep up with deep sea diving technology.”

“Makes sense.”

“I promise I’ll tell you the story later tonight at the hotel,” Joe said, and lifted up his book again. ”I can see that Andy is waving at you, you don’t wanna keep her waiting.” Nile turned around to look, and indeed she was.

“All right, I’ll hold you to that, old man. I won’t try to dive the arch, but you can’t get away with being cryptic forever,” she said, and he laughed.

“Deal.”

Andy was waiting for her when she finally made it to the shoreline. She was clearly fresh out of the water, flushed with exertion and her hair was sticking everywhere, but there was a happy gleam in her eyes. It made something flutter in Nile’s chest .

“You look all decked out. Planning a dive?” Andy asked and Nile shrugged.

“I am. I mean, I was but Joe just told me I would be an idiot for attempting to dive the arch with only four or so hours of scuba training behind me.” Andy laughed and clapped her back.

“Well, he would be right. You wanna train with me this week, see how far along we can get you? I won’t promise you the arch but I think you’ll get the hang of it pretty soon. As long as you’re not bored of me already,” Andy said with a grin. Nile shook her head and smiled back at her.

“Just try to get rid of me. I’m ready for whatever you have to throw at me.”

“I know,” Andy said and winked. She gestured to Nile to follow her. ”All right, how much air do you have in that tank? We need to plan how deep we can go and for how long.”

“I have… I don’t know the exact amount actually,” Nile said and started walking after Andy.

“Well, that’s the next thing we are figuring out then.” Andy said brightly. ”First rule of diving Nile, you have to know exactly what the fuck you’re doing. I learned that the hard way.”