Following another disgusting meal of mushrooms, Luna reported for the last day of her regular duties - kelping in the fields to the north. As the station’s only active kelper, it had befallen on her to compensate for the dying grow-beds and the loss of the system’s biomatter by harvesting the long strands of slimy green flailing in the gentle streams. Not that she minded it the least. As opposed to the rest of the Logoruum, she was perfectly fine with living a life of relative solitude - one in which she might wander those endless dunes of sand, coral and kelp while construing thoughts that none other than her would ever hear. She felt giddy as she strapped herself in the auto-regulating, ancient, gray suit, zipped it shut and felt the System’s helping hands fit it to her skin.
Despite having done so hundreds of times, she still felt a nostalgic sensation to the humid, pool-side atmosphere as she readied herself for the great outhulls. The walker’s bay was a square construct; a construct surrounding a square-shaped hole in the hull, where the comfortable waters lay perfectly still - illuminated by bright, white lights built into the solid metal. For generations, those sources of illumination had guided her people to and fro their home and for generations to come, they would continue to do so.
She strapped her black mask on, grabbed the small, circular rebreather, and bit down on the stand-alone mouthpiece before touching a hand to the water, taking solace in the calm, warm embrace of the outside for the first time in a week.
The designs and workings of the apparatuses she wore had been lost to the ages; said to have been produced by Logos himself back when her kind lived beneath the scorching sun. Therefore, the device was priceless; the fact she was allowed to use them was as much of a testament to her skill as much as the trust the stationeers... or rather, her father placed in her. She drew a long breath of the rebreather’s filtered air, sating herself on that tasteless, fragranceless gas before plunging into the waters - down into the freedom of the dunes.
There were few who could swim like her, or so she had been told. “Born with flippers” her father had spoken more than once; high praise from the legendary swimmer. Like the fish lingering in the darkness around her, she had long since mastered the element of water and as she swam down towards the sands, she could’ve sworn that the big, wide eyes of the mysterious beasts nodded approvingly. Once she had reached the bottom, she turned to the north and swam in zig-zags between the ancient, green support columns, swinging her flashlight to scan for any interesting, unmapped creatures, only to find that there was nothing new, save for the odd starfish.
When she had finally embarked from her home, she spun around to look at the innumerable boxes and their impressive supports, illuminated by dim, red diodes that served to warn the rare, few visitors of the solid, green hull. In the stillness of the water, it all seemed so peaceful and quiet; a far cry from the chaotic, densely populated hellscape she knew the cantina to be. Just thinking about those packed afternoons made her shudder - especially since the rationing began. She could almost hear the complaints and whines of the young mothers, despite their triple rations. Perhaps, she thought, the kelp would keep them quiet until her father returned with the promised core.
She zoomed across the dunes, through a school of silverfish that followed her as their leader as she turned up to follow the red-shimmering Walker’s Ridge and paused to view her Kingdom from afar.
There, just beyond the tall protrusion of rock, massive fields of green reached for the distant, unseen surface with spindly growths - shrouding the biodiversity living in its depths. She rolled around herself as she descended to disappear into the forest, swimming along the tall ferns of bubbly green, feeling the cool, nourishing streams on her cheeks while navigating the ebb and flow of the magnificent, tall stalks.
As her mother had taught her, kelp was harvested from the top. On higher altitudes, plants grew faster - or so she had been told, though it did little to help her. All she knew was the life in the darkness; an altitude where kelp grew slow enough for her to still see the cuts she had made a cycle previous, however sparse they were. She continued to her mother’s clearing - where the two would always stop to shine their lights up at the perpetual school of fish swimming in their endless circle. There, it seemed the gray sands were ever-so-slightly lighter as if blessed by Logos himself in a time long since passed.
A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.
She turned the altitude controller on her left shoulder and sank to the large, dead, white skeleton of a long-dead coral and laid down to flash her beam up at those beautiful swirls of silver, blue, and red twinkling in the bright illumination of her ancient technology. Nothing had changed - it seemed even the fish were the same as they had been, all those years ago. She lay there for a moment, pondering the day’s turn of events; how she had gone into the control room to demand to be brought to the expedition, only to be promised a fate that seemed far more interesting. Her… at Sitalii? She had heard the stories from her peers - from the scavs, the traders, and her father; how it never slept and brimmed with life. More importantly, it was claimed they had a magical drink made from starch and time itself - said to lighten the mood, brighten any day, and make even the most boorish of men seem a prize. Perhaps then, she may finally see the point of lounging around her fellow dwellers.
When she had finally had enough of the endless swirls and sat up, her eyes caught something unexpected out in the kelp ahead. She had wandered the fields for as long as she could remember, but few things ever struck her as odd. Once, she had encountered a shark, but it had been long ago and with a simple technique of redirecting it, her father had inspired such a calm in her that she no longer feared the beasts… but this was no shark. It was something stationary - something red.
Hesitantly, she got back up into the water and lay low along the sand, cautious as she kicked the flippers, taking care not to kick any sand up to cloud her view. She clung to the first column of kelp and strained her eyes to look between the ferns, only to freeze as she made out what appeared to be a man - a pale, naked, young man, no older than her.
She had never seen a dead body, nor had she ever expected to. But there, without a breathing apparatus, a peaceful being seemed stationary - hanging from… wings…
She sat still for a moment, blinking. Had it been any other dead body, she’d have immediately returned and reported her findings to her father, but in this instance, she could not muster the strength to resist her inquisitive nature.
Cautiously, she scanned her surroundings, verifying that no beasts or funnymen from the other cantons were playing tricks on her, and snuck forwards, pushing past the ferns to gaze up at the divine being.
The man was something along her age. Like her, his cheeks were gaunt, his ribs were clearly visible over a sunk-in stomach. Her eyes rested on his groin for a moment, questioning whether her books had lied to her about what those things were intended for, as it seemed ill-fit to fit anywhere. She promptly shook the ill-placed thoughts from her mind and reminded herself that this man was dead and she was still uncertain as to how she felt about that fact. The least she could do, for the time being, was respect his corpse and not gawk at his male anatomy.
But what impressed her - what had caused her to approach him in the first place, were the wings. From somewhere at his back, long, red tendrils suspended him between two long columns of kelp; holding him still in the gentle stream.
She readied her kelp knife and held it in front of her as she crept ever closer to investigate the red wings. Every fiber of her being screamed for her to turn around; to run away from the unsightly things, but she needed to see - to verify that her books had not lied to her… that Angels were real…
When she was close enough to verify that he was, indeed, not wearing a rebreather, she extended a hand to touch the long tendrils from his back, she did so without hesitation. Her books promised beings of glorious power with wings as white as the purity of the creature’s soul. This ones were red - red and… undulating. Touching the strands, she could feel something - a squirming… thudding… like a pulse, but far less organized. She squeezed one of the fibers, only to verify that something seemed to wish to push past her fingers as the lumens collapsed to some amount of force.
Raising the flashlight, she looked back towards his eyes, only to scream into the rebreather as the head had turned to stare a pair of intensely bright, red irises at her.
She jerked back, still screaming as he shook his dark hair around, as if trying to wake up from a horrific nightmare - a nightmare she… was now a part of.
Luna spun around and lurched forwards and downwards, prepping her legs to kick him in an attempt to gain some distance, only to find that she was not alone with the horror.
Something, down there, had been attracted by the scent of the naked angel.
A shark.