In a body of water, most large and free of the pervasive human species, lived a sparse bunch of merfolk. What they were doing there, I wouldn’t know. But I’ve taken it upon myself to find out.
Perhaps, with this memory I've captured, I’ll find out?
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*Memory’s perspective*
I went around the watery room.
Since I was a small boy, it had been years since we saw any parental figures. At least, for us siblings. Walking, running, jumping: was not enough. Down here in the depths with my sister, we merfolk had gotten tired of living so long. We decided to play a game.
From which we never would return. It was a sudden decision on my part, but it was reciprocated. Out of the water, a ceiling about one to two feet from my face blocked any view there could possibly be. But yet, there was a light source of some kind, pale and without warmth,
I look around for my clothes and ideas. There’ll be a visitor today. My randomly vanishing phone said to me. She will be a welcome visitor.
I agreed as I run a hand over my face. Waking up has never been easy. And so I go out of our chalk-white hut that seems to simply blend into the sea. For some reason, it does and doesn’t feel like home here. I wonder why.
I and my sister go out to greet this woman. She falls into the sea, dead, and old, and I notice she was a friend of mine, from ages past. We had talked together, happiness sparkling, about music and life and many other tidbits. I was a teasing sort of person, and she would tease right back with a laugh. Here she lie in my arms now, stiff in a jump-ish and sitting position.
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Me and my sister grab her arms, gently maneuvering her to the place she should go. What we can tell of the light of the sky is cloudy. Heading lower in the ocean, we see other buildings. Rough-hewn. Very corral-like in their white bodies and very in-building-like with their soft edges and needless poofiness.
Still at angles rotating her arms as we float down, we see a bunch of merfolk, who walk a bit, stretching out their arms. As we gently get closer to eye level we hand her over. With a quick rushed motion and bang! She is out of our sight. And so are the merfolk.
Going back up we discuss with each other what exactly we plan to do before we go, and running our hands along a white vent to our left, that went straight, and was large enough to walk into, we decide on new clothes.
We fashion these out of rough-hewn scissors, and hemp that had washed up many years ago. A simple white tunic. I wear it and turn around, and don’t see her anymore. Eh, she’ll show up. I shrug and make a bottom part.
For our time, I still want to go back to the surface. I surface, and see the ceiling has not changed. Still the empty husk of yesterday.
After meeting up and doing several exciting adventures together, we decide to do the last few separately. We get those done pretty quick. They felt pretty important, though. Nothing more on our bucket list.
And so for our last trip, we decided to enter one of many doors to the vent. The inside had bright lights, reflecting on the metal interior, that along with the reflective metallic echoes from our feet on its floor, brought an altogether eerie quality about the place.
We head deeper inside. After going fairly far, we try another of the doors to the side of this non-pronged vent. We had not seen any forking the whole time. The door is stubborn at first. But we attempt the goal together, and we budge it with a rusty creak.
Out, we see we are back around our house. Which to you, may be small enough to be a room, but without any pane on the windows, or blockage for our doorhole.
We decide to part ways. We do this with certainty in our floating steps.
And as the dull lights of above and below highlight the water’s depths, we go upwards, smiling, fading, dying, into the light.
And turn to foam.