‘So you ate him?’ Sym was stone faced, Alene couldn’t figure out what she was thinking at all. It was disturbing. ‘Are you…disgusted?’ Alene asked, hesitantly, eyes on the ground in front of her, unwilling to look at Sym’s face while she decided her verdict. She expected Sym to yell at her, tell her she repulsed her, that she never wanted to see Alene again. That she was Una after all.
Sym was quiet, Alene peeked at her from under newly manifested eyelashes, opal blue as the crab’s shell had been, glittering with opal sheen as they refracted the sunlight. ‘It is disgusting…but I kind of get it. Gods are different from humans.’ She sighed, flipping her long hair over her shoulder, making a wet sound as it hit the water before spreading out like ink once again. ‘I don’t understand it, but that doesn’t mean I can’t recognize that human’s rules may not apply. It’s just…hard. Not to see the world through the lens of the values I’ve grown up with.’ Alene nodded, just grateful Sym wasn’t disgusted enough to sever the delicate threads of their newly formed friendship. She wondered if Sym’s loneliness played a part in her willingness to overlook Alene’s decision. The thought made her cringe, opening a well of insecurities.
‘Your new body is very pretty,’ Sym said, changing the mood with a half-smile. ‘I really like your hair a lot,’ she picked up a strand, letting the silky opal blue locks run through her fingers. Alene preened, twirling so that it swirled around her.
They had walked around the swamp, Sym materializing her legs so they could walk together, trying to find an area where Alene’s feelings of unease peaked. ‘Do you even need to breathe?’ Sym asked, as she huffed from the effort of walking in the thick waters, disgruntled by Alene’s unruffled demeanor. Alene paused. Did she need to breathe? She had been scared of losing herself in the mud before, disintegrate and never being able to reconstitute. But as a mostly god, did she need to breathe? It was certainly more comfortable, as she tested it out. But once she got past the stale feeling in her body, she could resist.
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What about breathing water, if she accidentally lost her focus? She crouched down, the waters just rising above her nose, and breathed deeply. Sputtering, she stood up. That was terribly uncomfortable. She probably could manage, but she wouldn’t enjoy it. Sym was looking at her, mouth agape. ‘What sort of god was it you ate?’ she exclaimed, tracing a line down Alene’s neck, ‘I think you’ve sprouted gills! Now we can go together!’
They had been swimming for a while, deciding that swimming was easier than walking. After several hours they determined that Alene’s general discomfort with the swamp didn’t seem to be changing during their traversal, they decided instead that perhaps down was the best direction. They began their descent into the depths of the swamp, only to realize how very deep the swamp was. Much of the vegetation appeared to be growing on the roofs of the section of the city that had sunken, the water getting darker but clearer as they went further down, the plant debris mostly trapped in the vegetation above.
It was as if this entire area had separated from the rest of the city along a fault line, sinking down, the vegetation on top just hinting at the shape of the city below, that had sunk beneath the surface but was still remarkably intact. Sym and Alene swam deeper still, all the way to where skyscrapers met what was once the ground, broken now with even deeper caverns visible through the cracks, dark shadowy openings in the rock. ‘The catacombs,’ Sym mouthed, pointing down at them, bubbles rising from her mouth as they took a break, Alene passing her a large bubble of oxygen she had created for Sym to breathe, to give her gills a break. The scene on the bottom was not dissimilar to that above, with discarded vehicles lining the streets and the general mayhem of demolished city blocks.
A strange luminescence was visible, coming from somewhere amongst the wreckage, rather than from above, as they explored the ruins. Sym’s silver fishtail glittered in the golden glow as she swam towards the light, Alene following behind her, kicking her newly finned legs, the diaphanous lace of the membrane writhing behind her, as she worked hard to keep up. As they approached the light intensified, until a glowing neon sign was before them, lighting up the waters in brilliant gold, Miss Fortune, it read, in twinkling text. The doors opened as they arrived, a cascade of bubbles rushing out from behind them. Alene looked at Sym, uncertain, not wanting to push her into anything, but Sym headed in resolutely, a firm expression fixed on her face.