OK, so today's is the end of this part of the narrative arc. It resolves the primary problem, but there might be room for further story telling later on, if that would be interesting :) And one survivor out of three (four maybe, if you count the creature?) is a good score, right?
A light in the darkness It was light, and disturbingly we didn't seem to be rising to the surface. I said nothing, and we all watched the light get brighter, hoping that I was just confused about which way was down when all around us was water. At the back of my mind though, my brain finally let me in on its little secret: the nearest place for this creature to take us might be wherever it lived, rather than anywhere that we lived. The light was a fuzzy glow at first and as we got closer the intensity increased but it remained fuzzy. The containment we were in seemed to get colder too, but that might have been a dread of what we had gotten ourselves into. As the light got brighter and the water around us seemed to be greener and less threatening the tighter I clutched the contract thinking that that should have been a clue. We should have stopped and thought about what we wanted: not so much getting off the ship, but getting to dry land safely, and then asked for that. Instead we'd assumed that something that spoke our language thought the same way we did, and now it looked very much like it didn't.
"Light is nice," said Kraulik, though he sounded doubtful. "Not what I thought sunlight would look like from underwater." "It smells like aniseed," said Stef. I sniffed, surprised, and was even more surprised to find he was right; there was a faint smell of aniseed in the purple containment with us now. "Where does that come from?" I said. I shook my head as soon as I said it. "I know, I know, you don't know either, but it's still strange. Do things normally smell underwater?" "No air underwater," said Kraulik and then stopped speaking. The light resolved itself at last by splitting apart into multiple bright points of light, which explained, I supposed, why it stayed fuzzy for so long. After maybe only thirty seconds of that they became large enough that we could see where we were headed, and we were definitely underwater still. Up ahead were columns and spires of rock that looked a little like candles that have been a slight breeze when burning so that the wax dribbles down their sides in little tubes. The lights were floating around the tops of the columns, and further down -- and I as I looked, we changed direction noticeably and started descending -- we could see other structures: coralline, geometrical things like shells, and footballs and curving, intertwined spirals. At first it seemed graceful, but as we got closer and more and more details showed up, it became headache inducing to look at for any length of time.
"Not Kansas," said Kraulik, and there was still that note of heavy doubt in his voice. I suspected he was starting to have the same thoughts as me about how quickly we'd agreed to get off the ship and not asked where we'd be going. "We're not in Kansas anymore," said Stef. "Or something like that, you have to have the whole phrase for people to understand." Kraulik shrugged. "Out of the frying pan and into the fire," he said. "Happy now?" The look on Stef's face eloquently suggested he wasn't. "We are off the ship," I said, forcing my fingers to unclench around the contract. I smoothed the pages, relieved to see that I hadn't torn it. "And this looks like our destination. So... I guess our next task is to try and figure out how to get home from here." "If they don't eat us first." Kraulik's gloom was evident. "They might not eat people," said Stef. "There's no proof." "They called the ship a plate," said Kraulik. There was no answer to that.
The containment came smoothly to a halt and a metallic, brassy-looking wall in front of us opened up, turning out to a door, and we accelerated inside and then stopped. Water drained away around us, and then the purple glow disappeared and we found ourselves standing on a poorly lit stone walkway of some kind.
Up ahead a brighter light came on. "A light in the darkness!" said Stef, but his jovial tone sounded forced. It seemed we had little choice but to walk onward.
Greg - can't believe you tricked me into reading this expecting only one of them would survive.
I mean, I totally can believe it, but still.
This is an excellent point to pause at, I reckon. Feels like a whole new adventure/challenge is set to begin here. I am pleased that you managed to get them off the doomed ship, but I'm not sure I have very high hopes for them getting out of... wherever and whatever this is.
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OK, so today's is the end of this part of the narrative arc. It resolves the primary problem, but there might be room for further story telling later on, if that would be interesting :)
And one survivor out of three (four maybe, if you count the creature?) is a good score, right?
A light in the darkness
It was light, and disturbingly we didn't seem to be rising to the surface. I said nothing, and we all watched the light get brighter, hoping that I was just confused about which way was down when all around us was water. At the back of my mind though, my brain finally let me in on its little secret: the nearest place for this creature to take us might be wherever it lived, rather than anywhere that we lived.
The light was a fuzzy glow at first and as we got closer the intensity increased but it remained fuzzy. The containment we were in seemed to get colder too, but that might have been a dread of what we had gotten ourselves into. As the light got brighter and the water around us seemed to be greener and less threatening the tighter I clutched the contract thinking that that should have been a clue. We should have stopped and thought about what we wanted: not so much getting off the ship, but getting to dry land safely, and then asked for that. Instead we'd assumed that something that spoke our language thought the same way we did, and now it looked very much like it didn't.
Which should have been obvious from the outset.
"Light is nice," said Kraulik, though he sounded doubtful. "Not what I thought sunlight would look like from underwater."
"It smells like aniseed," said Stef. I sniffed, surprised, and was even more surprised to find he was right; there was a faint smell of aniseed in the purple containment with us now.
"Where does that come from?" I said. I shook my head as soon as I said it. "I know, I know, you don't know either, but it's still strange. Do things normally smell underwater?"
"No air underwater," said Kraulik and then stopped speaking.
The light resolved itself at last by splitting apart into multiple bright points of light, which explained, I supposed, why it stayed fuzzy for so long. After maybe only thirty seconds of that they became large enough that we could see where we were headed, and we were definitely underwater still. Up ahead were columns and spires of rock that looked a little like candles that have been a slight breeze when burning so that the wax dribbles down their sides in little tubes. The lights were floating around the tops of the columns, and further down -- and I as I looked, we changed direction noticeably and started descending -- we could see other structures: coralline, geometrical things like shells, and footballs and curving, intertwined spirals. At first it seemed graceful, but as we got closer and more and more details showed up, it became headache inducing to look at for any length of time.
"Not Kansas," said Kraulik, and there was still that note of heavy doubt in his voice. I suspected he was starting to have the same thoughts as me about how quickly we'd agreed to get off the ship and not asked where we'd be going.
"We're not in Kansas anymore," said Stef. "Or something like that, you have to have the whole phrase for people to understand."
Kraulik shrugged. "Out of the frying pan and into the fire," he said. "Happy now?"
The look on Stef's face eloquently suggested he wasn't.
"We are off the ship," I said, forcing my fingers to unclench around the contract. I smoothed the pages, relieved to see that I hadn't torn it. "And this looks like our destination. So... I guess our next task is to try and figure out how to get home from here."
"If they don't eat us first." Kraulik's gloom was evident.
"They might not eat people," said Stef. "There's no proof."
"They called the ship a plate," said Kraulik. There was no answer to that.
The containment came smoothly to a halt and a metallic, brassy-looking wall in front of us opened up, turning out to a door, and we accelerated inside and then stopped. Water drained away around us, and then the purple glow disappeared and we found ourselves standing on a poorly lit stone walkway of some kind.
Up ahead a brighter light came on.
"A light in the darkness!" said Stef, but his jovial tone sounded forced. It seemed we had little choice but to walk onward.
Greg - can't believe you tricked me into reading this expecting only one of them would survive.
I mean, I totally can believe it, but still.
This is an excellent point to pause at, I reckon. Feels like a whole new adventure/challenge is set to begin here. I am pleased that you managed to get them off the doomed ship, but I'm not sure I have very high hopes for them getting out of... wherever and whatever this is.
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