No, we are not dead
At least, I don't think we are.
It just feels like it, here at the bottom of the sea. I remember what the surface was like, back when we were just treading water. The sun. The waves. The salt in the air.
But that's all gone now. Here, we just have the murk of the bottom and the fear of the things that feed and scuttle and snap. Odd shapes lurk in the mire. Most of them take the form of smaller pests, but larger, more unsettling terrors swim these depths. They show themselves in flashes of teeth and feelings of uncertainty. We try to swim up for air, but there is none to be had, as strong tendrils drag us back to the bottom. Even our rest is restless, here at the bottom of the sea, as dark things creep in the long, black nights.
When I glance upwards, I see ghostly shapes. Shapes of things that we lost when the ship went down. Friends, family, places once called home, all distant shores long forgotten. They whisper and dance on the current, detached and ephemeral. I cannot tell if they ever existed. If they did, they seem little more than embers. It drifts by in the void, milky and viscous, altogether intangible and disconnected. I reach out for them, but I cannot grasp them. Some of them reach back. Some do not. Very few descend to our depths and walk with us in the dark mire, our footfalls disturbing the deep silt, clouding the fluid that surrounds us. We tell them that we are not dead. We swear we are not dead. But let's face it - we certainly don't seem to use our lungs all that much anymore. When the cloudy ghosts speak, we cannot draw breath to respond. And what would they know? They move through our depths occasionally, but never feel the pressure. They stay for a time, and then depart, leaving warmth in their absence, and the question of whether or not they even heard us. Are we as insubstantial to them as they are to us?
We do not know. And we hardly have time to think. The mountains here in the ocean depths are vast, and we must watch our footing. Our path looks to go deeper still before it turns up into shallow waters. We hope that when we come up to the surface, at long last, that we will find a world that can offer us even a scrap of familiarity.
We shall see. But for now, we must hurry. The waters are shifting, the current is picking up, and large things are beginning to move in the black. Large and hungry. We are, after all, not dead yet (are we? We can't be...), and to stay that way, we need to move. Now.
It just feels like it, here at the bottom of the sea. I remember what the surface was like, back when we were just treading water. The sun. The waves. The salt in the air.
But that's all gone now. Here, we just have the murk of the bottom and the fear of the things that feed and scuttle and snap. Odd shapes lurk in the mire. Most of them take the form of smaller pests, but larger, more unsettling terrors swim these depths. They show themselves in flashes of teeth and feelings of uncertainty. We try to swim up for air, but there is none to be had, as strong tendrils drag us back to the bottom. Even our rest is restless, here at the bottom of the sea, as dark things creep in the long, black nights.
When I glance upwards, I see ghostly shapes. Shapes of things that we lost when the ship went down. Friends, family, places once called home, all distant shores long forgotten. They whisper and dance on the current, detached and ephemeral. I cannot tell if they ever existed. If they did, they seem little more than embers. It drifts by in the void, milky and viscous, altogether intangible and disconnected. I reach out for them, but I cannot grasp them. Some of them reach back. Some do not. Very few descend to our depths and walk with us in the dark mire, our footfalls disturbing the deep silt, clouding the fluid that surrounds us. We tell them that we are not dead. We swear we are not dead. But let's face it - we certainly don't seem to use our lungs all that much anymore. When the cloudy ghosts speak, we cannot draw breath to respond. And what would they know? They move through our depths occasionally, but never feel the pressure. They stay for a time, and then depart, leaving warmth in their absence, and the question of whether or not they even heard us. Are we as insubstantial to them as they are to us?
We do not know. And we hardly have time to think. The mountains here in the ocean depths are vast, and we must watch our footing. Our path looks to go deeper still before it turns up into shallow waters. We hope that when we come up to the surface, at long last, that we will find a world that can offer us even a scrap of familiarity.
We shall see. But for now, we must hurry. The waters are shifting, the current is picking up, and large things are beginning to move in the black. Large and hungry. We are, after all, not dead yet (are we? We can't be...), and to stay that way, we need to move. Now.
posted by Raoul The Destroyer at 12:02 PM
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