For a long moment, as Dashi followed the sea otter's gaze through the large viewing window, trying not to freak out about the feeling of his soft paw holding hers, there was nothing, just darkness. She breathed out once. Nothing. Nothing.
Then a single, pink light flickered into sight. It was dim, but there. Dashi squinted, trying to find its source, then another one, this time a yellowish colour, joined it. As her gaze flicked from light to light more kept appearing, until it hurt her eyes trying to take them all in and she blinked, opening her eyes to a chasm full of... stars.
Shellington craned his neck to look up towards where the walls of the trench stretched away, those same lights seeming to pulse a rhythm as they danced in the black-green waters everywhere in sight.
Dashi felt her tired feet give way beneath her and she collapsed into a chair at the dashboard, eyes wide as she stared, unable to quite understand it. "Stars?" she murmured, the word a question as she turned to look at her friend who had taken the seat next to her, a smile spreading from her eyes and reaching her cheeks until they ached too.
Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
Shellington looked almost scared to meet her eyes as he concentrated his gaze on the waters outside. "You said you were sad that you wouldn't spend your New Year's Eve under the stars this year, for the first year ever. Now, I can't bring you a thousand red-hot balls of thermonuclear plasma millions of miles away in the night sky, but I did still want to bring you stars."
Dashi gazed in wonder at yellows and blues and pinks until they began to swim around her vision. "They're beautiful," she breathed. "How on earth...?"
Shellington chuckled softly. "I did tell you I wanted to go and have a chat to some bacteria down here. And, this deep down, bacteria just happen to have some bioluminescent qualities of their own. They're not stars, but I figured they came close enough."
The photographer remembered herself and rummaged for her camera, finding it where she had placed it on a shelf underneath the counter, and bringing it to her eye, she took a couple of photos, a stray tear almost obscuring the lens.
Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
While his fellow Octonaut was distracted, Shellington quickly checked the time. 11:57pm. So close.
Once she had had her fill of snapping shots of the swirling bacteria outside the lab, Dashi carefully placed her precious camera back in its place and turned to Shellington, her eyes sparkling. "You did this for... me?" she asked simply.
