Finding Contentus

-Stage Two- Chapter 26: One

Stage Two: Rising Fall and Falling Rise

The depths.

LUB-DUB~~

The very depths.

LUB-DUB~~

Deep, dark, and foreign.

LUB-DUB~~

Arising from the plummet from the known above.

LUB-DUB~~

Above where all was high to soar.

LUB-DUB~~

Only to fall in a downpour of inequity.

LUB-DUB~~

LUB-DUB~~

LUB-DUB~~

LUB-DUB~~

Slowly, and full of strain, she opened her eyes. A low groan that was drowned out by the waters that kept pulling her down. The ground beneath her felt... odd, and the pressure made everything move in slow motion, along with the organisms beneath her.

All that should have remained still was constantly moving in some fashion from the current, and all that was restless was dead stiff from the carnage that had just taken place.

E-eehh? Neosa's protected eyelids allowed the thin strips of light through the deep waters to resonate with her line of sight in order to ascertain what her current predicament was from the momentary loss of consciousness.

O-oohh! What she saw in her state of confusion and disarray as her blurriness dissipated wasn't the blue that one would associate with the oceans reflection of the sky, but rather red, the red that comes with blood.

Various creatures of the sea floated above her with their insides bulging out of their bodies, and the blood spurting out like a running tap to create a dense cloud of death. The small fish of countless shapes and colours flickered past the bloodbath in quick haste, avoiding the scene at all costs.

W-what... Her eyes grew large as the long minutes counted down towards her realization of not only where she was, what she had possibly done, but also what had happened before to lead her to such a perilous position of horror.

Ema ema ema. She told herself to wait repeatedly. Why am I here? What happened before? Why am I alone? What did I do? Why are all these sea creatures dead?

She started breathing heavily, before experiencing a traumatic coughing fit that came out as bubbles with hardly any resonate sound. She clapped her hands around her throat that felt course, rough and dry like she had ingested charcoal, yet also slimy and wet like she had taken liquid medicine.

As she did so, she could also feel that large slits in the form of gills were flapping in the deadly water. She gulped and gulped and gulped the breath of life that came from death and felt the oxygen being sent to her brain. Not only did she have gills, but her hands and feet had also become webbed in accordance with the drastic change in environments.

The ocean floor that kept her grounded only made the urge to be uplifted from it that much more strenuous when she tried moving up, only to feel one thing that increased her sense of panic.

She couldn't move. Her body felt stunned, a consequence of being shocked by nearby electric eels that were twitching in spams on the ocean floor, before ceasing to move any longer.