Escape to the Blue

Our Home.

"Hey Mum, how is everything up there? Are Madeline and Eleanor doing well at their new school?"  I hear Yvette ask her mother on the phone.  I prop myself up on my elbow and gaze at her longingly.  She turns towards me and catches my eye, flashing me a quick smile before her attention turns back to the phone with an irked expression on her face.
"No, Mum, you know I can't resurface... Yes, I know how long we've been gone for.  Please stop bugging me about it. Enough, okay? You know he didn't-"

I pull myself off the couch and wander towards her, holding my hand out for the phone. Hesitantly, she hands it over.
"Hey uhm, Linda, could you please do me a quick favour? Listen to your daughter and quit asking her to come back.  Yeah, that'd be great. I know you think she's here because I stole her or some complete bullshit like that, but she has a mind of her own and doesn't need you to dictate what she does.  Thanks!"
I hang up the phone with a click and slide it back into the charge port. Yvette leans against the kitchen counter and gives me an amused look, a sigh escaping her lips. "Maxwell, you really need to stop doing that to my mother."
"She needs to stop telling you what to do, actually. You're old enough to make your own decisions, you're able to go wherever you want, and you choose to stay here. If she doesn't like it, she can shove off," I say.

She pulls me close to her body, letting me take in her familiar smell with a deep breath. "See, this is why I love you, you don't let people boss me around. Even if they're my parents, you're always there to protect me," she whispers into my ear as I plant kisses along her neck.
I feel her chest rise and fall against my own. "I'm so lucky I won you over before anyone else could," I murmur.
It's true, I wouldn't be here if it weren't for her. She quite literally saved me.
With strong arms I hoist her in a bridal hold and carry her to the couch, sitting her across my lap. She smiles and rests her head in the crook of my neck, "I can assure you, you were my first and only pick."

. . .

It's been a long time down here. The first couple of months were difficult, I must admit. We had a small two-room bunker to move into with stocks of basic supplies of food, water, oxygen tanks and other things most creatures need to live. There was a mattress on the floor without a blanket or a pillow, so it got very cold since we were two hundred metres underwater.
Over the course of those months we first created a filter that transferred large bubbles of oxygen into our home as a temporary air fix.  We visited the surface for anything we needed in order to build our underwater facility. Neither our friends nor family saw us and we couldn't tell them where we were. We had to use disposable phones and purchase everything from far away markets and hardware stores whilst wearing makeup and wigs.  It was too dangerous not to take these precautions, since we seemingly dropped off the face of the earth. The Ward officers are still out there keeping an eye on anything that might lead them to me, and that includes relations between myself, Yvette and anyone we know.

After majority of the construction was completed to create general living spaces, we had all the time in the world to fine tune our house and transform it into a safe and secure home.  We created pumps for our oxygen filtration so we could breathe fresh air from a reliable source instead of the flimsy supply from outside.
Without anyone having access to the pods we used to get here, there was no officials to make any legal judgements or sign off on our home so we were able to build whatever we wanted.  My studio is one of the biggest rooms we have which gives me a lot of space to spread out my artwork and authors notes for future books. That's how I made the money to fund all the creation down here, my novels that people can purchase online.  That and Yvette's digital art business that bloomed from a burst of inspiration from sea life.

We spent another couple of years figuring out how we could create our own produce and machinery so we wouldn't have to resurface anymore, and that, well that was hardest part of all.
We had all the knowledge and information known on the surface world about architecture and mechanics but we needed to manipulate it all to suit our life in the sea.  Yvette constructed huge tunnelled rooms for our crops as well as making a safe port for gathering food and supplies from the water.  Whilst she goes out hunting in the miniature sub, I tend to the crops, hydrating them with the water filtered from outside and showering them with manure from our tropical fish tanks.

It's a nice, calm life down here. Now that we don't need money for materials since we're able to obtain them ourselves, we don't really have anything to stress about. Of course it would be nice to have people over but it's just not possible, so we settle for exploring the deep and make the wildlife outside our company.
Yvette and I often travel in the mini-sub to the oceanic grove-like cavern we discovered on one of our adventures.
It's a little cove of deep-green sea snails clashing with blaring yellow coral walls and a sea-moss carpet for flooring where octopi and squids coexist without war of dominance over the area. Upon our first arrival, Yvette was speechless. I looked across at her and noticed tears in her awestruck eyes. Nothing brings more warmth to my heart than to watch her face light up when we discover a new, magnificent area of this brilliant ocean. 
That was the day her art truly manifested into something beautiful.  Her first digital painting was of the cove and she captured every detail, every splash of iridescent colour, every tiny creature that stumbled into sight, missing nothing from the view we had.

It was the only piece she didn't sell to anyone and it's hanging on the wall across from our bed so we can see it every morning we wake up. 

I couldn't think of a more perfect being to wake up next to than Yvette, my love, my soulmate, and my one and only.