Follow the Leader
It isn’t difficult to decide on following, not when the chance has presented itself that you might have just seen another person - or selkie - just like you. You swim upward to the entrance to this shipwreck’s hole, and you spot a body shooting away through the waves at an incredible speed. It appears to be a seal, but, they are moving very fast, and you feel inclined to follow to see for yourself if they are a real seal or if maybe, just maybe, they are more like you.
Naturally, that’s what you decide to do.
You take off in a flash after the seal, following behind it despite the distance between the two of you. At first, you struggle to maintain a solid speed since you only know a little about this new-found body of yours - you kick your flippers like you would if they were human legs, as if this will make a difference, but it only does you so good in moving faster.
You aren’t about to give up, of course, but, you are aware that this seal is far ahead of you, heading back toward the direction you initially came from. They dive down, right near the coral forest you spotted a while back.
You eventually get into the groove of moving more easily. It is a matter not of kicking flippers or trying to move this or that - you discover that it is a combination of working with the water, not against it, and moving in tandem with your breathing. These two factors allow you to improve your agility, and you pick up speed right around the time you come to the coral forest for yourself.
You stop when you reach it.
The coral forest is far, far bigger and runs far deeper than you expected it to. You cannot help but float there for a few slow breaths, taking in the array of colors sprouting out from the sand below - there are shades of reds, deep and emerald ton greens, several blues, and several purples, oranges and yellows, and that doesn’t even take into consideration the dozens upon dozens of different fish types all fluttering about, above and within the forest.
You are in awe of the beauty - it is like being in an art museum filled with old and fascinating artworks, or standing in a field of hundreds of different, blooming flowers. It goes beyond what you had expected, and you admit that perhaps you should’ve come here first. But you shake this off when you hear that human singing deeper into the coral forest.
You swim down, darting past the fish that scurry away in fright at the sight of a much larger being (and obvious predator) shooting past them. You delve into the forest, swimming around the clusters of red corals, the clusters of greens and blues and purples - a few bobs, a few weaves, and you eventually push deeper beneath the colors to find a cave - a rather open, deep cave with no end in sight, yet though it’s dusky, there are flickers of light that illuminate tiny shreds of the innards.
You hear that singing echoing from the cave’s gullet, so, you venture inwards. You are slightly on edge, you admit to yourself, but your curiosity has gotten the better of you once again. It’s not like you have anything to lose, either.
The smattering of light you find varies - some of it comes from holes above you, crackles in the cave’s ceiling that allow for slivers of the sun’s light high, high above to somehow peer through into the murk. But, you also notice that some of the light seems to be coming from the walls of the caves - tiny groupings of… glowing coral, perhaps? You aren’t entirely sure, mostly because your attention zeroes in on following that eerie melody to its source.
Minutes tick by, and you flow through the cave, dodging around random bends and turns and bumps until you spot the cave’s end ahead of you - and end in that it opens up again, leaving you a little bewildered as to what would cause a random cave like that in such a strange portion of the ocean.
You shrug this off internally.
When you reach the end of the cave and exit into the wider ocean once more, you find yourself in another, smaller coral forest. The water here is a little darker, you notice, and though you turn your gaze upward toward the direction of the sky, you can’t quite tell if it’s still daylight out or if it’s slowly beginning to turn to night. You expect night to drape over the ocean soon, but, you are undeterred by this.
That singing reaches your ears, and you swim toward it, moving through this newer, smaller coral forest of various colors, going up, then down, then up again until you skim the top of the coral field. You then see, a little ahead of you, is a sight that again leaves you genuinely surprised.
There is a large, large rock formation several yards - you think? - in front of you, a rock formation with random bits sticking up and out and even chunks broken off. Yet that is not what snags your attention: you see a variety of holes, large holes that are most definitely person-sized, almost in a perfect row forming a strange sort of ring within the massive stone, as if it were a home to sea life.
You blink several times, and something about this mass rising out from the ground makes you feel like you ought to explore it. But before you can contemplate this, you hear that singing again, much closer now - you turn your attention and, there, roughly the same distance as the large earthen formation, is the seal you saw. She - they - are nearer to the surface, and as you notice them, they swim toward what appears to be land, emerging from the depths.
You have two options - you can swim to this formation to check it out, and see what may lurk in those holes or near them. Or, you can follow this seal, and see once and for all if perhaps they are someone like you. Now what, you wonder?
Written by Hollowpages on 09 July 2020
