https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=omG-hZfN6zk
Some people stood on the beach, looking out over the ocean, and imagined that they stood at world's end.
It wasn't. It was only the beginning.
The sunlight penetrated deep beneath the surface of the water, illuminating a brave new world below. One populated by vibrant color. Red corals painted an intricate landscape, rising like mesas and hollowing out valleys and ridges into which green fronds and anemones created an undersea forest. Yellow, orange, and blue were all visible, as tropical fish moved in small schools through sea grass, which bowed and waved with the motion of the currents. Red and brown mollusks, crustaceans, and sea slugs crept along the ocean floor.
The young Nautolan's body cut through the water with an altogether preternatural ease. Moving in time with the waves above, the child's slim frame undulated with the motion of the dolphin kick, pushing against the weight of water with a certain instinctual grace. His arms were tucked against the sides of his body, his hips and legs fueling the momentum with which he navigated down and through the ocean. The fourteen stubby head-tendrils, normally hanging limp from the crown of his head, now writhed with a life of their own as the tresses worked to adjust the boy to the changes in pressure and salinity that were occurring dynamically as he passed through the strata of the sea. The gills, situated slightly higher and further back than the ears on a human, flared open and shut, as the delicate membranes filtered the water which the boy now breathed.
A school of moappa hung like clouds, drifting on the wind-like currents.
Dropping beneath the hang of their tendrils, the boy rotated around so that he was peering up toward the surface overhead. Watching as the sunlight shone through the jelly-like bodies of the moappa as he passed beneath them.
Rotating back around, the child spied an exosquidra creeping along the sea bed, it's tentacles reaching out to grab onto the corals as it pulled itself along.
Another dolphin kick sent the boy gliding forward with a sudden burst of speed. Planing out with his body, the youngling subconsciously adjusted his own buoyancy so that he hovered over the reef as he passed between the daylight and the deep. A great shadow along the sea floor betrayed the presence of one of the ocean's great masters.
Indeed, looking up, the boy was greeted by the majestic sight of a true giant. A whaladon, one of those mysterious, solitary soldiers of the sea. The magnificent creature was drifting onward in a slow march out among the waves.
Reef's end arrived with the terminus of the continental shelf. The sea floor suddenly dropping to reveal a steep face of an undersea mountain, one which descended down into the deep and dark.
Overhead, a disturbance radiated down through the salt and saline pressures. A tingling sensation radiated through his head-tails, prompting the boy to look up toward the surface again. Against the light of the sun, he could make out the silhouette of a near-human. The distinctive shape of a surfboard framed against the ceiling to this world within a world.
Ascending rapidly, the Nautolan's buoyancy underwent a radical shift. His gills worked furiously to equalize internal organ volumes as the pressures surrounding him lessened with the steady climb toward the surface dweller's realm.
The Nautolan's head crowned with a loud splash. Water droplets went in all directions as the boy whipped the head-tails back. Blinking several times, the small, green figure saw a human-looking boy up on a surfboard.
"Sup, brah," the child chimed brightly.
It was Zak for
hello.
[member="Makai Dashiell"]
