Dara: Deep

Today, the sensors on The Seeker went haywire. The pressure gauge was fine, but the sonar showed impossible geometries—pillars of basalt that twisted like smoke, canyons that seemed to breathe. Then she saw it. A faint, pulsing violet light, far below the rated crush depth of her vessel.

She engaged the thrusters and began to rise. dara deep

She checked her systems. The Seeker was damaged, but it could ascend. Above her, a whole world waited. A world she had been running from. A world full of noise and light and other flawed, beautiful people. Today, the sensors on The Seeker went haywire

A woman, seated on a throne of black coral. Her skin was the colour of abalone, iridescent and cracked. Her eyes were twin pearls, unblinking. She was not human. She was the Deep’s memory, the spirit of the trench. A faint, pulsing violet light, far below the

Dara’s throat was dry. “I came to find the song my grandmother lost.”

Dara looked at her hands. They were trembling. For the first time in a decade, she did not fight the tremor. She let it be.