🌊 The Lighttouched Abyss – Chapter 3; First Contact

Jay is a hopeful Lunarian engineer and pilot stuck in a tedious internship… but after a making the discovery of a lifetime, what will her future hold?

Characters: Jay, Ego

Warnings: Thalassophobia / Drowning

Wordcount: 938

Vibe: facing fears……… going into da unknown………..

This story was run as a choose-your-own-adventure story on Paperdemon!

Original AN:

ITS BEEN A WHILE!!!!! in between being super super busy and writer’s block , this went on pause for a while orz. but now we’re back, same bat channel! hopefully i can start updating this regularly again :’D

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Jay sat there lost in thought for much, much longer than she’d ever want to admit.
Every so often she’d glance upwards, only to see the mysterious girl still waiting for her.

It didn’t make any sense… it was stupid and terrifying, but…
Jay didn’t feel like she had any other choice, did she?

After all… even if she did record a distress call… how would she be able to even remotely convey what she’d stumbled upon, much less how deep she’d got herself stuck in the inverted sea?

The girl was waiting… if this wasn’t some kind of hallucination from low oxygen, she must be able to get Jay somewhere…
Right?

Even though she’d made her decision, it took Jay more hyping up than she usually required to even make her way towards the airlock of her ship.

“Damn it!! Let’s go already!” Jay shouted to herself, before swiftly storming into the airlock and closing herself in.

She was ready.

…Or, so she thought.
Because as soon as the second door of the airlock started to open and the chamber quickly began filling with water, Jay’s panic resumed full throttle. It was a guttural, primal fear that no amount of preparing could have prevented.
Jay’s hand was slamming on the button to stop the process, but it was futile – as the machinery wouldn’t reverse the airlock sequence until the second door was fully open.

Chest-high, chin-high, try and take as deep a breath as you can…
It was hard for Jay to even gasp through her panicked yelling.

I really fucked this one up this time, huh…?

While she thought she could keep standing tall, Jay crumpled into a vulnerable curl the moment the water fully consumed her.
Shivering, holding her breath, too afraid to open her eyes, then hyperventilating…

Wait a second.

Jay had… let go of her breath, and was still hyperventilating from panic…
despite being fully engulfed.

When the panic cleared from her head enough to realize this, Jay gave a sharp gasp and shot her eyes open – her stance shifting from that of a curled-up ball to sprawled out on the seabed in front of the now open airlock.

There’s… no way…

It didn’t even feel different from normal air… even though Jay very much felt underwater. To say the conflicting sensations were slightly uncomfortable would be an understatement.

Jay went to lift herself up off the seabed, and was a bit surprised to see a delicate gloved hand reaching out to help her up once she finally opened her eyes.
But really, considering who it belonged to, she shouldn’t have been surprised at all.

“Oh… you were yelling a lot, it was really scary… are you OK?”

The voice was soft and sweet, with an almost dreamlike air to it. Bubbles came out of her mouth as she spoke, and her expression was of soft concern.

Jay took the mysterious girl’s hand.

“I, uhm…” Jay mumbled, struggling to even process what was happening at all.
“I’m… fine? Who… are you?”

“I had that question for you as well, but I didn’t want to seem rude…” the girl said with a nod.
“I’ve been told about outsiders, but I’ve never seen one before… my guardian told me to be wary if one ever showed up, but… you seem more scared than anything.”

“That’s, uh… one way to put it.” Jay sighed.
“For what it’s worth, you can call me Jay?”

“Jay… I see.” the girl replied.
“My name is… Ego? I think that’s how you do an ‘introduction’…”

With Jay still holding onto Ego’s hand, she started to lead – not saying a word in addition, and catching Jay by surprise.

“H… hey, wait? Where are we going?!” Jay yelped, skidding her claws into the bleached coral and stones that made up the seabed below.

“Hm…? Oh, sorry…” Ego mumbled.
“I’m… not used to strangers. But I figured because you’re so scared, you could come to my home with me. I could call my guardian, they could try and help…”

“Er, I guess it’s gotta be… cultural, or something…” Jay huffed.
“Back down on the, er… ‘surface’, it’s sorta fishy to go to a mysterious stranger’s house… moreso if you meet them in a… creepy place like this.”

Jay’s conversation with Ego had allowed her to examine the surroundings a bit more thoroughly, to the point where she felt pretty confident in calling it ‘creepy’.
In contrast to the bright and lively sea greenery and rainbows of coral from the shelf she’d arrived near, the area Ego had led her to was almost completely monochrome. Bleached coral sat towering on both sides of what seemed like a ‘path’, and the seabed was gravely – not a plant to be seen.

“Mm…” Ego hummed.
“What an odd way to do things… though, my guardian told me those of the surface can often be cruel, so maybe I understand why someone would be more wary.”

The waters were cold around here – the current going by as Jay stood silent almost feeling like a chilly wind.

“Well, you may have been screaming a lot earlier, but I promise it’s not scary here…”
“If you… don’t want to go to a stranger’s house, I could always lead us back to the town… I’m sure there’s something there that’d help you feel better.”

The slow and singsongy way Ego spoke was a bit unnerving to Jay, but she figured she didn’t have much of a choice to follow along either way.

The real matter was if she felt in the mood for some mysterious ‘guardian’, or… whatever these ‘townsfolk’ were.

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