She wanted to touch him. She wanted to let those bubbling emotions take over her body and tell her what to do.
He moved his fingers along her wetsuit, gliding them up and down her leg before he finally said, “I have thought a long time about what I would like you to hear me say first. A part of me wishes there were kinder words I could say. That I could tell you how rapturous it is to see you swim through my world and to see you love it as much as I do. Or perhaps I would remark on the way your hair looks like blood underneath the water and that stirs some feral part of me. But what I settled on, the first most important words you must hear from me, are that I am deeply sorry.”
Breath caught in her throat, Mira bit at her lips. He wanted to apologize to her? Why? He was... was...
She reached down and cupped his face, finally giving into the urge to touch him. Drawing him a little closer, feeling his rib gills press against her inner thighs, she breathed out a small sigh of relief as she watched those big, black eyes. “You are not a monster,” she whispered. “You are not what they told me you were. I accepted your apology long ago, Arges, even before you were able to speak it out loud. You have done what you had to do. For your people. Because of our history. And I will not, ever, hold that against you.”
“I am the reason that you are sick,” he replied. His hands lifted, and those webs skated along her wrists, delicately pressing against the heartbeat that sluggishly beat there. “You could die because of me, and I will not have that.”
“Wasn’t that the point? Our people have always fought against each other. Always tried to kill each other. I don’t think there is another way for us to move forward. One of us has to die.”
“I will not allow it.” His features hardened into an expression that almost made her believe him. “We will both live. This future that we seek together will come to life. I will not accept any other way.”
She supposed that was one way to look at the future. She admired his belief that he could manipulate the very fabric of time.
“The future will happen no matter what we do. Our lives and the will of the gods have been carved into our very being from the moment we first took breath.” She smiled, even if the expression felt a little sad. “Unless you see another way out of this, then I suspect our fates have already been decided.”
He shook his head and then shifted his grip from her wrist to her hips. “Gather your Byte, achromo. We are leaving this place.”
“Another cave?” she sighed. “I suppose it is time, after all. We’ve been here for a bit. I really don’t think any of your people are looking for me, though.”
“My brother has yet to return to our home. I do not know where he is, or why he has disappeared. He could easily plan to hunt you down.”
“I think you’re worried over nothing.”
“I did not suspect our first conversation together would be you scolding me,” he teased as she stood to go get Byte. “But I suppose knowing that you understand me does not dull your teeth.”
“It’s rather easy to talk like this, isn’t it?” She returned with Byte in her arms, biting her lips with nerves. “I wasn’t certain you would be this happy, or this easy to talk to.”
“Mira.” Her name rolled off his tongue so easily. Said in the same song-like voice she’d gotten used to, but this time she knew even more that it really was her name. And it still affected her just as much. “We’ve been talking to each other for quite some time now. Just not in so many words.”
She supposed they had. It was easy to be around him now. Easy to float through the water and trust that he wasn’t bringing her to the mouth of some massive creature to sacrifice her to whatever water gods they had. She hadn’t even thought he was going to kill her for a while, so that had to mean something.
Still, it was rather reassuring to be able to return to him and ask as she got into the water, “You aren’t going to kill me this time though... Are you?”
He grinned, those sharp teeth flashing. “No, Mira. I’m going to keep you.”
She wasn’t all that certain his answer was much better.
But she fixed her rebreather on, tightened her goggles, and sank into his arms with the same amount of trust as always. He gathered her up to his chest, even moving his hands to shift her feet into his gills as they slowly swam away from the darkness. She didn’t know where they were going, nor did she need to.
It startled her how much she trusted an individual who had tried to kill her. Multiple times. He could have drowned her at any point, and the rebreather was the only thing keeping her safe now. Even that was a little clunky now that she’d used it so much. But if it stopped working, she had faith that he would breathe air into her lungs until he got her to the surface.
That amount of trust in someone like him? It was... unprecedented.
Stupid, maybe.
But then she remembered how his fingers tucked her toes a little tighter into the warm gills at his hips, and how he regularly checked her fingers in the gills at his neck to make sure they weren’t icy and she forgot she was supposed to be afraid of him.
Soon the water lightened again. Turning from the depths of dark blue where all color disappeared into bright lights where she could see that they were fairly close to the bottom of the ocean. The ground seemed to come up from underneath them. Suddenly it was right there, sandy white with dots of starfish and shells of creatures she couldn’t name. Though there were not a lot of sea creatures around them, it was still beautiful in its own way. Endless, it seemed.
She could see the small tunnels left in the sand by all the creatures who had moved about in their shells. And soon, she could see the surface. She’d never been this close to the upper levels of the ocean where she could have swum up and poked her head out if she wished.
And there was sun.
Spears of sunlight that shattered through the water, like great weapons that were soft to the touch and broke against her skin. So beautiful that tears fell from her eyes and gathered at the bottom of her goggles. It was... unlike anything she’d ever seen before.
“Why are we here?” she asked, her voice muffled around the rebreather. “Isn’t it dangerous?”
He looked down at her and that booming voice shattered through every truth she’d ever had. “It’s been a long time since your people have seen the surface, achromo. A great many things have changed.”
“Are you... Are you taking me to the surface?”
“No. That is a wild, untamed land now. There are many creatures who rule it and you are not capable of protecting yourself. But I found something here, a rumor that turned out to be true, and I thought you would be more comfortable. Even if it is very far from me.”
How long had they been swimming? This was far?
She craned her neck to look behind him, back into the depths of the sea that disappeared from view. But then he flicked his fins, forcefully turning her, so she had to look at something else entirely.
It was a dome. A glass dome with panels on each side outstretched like little fins. Black structures that looked remarkably similar to the diagrams she’d seen of solar panels from the old days. It was connected with a single rod to the ocean floor, but the rest of it hovered in the middle of the water. Though the glass was covered in algae, making it difficult to see what was inside, she was certain it was a room.
He swam her over to the strange dome, then underneath it.
“There,” he said, pointing to an opening in the bottom. “I assume you are familiar with this?”
She startled, surprised he was talking to her. She’d gotten so used to them not talking and communicating through gestures that it was still rather strange to converse. “Oh, uh, yes. It’s a moon pool.”