a story about what lures us to dive deep, deep, down, down

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Dive

a story about what lures us to dive deep, deep, down, down



You didn’t know, when you began designing your submersible, why the mystery of the deep ocean had called to your kind so longingly, and for so long.

You didn’t know, when your bathysphere entered the water, that the light flooding the interior would be the exact colour of your childhood raincoat, a bright jade made brighter by the memory of summers by the sea. You didn’t know, when you sank through quicksilver fish and glowing jellies, that the light would age like autumn, the reds of the spectrum dying first, then oranges and yellows and greens vanishing into midnight blue.

You didn't know how it would feel to drop past creatures moulded by the weight of a sunless ocean: creatures without bladders or bones, creatures that hunt with lures of light and curiosity, creatures that survive off the unlikeliest of food sources, creatures with appetites so patient they go years without feeding, creatures so large their shadows stretch for miles.

You didn’t know, so I am telling you now. There is a reason some creatures hunt with lures, with curiosity. there is a reason the ocean called you, the unlikeliest of prey, one summer by the sea, and waited as you grew up and dedicated your life to exploring the depths. I cannot express how I crave to peel apart your submersible and swallow you whole, but my kind survives with the patience of eons. So few of you dare to follow our lures, and so we must catch and release. We feed on your memories of jade raincoats and autumn trees and wipe your minds of our meeting. And then we send you back to the surface with stories to stoke the imagination of new explorers.

And in the meantime, we wait, our lures a distant beacon in the back of your mind, the shadow of our hunger stretching for miles.

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Short story written by Peter Chiykowski

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Story prompt taken from a photo by Michal Mrozek

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