daily microfiction
Rippled light gleams off a decorative diving bell, thrown from deck in a storm.
Within, a solitary nereite leans against the glass, so close to familiar waters but trapped in alien brine.
His song is subsonic, and calls his brethren from afar.
daily microfiction
It churns the ocean floor, in armor forged from vent effluvia, legs undulating beneath a transparent carapace of a thousand mismatched plates.
As it trundles closer, ask yourself: does it roar, or is that merely the tectonic thunder of overlapping glass on glass?
daily microfiction
Dive to the benthic depths on a cool night and you may chance upon the fluorescent dance of the quantum nymphs.
Their twenty-three-year superposition degrades in a pop of bubbles & a brief flash, as they blink across oceans - sometimes even worlds - to rejoin their mate.
daily microfiction
Before Myxini was caught, this used to be an ocean. But Myxini is the slipperiest of all prey, the trickster of the dark, and His slime is without end.
Do not stray into the swamp lightly, for it is quick to brine, and Myxini must lie undisturbed if the waters are ever to return.
daily microfiction
Twelve years ago, the starship Thistlegorm crashed into the reefs of the Geusian xenosea, with the loss of all organic life.
But the fish school in algorithmic fighter patterns, and the wave-crests breaking over fresh coral spell out in binary: I AM HERE.
daily microfiction
The vents slumber far from the light, as submersibles and bathyspheres waft by; they have lain dormant for centuries.
Gold and precious metals await those brave or greedy enough to dive too deep, to crack the dark towers and rouse the beast on whose back they have always ridden.
daily microfiction
This bottle once contained the ocean. See: how its glass is weathered smooth by the waves. Hear: how the voice of the sea rings unceasing in its bore.
It must never be returned to the deep, for water finds its own level, and a home once departed is oft longed for.
daily microfiction
Old Father Slime tends his abyssal garden, one sprout at a time. Sunless, his blooms orient to his passing, each current-swept red stem drawing life from lazily-sinking death.
Down here, all things pass slowly. It is by design, for Old Father Slime's in no hurry to leave his works undone.
daily microfiction
In every ocean, there is a boundary: above it, living things are thrust to the surface; below, they plunge to the depths.
The Dutiful Order of Hippocampi patrol this line, tridents at the ready, for there are things below which must never be allowed to re-surface.
daily microfiction
A shadow in the deep, outline broken by tentacled courtiers like locusts before the sun.
The bysswhale sings, her voice the harmonic grind of subduction plates and eroding chalk, and the waters rise up and crash down like a tsunami upon her prey. Her court will eat well this day.
daily microfiction
When the first boatload of trash was hauled from the Pacific gyre, gathered by cephalopod labour, we celebrated our cleverness. How smart we were, trading meagre morsels for clean seas!
When the octopi cleared the way to their city, and rose once more above the waves, their first demand was back-pay.
daily microfiction
His flesh is faceted obsidian, his eyes are agate, and his lure is the tiny voice that echoes in your head in the early hours of the night.
It deceives, it paralyses, it drives your confidence from you, until you plunge into those depths, swim towards the light, and are consumed.
daily microfiction
Enthroned on long-dead coral, dorsal spines erect, Abyssalia reigns over the chill beneath the thermocline.
Her augurs warn of the growing heat of the surface waters, and she knows her fate leads into that unfathomable warmth, to lead her army to war, else all life perish.
