Das Begman: RP Scene 19
SUMMARY: The final search, Part 1. Merrisol and Maggie attempt to get to the source of the phenomenon.
CHARACTERS: Merrisol and Maggie
Jumping in feet first this time is advised, with the waves so choppy, and the wind strong enough to throw one's entry off. Merrisol keeps the cutlass sheathed and held firmly along the back of his arm, streamlining himself to plunge deep, escaping both the storm and the ship's hull as she pulls away. Under the waves there is deceptive stillness, but a constant drone of sound. The landscape is as it was, although light patterns no longer dance over the seabed, and visibility is accordingly dim.
Merri immediately notes the landmarks in the direction they need to go, then turns and catches hold of Maggie once their progress downwards is negated by water resistance. He won't assume she has already been releasing her air by the lungful, and meets her gaze pointedly until they are synced in purpose. Instead of linking hands or touching her face, he folds his free arm around her back and draws her in, his hand cupping the back of her head while he applies the Kiss. It is more than the ritual, of course. It must be. They are about to come full circle upon lost history; not read someone else's research notes; nor listen to another's personal tale. This is their story to rediscover first-hand, together.
Jumping in with Merrisol, Maggie holds her cutlass flat against her thigh to keep it from snagging on the water and causing harm or complications. She does manage to point her toes in the hope that it will help cut the water's surface on entry and send her deeper into the briny depths. The surface is broken and chaotic with wind whiping the sea into a froth and rain adding dimples and indentations to the mix. Maggie's hair streams out behind and above her, a streak of flame above her form that settles for a moment then slips beneath the waves.
Sound becomes muted, thunder behind closed, cotton-encased doors and Maggie takes a moment to glance over her shoulder to see the last deeply brown shadow of the Wave Dancer as it draws away from the storm's epicenter in search of calmer water. Any pang she feels is set aside when she looks back to find Merrisol looking intently at her. Her gaze meets his without hesitation and she half smiles at the purpose in his gaze. A lungful of air is released, pushed out in silvery hollows in the ocean's skin. Moving to him when he folds his arm about her, she encircles him with her arms, releasing the cutlass to let it hang at her side. The Kiss is accepted, water replacing her need for air, though there is more there than mere magic. Those elements are welcomed and returned as precursors to rediscovering what was and beginning something new, together.
And with the storybook story kissing stuff out of the way, they part. Merrisol dips further to collect the spears still wending their way downwards into the shadows, three in all. He returns, the surface above them now empty of ship, and nods grimly. Looking up, it is possible to see the unnatural darkness hanging above. And they'll need to get directly underneath. He points the way with the small bundle of polearms, and kicks off into a lateral swim. Always moving, the Sea plays her tricks when it comes to gauging distance, but even though it feels after ten minutes like they've covered enough ground, Merri isn't buying it. "It's pushing us back.. whatever's making the surface churn!" he calls, and even his voice sounds more garbled than usual. "We'll have to try for lower!" Where there's even less ambient light.
Odd how a kiss from him leaves her breathless above, grants her breath below, but then robs her of it even so. Perting, Maggie quirks a smile as she watches him dive for the spears. The light is more deep grey than green and her gaze lifts to watch the surface. It is not smoothing out with the Dancer's departure which gives her a pang of anxiety. Perhaps she should have let Fang or someone else go with him. Maybe then the sea would have stopped trying to beat itself into a froth. Lowering her attention, she nods to the indicated direction and angles off to swim beside him. She tries to guage the distance traveled by features seen earlier, now only partially glimpsed in the darkened water. A nod and she darts closer to Merrisol to more clearly hear what he is saying. "Go lower?" Looking up again, then down, she nods, "Okay." Turning smoothly into a dive, she angles it obliquely toward their ultimate goal.
It works for a minute. The landmark features, now hazy outlines of dark upon dark, are closer now. But the swimmers hit another perimeter of resistance, or rather, it hits them, like a hail of solid ogre fists that buffets them back, forces them upwards, stuffs their heads with disorienting echoes of thunder. Merrisol shakes himself out of the daze and looks around for Maggie urgently. He still has the sheathed sword tethered to his wrist, but the spears he has to give up, as he moves regroup with her. Back to a depth with better lighting, he can see the swirling cloud of red.. and smaller wisps of it? Blood. The physical battering or the inner-ear/sinus inflaming must have caused various minor hemorrhaging. "Are you all right?" he demands, reaching for her, and winces as a red trickle plumes and dissolves from his own nose.
It is encouraging to be able to identify landmarks along the bottom even if they are hazy and indistinct. She is not expecting the whammy that smacks into her and throws her back into a darkened spiral upward. Dazed, she floats for a moment or two as blood leaks from her nose and ears. Shaking it off in a shudder that runs through her from her head to her toes, she blinks to clear her eyes and looks for Merrisol, panic bubbling near the surface when she finds that he is not right beside her. "Kerf!" Movement angling toward her through the gloom resolves into the man she is looking for and she reaches to take his hands as he arrives. Red hair mingles with red blood though the bleeding stops within a few seconds. "I am fine. You?" Her eyes drop to his nose, then lift again to meet his eyes. There is fear in her eyes, a wondering sort of concern that she does not wish to give voice to just yet. Should she let him go one alone? Wait to see if it is her presence that is causing the problems...? Should she stay by his side as is her preference? What good is it to be there if by being there she holds him back?
His bleeding peters out presently. Attracting sharks is the least of their worries, really, and that's saying something. Holding her hands, he angles them away from the edge of turmoil and watches with relief as her own hemorrhage ceases, even under water. "Yes, feel like I've gone up against your Weir brother again, but I can handle it." There will be weird unfocused bruises after a while, and muscle ache, but for now, he is much too busy to give it any consideration. He regards her with concern, however, attempting to interpret the conflict and trepidation in her gaze. Sliding to the invisible undersea furor, then back, his gaze grows stubborn, jaw setting squarely. "No. Try again. We stay together," he insists, releasing one hand, and indicting another downwards arc before making their approach.
Red tendrils float away and fade into fog then nothing that she can detect as his bleeding stops. Her own relief is there beneath the confusion, "Okay. Good." Her hands tighten on his while he comes to realize where her concern lies and when his gaze turns stubborn and his jaw sets, she almost smiles as the relief she feels at his doing well broadens to include staying with her. That determination is contagious, "Okay. Thank you. Together then." One hand remains in his when he releases the other and she turns to arc downwards as indicated. The water darkens as she swims down, echoes of the tumult above shivering through the water. Speaking clearly, her voice grows more muffled as they get lower and closer, "When walking the pattern it was important to go forward steadily no matter the pressure to stop. Even if one moved very slowly, forward motion was key. Maybe this is the same kind of thing."
Moving easily now that they are back on the fringes of the atmospheric disturbance, they are soon enough swallowed by the shades of late evening. Startling amounts of time have passed during the struggle to break into the 'forbidden' area, and it is dark down here. Too dark to see well at all, frankly. It's bad enough for one to try walking through a dark room from one end to the other. Now take away the floor. Merri keeps them on that downward track, strong kicks gaining them momentum while he tries to encourage her with his voice as he replies, "Maybe. The source of this bother is magic, it has to be. However.. I expect we'd be battered to a pulp while inching through.. for which we need traction.. meaning walking the sea bed.." He holds firm to her hand while he reaches over to her waist and inverts them smoothly... at least.. the pressure of his hand suggests so, as well as the way the roots of her hair tug the other way once she is pointed toes downward. "You're right, though. We will start at ground level, and use that traction.. for steady forward motion." So saying, they touch down after another dozen seconds, feeling rock and loose silt clouding around their legs. He pauses there, coughing water once as the sediment haze reaches overhead levels, can be felt turning, drawing her close into a careful clasp against the front of his body. "Ready.. help me push off. Propulsion is the key. Velocity will push us through." He coughs again and gasps, "Let me do the swimming, yes? Hold onto me, Maggie." He sinks them down into a crouch with her straddling one of his knees, enough room and leverage for them both to gather power in their legs. "Ready," he repeats into her ear, before counting them into it.
It is a relief to be moving through the brighter, calmer waters on the edge of the mess and Maggie would enjoy it but for the urgency and immediacy of their errand. As late evening's purples reaches them even beneath the waves, she briefly entertains a silent question as to the phase of the moon high above. It is a passing thought that swims into and out of her consciousness as she listens to Merrisol's kind commentary. "Mmmhmmm. Okay. Down it is, then." Robbed of even the semblance of clear vision by the sea, the night and the tumult, she trusts him to stop them before they smash into the sea floor. The touch of his hand guiding her into an upright pisition is comforting in the strangeness of sightless boyancy. Her toes point, seeking the sandy sea bed and she lands as small puffs of silt swirls up her legs, lightly abrading, slightly tickling. It rises in what would be a golden cloud were the sun shining. Caught by a cough, she draws in more water to fuel it which brings more grit in. Closing her mouth against it, her cough becomes muffled. She turns into his arms, her own moving to gain a firm, if cautious purchase. She nods in answer to his query, then realizes that he might not be able to see the gesture and tries again, "Makes sense. You are the stronger of us and I will not let go, Kerf." Straddling his knee, she bends both of her legs, drawing strength and determination into her core, poised to thrust them off and away at his mark. Another cough almost steals her focus, but she recovers in time. The count works its way down and she tightens her hold. At the mark, she pushes strongly into the sea floor and draws her body against his to increase the aerodynamics of the pair moving through water.
The atmospheric pressure of being eighty or ninety feet underwater is truly felt when they abruptly push against it with all their combined strength... which is plenty. There is a tremendous initial drag upon launching, and then it's like they have punched through some bubble.. -without- the unpleasant effects of eardrum-popping and nitrogen poisoning due to the Rebman gift. They hurtle at an angle into the jumble of currents, bodies stretched against one another, straight as arrows aside from arms, his clasping her: one hand to the back of her head to keep it tucked safely beneath his chin; the other at her hip. The latter moves down her leg now and encourages the thigh to slide up and squeeze tight to his hip. The reason is clear a second later, as he needs his legs free and unobstructed, to flutter kick powerfully and keep their momentum high. Bursting through the rougher wall of roiling force, and riding upwards still further as opposed to fighting downwards against it, they spin involuntarily. That's all right with Merri - as long as they keep that forward motion, it will be as Maggie said. To that end, he now has to add even more of his strength and prowess to the Big Push. His arms leave their hold on Maggie, thrusting over his head as though to manually break apart the churning fields of force; at the same time, the muscles in his torso from groin to chest ripple in an undulating wave, again and again in tight rhythm, snaking them limberly into an arc. One final burst of effort has them out the other side, now tumbling through a relatively more peaceful cone of water space. Merrisol works to get them back under control for fear of being tossed right back into the battering wall, then begins to gradually relax. He seems to spend a moment hacking up the clogs of silt, then subsides into a frozen hush as he looks downwards once more in the dim ambience of an eerie light source.
Pushing into the weight of the sea above, feeling the resistance just from the water, Maggie is glad to be able to lend her strength to this endeavor. The drag increases for a while, threatening to snatch her from Kerf's side and their combined purpose. Turning her head a little, she tucks her head beneath his chin, listening to the beating of his heart. Her body remains straight as they fly together through the water until his hand moves down along her leg. Lifting them at his direction she tightens her thighs about his hips, curling her legs carefully to minimize the added resistance to their wild flight. A hint of trepidation flits through her when he removes his hands to lift them upward and she holds on a bit more tightly to keep the water from pulling her down along his body to his knees or tearing her away from him entirely. Her eyes close as his powerful strokes coupled with the buffeting currents send the pair into a spin that spirals them through the water. She can feel the rippling movement of his powerful form as he propels them forward despite the pressure around them. A notion flits through her and is gone though it does leave a brief smile upon her lips that is then lost as a strong urge to cough shivers in the back of her throat. The tickle grows and she denies it, knowing that such a violent impulse would be detrimental in so many ways. The arc they describe could so easily show them beautiful vistas, glittering fish and coral structures rising delicately from the deeps. She holds on, lending determination by osmosis if nothing else. And then the buffeting stops, the pressure is gone and they are tumbling together through water free of turbulence. She holds on still while he regains control of their trajectory, keeping them safe from the opposite wall. Releasing him then, she floats away, one hand still reaching toward him as she coughs violently, expelling inhaled silt and the skeletons of miniscule sea creatures. When she regains her composure, she looks first to him then follows his gaze downward, seeking whatever it is that has left him frozen there floating in the faintly eerie glow.
Merrisol has never had to swim quite that desperately before, that he remembers anyway, not even when diving in after a crewmate washed overboard on rough seas. The dynamics had just kicked in, how to slide and ride and dive through the rush of current like a salmon flinging itself upstream for the spawning grounds. Maybe the struggle was meant to look somewhat... suggestive, then. He looks exhausted, naturally, but that is not why he's just hanging there in the water, staring downwards.
It's not the 'Eye' of the storm, per se, for this funnel-shaped area is permeated with a creepy grey tint that is not a reassuring step up from the inky purple-black of the outer depths. The haze seems to suck all the vibrant colour out of the world and the both of them as they drift midway between the surface and the sea bed.. or what passes for the sea bed in these parts. Instead of kelp-strewn sediment, it is a a boneyard. Brittle skeletons of both marine animals and humanoids blanket the ground in a scatter zone that about matches the huge fried-egg mass blip that Quinlan and/or Alonzo had described, that Merrisol had so easily dismissed as way too big and weird to be the sub. And yet! There in the center of the calcium carpet, almost engulfed under a slope of heaped bones, a flat ship deck of sorts can be made out. The prow is the shoulders, rearing serpentine neck, and long bony head of a huge dragon-esque seahorse; its bulging crystal eyes seem to stare back up at them in utter surprise.
The uncovered deck is the real eye-catcher though, with 'planks' of polished volcanic glass fitted neatly together the same way a standard ship's main deck would be. It is this dusky but still reflective surface which exudes that hazy grey aura. Neither of the swimmers are quite at the right angle to view their own images, but there are shapes seen beyond the surface all the same. Once again, they fail to reassure.
CHARACTERS: Merrisol and Maggie
Jumping in feet first this time is advised, with the waves so choppy, and the wind strong enough to throw one's entry off. Merrisol keeps the cutlass sheathed and held firmly along the back of his arm, streamlining himself to plunge deep, escaping both the storm and the ship's hull as she pulls away. Under the waves there is deceptive stillness, but a constant drone of sound. The landscape is as it was, although light patterns no longer dance over the seabed, and visibility is accordingly dim.
Merri immediately notes the landmarks in the direction they need to go, then turns and catches hold of Maggie once their progress downwards is negated by water resistance. He won't assume she has already been releasing her air by the lungful, and meets her gaze pointedly until they are synced in purpose. Instead of linking hands or touching her face, he folds his free arm around her back and draws her in, his hand cupping the back of her head while he applies the Kiss. It is more than the ritual, of course. It must be. They are about to come full circle upon lost history; not read someone else's research notes; nor listen to another's personal tale. This is their story to rediscover first-hand, together.
Jumping in with Merrisol, Maggie holds her cutlass flat against her thigh to keep it from snagging on the water and causing harm or complications. She does manage to point her toes in the hope that it will help cut the water's surface on entry and send her deeper into the briny depths. The surface is broken and chaotic with wind whiping the sea into a froth and rain adding dimples and indentations to the mix. Maggie's hair streams out behind and above her, a streak of flame above her form that settles for a moment then slips beneath the waves.
Sound becomes muted, thunder behind closed, cotton-encased doors and Maggie takes a moment to glance over her shoulder to see the last deeply brown shadow of the Wave Dancer as it draws away from the storm's epicenter in search of calmer water. Any pang she feels is set aside when she looks back to find Merrisol looking intently at her. Her gaze meets his without hesitation and she half smiles at the purpose in his gaze. A lungful of air is released, pushed out in silvery hollows in the ocean's skin. Moving to him when he folds his arm about her, she encircles him with her arms, releasing the cutlass to let it hang at her side. The Kiss is accepted, water replacing her need for air, though there is more there than mere magic. Those elements are welcomed and returned as precursors to rediscovering what was and beginning something new, together.
And with the storybook story kissing stuff out of the way, they part. Merrisol dips further to collect the spears still wending their way downwards into the shadows, three in all. He returns, the surface above them now empty of ship, and nods grimly. Looking up, it is possible to see the unnatural darkness hanging above. And they'll need to get directly underneath. He points the way with the small bundle of polearms, and kicks off into a lateral swim. Always moving, the Sea plays her tricks when it comes to gauging distance, but even though it feels after ten minutes like they've covered enough ground, Merri isn't buying it. "It's pushing us back.. whatever's making the surface churn!" he calls, and even his voice sounds more garbled than usual. "We'll have to try for lower!" Where there's even less ambient light.
Odd how a kiss from him leaves her breathless above, grants her breath below, but then robs her of it even so. Perting, Maggie quirks a smile as she watches him dive for the spears. The light is more deep grey than green and her gaze lifts to watch the surface. It is not smoothing out with the Dancer's departure which gives her a pang of anxiety. Perhaps she should have let Fang or someone else go with him. Maybe then the sea would have stopped trying to beat itself into a froth. Lowering her attention, she nods to the indicated direction and angles off to swim beside him. She tries to guage the distance traveled by features seen earlier, now only partially glimpsed in the darkened water. A nod and she darts closer to Merrisol to more clearly hear what he is saying. "Go lower?" Looking up again, then down, she nods, "Okay." Turning smoothly into a dive, she angles it obliquely toward their ultimate goal.
It works for a minute. The landmark features, now hazy outlines of dark upon dark, are closer now. But the swimmers hit another perimeter of resistance, or rather, it hits them, like a hail of solid ogre fists that buffets them back, forces them upwards, stuffs their heads with disorienting echoes of thunder. Merrisol shakes himself out of the daze and looks around for Maggie urgently. He still has the sheathed sword tethered to his wrist, but the spears he has to give up, as he moves regroup with her. Back to a depth with better lighting, he can see the swirling cloud of red.. and smaller wisps of it? Blood. The physical battering or the inner-ear/sinus inflaming must have caused various minor hemorrhaging. "Are you all right?" he demands, reaching for her, and winces as a red trickle plumes and dissolves from his own nose.
It is encouraging to be able to identify landmarks along the bottom even if they are hazy and indistinct. She is not expecting the whammy that smacks into her and throws her back into a darkened spiral upward. Dazed, she floats for a moment or two as blood leaks from her nose and ears. Shaking it off in a shudder that runs through her from her head to her toes, she blinks to clear her eyes and looks for Merrisol, panic bubbling near the surface when she finds that he is not right beside her. "Kerf!" Movement angling toward her through the gloom resolves into the man she is looking for and she reaches to take his hands as he arrives. Red hair mingles with red blood though the bleeding stops within a few seconds. "I am fine. You?" Her eyes drop to his nose, then lift again to meet his eyes. There is fear in her eyes, a wondering sort of concern that she does not wish to give voice to just yet. Should she let him go one alone? Wait to see if it is her presence that is causing the problems...? Should she stay by his side as is her preference? What good is it to be there if by being there she holds him back?
His bleeding peters out presently. Attracting sharks is the least of their worries, really, and that's saying something. Holding her hands, he angles them away from the edge of turmoil and watches with relief as her own hemorrhage ceases, even under water. "Yes, feel like I've gone up against your Weir brother again, but I can handle it." There will be weird unfocused bruises after a while, and muscle ache, but for now, he is much too busy to give it any consideration. He regards her with concern, however, attempting to interpret the conflict and trepidation in her gaze. Sliding to the invisible undersea furor, then back, his gaze grows stubborn, jaw setting squarely. "No. Try again. We stay together," he insists, releasing one hand, and indicting another downwards arc before making their approach.
Red tendrils float away and fade into fog then nothing that she can detect as his bleeding stops. Her own relief is there beneath the confusion, "Okay. Good." Her hands tighten on his while he comes to realize where her concern lies and when his gaze turns stubborn and his jaw sets, she almost smiles as the relief she feels at his doing well broadens to include staying with her. That determination is contagious, "Okay. Thank you. Together then." One hand remains in his when he releases the other and she turns to arc downwards as indicated. The water darkens as she swims down, echoes of the tumult above shivering through the water. Speaking clearly, her voice grows more muffled as they get lower and closer, "When walking the pattern it was important to go forward steadily no matter the pressure to stop. Even if one moved very slowly, forward motion was key. Maybe this is the same kind of thing."
Moving easily now that they are back on the fringes of the atmospheric disturbance, they are soon enough swallowed by the shades of late evening. Startling amounts of time have passed during the struggle to break into the 'forbidden' area, and it is dark down here. Too dark to see well at all, frankly. It's bad enough for one to try walking through a dark room from one end to the other. Now take away the floor. Merri keeps them on that downward track, strong kicks gaining them momentum while he tries to encourage her with his voice as he replies, "Maybe. The source of this bother is magic, it has to be. However.. I expect we'd be battered to a pulp while inching through.. for which we need traction.. meaning walking the sea bed.." He holds firm to her hand while he reaches over to her waist and inverts them smoothly... at least.. the pressure of his hand suggests so, as well as the way the roots of her hair tug the other way once she is pointed toes downward. "You're right, though. We will start at ground level, and use that traction.. for steady forward motion." So saying, they touch down after another dozen seconds, feeling rock and loose silt clouding around their legs. He pauses there, coughing water once as the sediment haze reaches overhead levels, can be felt turning, drawing her close into a careful clasp against the front of his body. "Ready.. help me push off. Propulsion is the key. Velocity will push us through." He coughs again and gasps, "Let me do the swimming, yes? Hold onto me, Maggie." He sinks them down into a crouch with her straddling one of his knees, enough room and leverage for them both to gather power in their legs. "Ready," he repeats into her ear, before counting them into it.
It is a relief to be moving through the brighter, calmer waters on the edge of the mess and Maggie would enjoy it but for the urgency and immediacy of their errand. As late evening's purples reaches them even beneath the waves, she briefly entertains a silent question as to the phase of the moon high above. It is a passing thought that swims into and out of her consciousness as she listens to Merrisol's kind commentary. "Mmmhmmm. Okay. Down it is, then." Robbed of even the semblance of clear vision by the sea, the night and the tumult, she trusts him to stop them before they smash into the sea floor. The touch of his hand guiding her into an upright pisition is comforting in the strangeness of sightless boyancy. Her toes point, seeking the sandy sea bed and she lands as small puffs of silt swirls up her legs, lightly abrading, slightly tickling. It rises in what would be a golden cloud were the sun shining. Caught by a cough, she draws in more water to fuel it which brings more grit in. Closing her mouth against it, her cough becomes muffled. She turns into his arms, her own moving to gain a firm, if cautious purchase. She nods in answer to his query, then realizes that he might not be able to see the gesture and tries again, "Makes sense. You are the stronger of us and I will not let go, Kerf." Straddling his knee, she bends both of her legs, drawing strength and determination into her core, poised to thrust them off and away at his mark. Another cough almost steals her focus, but she recovers in time. The count works its way down and she tightens her hold. At the mark, she pushes strongly into the sea floor and draws her body against his to increase the aerodynamics of the pair moving through water.
The atmospheric pressure of being eighty or ninety feet underwater is truly felt when they abruptly push against it with all their combined strength... which is plenty. There is a tremendous initial drag upon launching, and then it's like they have punched through some bubble.. -without- the unpleasant effects of eardrum-popping and nitrogen poisoning due to the Rebman gift. They hurtle at an angle into the jumble of currents, bodies stretched against one another, straight as arrows aside from arms, his clasping her: one hand to the back of her head to keep it tucked safely beneath his chin; the other at her hip. The latter moves down her leg now and encourages the thigh to slide up and squeeze tight to his hip. The reason is clear a second later, as he needs his legs free and unobstructed, to flutter kick powerfully and keep their momentum high. Bursting through the rougher wall of roiling force, and riding upwards still further as opposed to fighting downwards against it, they spin involuntarily. That's all right with Merri - as long as they keep that forward motion, it will be as Maggie said. To that end, he now has to add even more of his strength and prowess to the Big Push. His arms leave their hold on Maggie, thrusting over his head as though to manually break apart the churning fields of force; at the same time, the muscles in his torso from groin to chest ripple in an undulating wave, again and again in tight rhythm, snaking them limberly into an arc. One final burst of effort has them out the other side, now tumbling through a relatively more peaceful cone of water space. Merrisol works to get them back under control for fear of being tossed right back into the battering wall, then begins to gradually relax. He seems to spend a moment hacking up the clogs of silt, then subsides into a frozen hush as he looks downwards once more in the dim ambience of an eerie light source.
Pushing into the weight of the sea above, feeling the resistance just from the water, Maggie is glad to be able to lend her strength to this endeavor. The drag increases for a while, threatening to snatch her from Kerf's side and their combined purpose. Turning her head a little, she tucks her head beneath his chin, listening to the beating of his heart. Her body remains straight as they fly together through the water until his hand moves down along her leg. Lifting them at his direction she tightens her thighs about his hips, curling her legs carefully to minimize the added resistance to their wild flight. A hint of trepidation flits through her when he removes his hands to lift them upward and she holds on a bit more tightly to keep the water from pulling her down along his body to his knees or tearing her away from him entirely. Her eyes close as his powerful strokes coupled with the buffeting currents send the pair into a spin that spirals them through the water. She can feel the rippling movement of his powerful form as he propels them forward despite the pressure around them. A notion flits through her and is gone though it does leave a brief smile upon her lips that is then lost as a strong urge to cough shivers in the back of her throat. The tickle grows and she denies it, knowing that such a violent impulse would be detrimental in so many ways. The arc they describe could so easily show them beautiful vistas, glittering fish and coral structures rising delicately from the deeps. She holds on, lending determination by osmosis if nothing else. And then the buffeting stops, the pressure is gone and they are tumbling together through water free of turbulence. She holds on still while he regains control of their trajectory, keeping them safe from the opposite wall. Releasing him then, she floats away, one hand still reaching toward him as she coughs violently, expelling inhaled silt and the skeletons of miniscule sea creatures. When she regains her composure, she looks first to him then follows his gaze downward, seeking whatever it is that has left him frozen there floating in the faintly eerie glow.
Merrisol has never had to swim quite that desperately before, that he remembers anyway, not even when diving in after a crewmate washed overboard on rough seas. The dynamics had just kicked in, how to slide and ride and dive through the rush of current like a salmon flinging itself upstream for the spawning grounds. Maybe the struggle was meant to look somewhat... suggestive, then. He looks exhausted, naturally, but that is not why he's just hanging there in the water, staring downwards.
It's not the 'Eye' of the storm, per se, for this funnel-shaped area is permeated with a creepy grey tint that is not a reassuring step up from the inky purple-black of the outer depths. The haze seems to suck all the vibrant colour out of the world and the both of them as they drift midway between the surface and the sea bed.. or what passes for the sea bed in these parts. Instead of kelp-strewn sediment, it is a a boneyard. Brittle skeletons of both marine animals and humanoids blanket the ground in a scatter zone that about matches the huge fried-egg mass blip that Quinlan and/or Alonzo had described, that Merrisol had so easily dismissed as way too big and weird to be the sub. And yet! There in the center of the calcium carpet, almost engulfed under a slope of heaped bones, a flat ship deck of sorts can be made out. The prow is the shoulders, rearing serpentine neck, and long bony head of a huge dragon-esque seahorse; its bulging crystal eyes seem to stare back up at them in utter surprise.
The uncovered deck is the real eye-catcher though, with 'planks' of polished volcanic glass fitted neatly together the same way a standard ship's main deck would be. It is this dusky but still reflective surface which exudes that hazy grey aura. Neither of the swimmers are quite at the right angle to view their own images, but there are shapes seen beyond the surface all the same. Once again, they fail to reassure.