Page 5 of Claimed By the Deep
"Go home, Meri," Fergus advises quietly. "Rest. Perhaps morning brings a new perspective."
Doubtful, but I nod anyway. Dreams will return tonight—they always do after days on water. Tomorrow brings the same outstanding bills, same boat maintenance requirements, same impossible choice between legal compliance and financial survival.
The storm front has barely arrived, and already I sense this night stretches endlessly ahead.
Cyreus
THREE
Iobserve her from the depths, concealed among rocky formations that have sheltered me for decades.
The human female returns to these waters with persistence that simultaneously intrigues and troubles me. She remains unaware of my presence—few humans detect me, and those who glimpse my form dismiss it as shadow or optical illusion.
But she stands apart from others.
Her vessel cuts the surface overhead as I ascend cautiously, keeping to darker currents where my body melds with underwater shadows. The craft she named Deep Pockets mirrors its captain—weathered yet resilient, patched but seaworthy. For months I've watched her dive with expertise rivaling creatures evolved for these pressures.
Today she anchors above the remains of Caroline's Dream. This merchant vessel has lain here since winter 1943, when storms claimed both ship and seventeen souls. I witnessed her sinking—those screams silenced by frigid water, lights swallowed by unforgiving depths. During the early years after myown crash, I attempted to rescue drowning humans when possible. Yet storms never ceased, and vessels continued claiming the sea's benevolence while evidence suggested otherwise.
I learned simply to watch. To maintain distance. To rescue when I could and to let the sea take the ones I couldn't.
I learned to merely watch human affairs without intervention.
Until this one.
She moves deliberately overhead, examining equipment she's utilized countless times. Sunlight filtering through storm clouds catches her auburn hair, and despite sixty feet of separation, I detect her unease. Something has disrupted her pattern.
I advance closer, my body flowing through transformations that would horrify most surface dwellers. In natural form, I comprise dark red flesh and powerful appendages, each tentacle capable of pulverizing steel or executing movements requiring surgical precision. My home world Agual V produced us for environments far deeper and darker than Earth's oceans, yet these waters have sustained me through decades since my ship's destruction.
The crash. Nearly a century later, remembering still produces anguish in my hearts. My vessel lies fragmented across the seabed, irreparably shattered. Communication arrays that might have summoned rescue were obliterated first. Navigation systems that could have guided me home exist now as twisted metal and fused circuitry. My shipmates all lost.
I remain this world's solitary visitor. The sole survivor of a mission intended to establish peaceful first contact with Earth's dominant species. Instead, I've become a silent observer, studying humanity through careful observation and rare, calculated interactions with those who mistake me for their kind.
The woman begins descending, prompting my retreat to a safer distance. She moves through water with economical grace born from years of practice. Pressure changes that would incapacitate untrained humans present no challenge as she navigates toward the wreck by instinct and experience.
I understand her attraction to these waters. Salvage provides livelihood, certainly, but deeper motivations drive her here. She seeks something beneath the surface—perhaps answers, or simply that rare tranquility found where terrestrial concerns cannot penetrate.
This need resonates with me. Ocean depths have served as my sanctuary too, where crushing solitude momentarily dissipates through simple immersion in waters that accept my true form.
She reaches the wreck and commences methodical investigation, employing the metal detector that reveals objects invisible to unaided perception. I've witnessed previous discoveries—jewelry, coins, artifacts she retrieves and eventually exchanges. This process confounds me.
On Agual V, resources circulate according to necessity. Human concepts of ownership and trading objects for survival rights remain incomprehensible despite decades studying them.
Yet other aspects of human nature grow clearer to me.
Her movements when believing herself unobserved. Precise maintenance of equipment, treating tools as bodily extensions. Satisfaction upon discovering valuable items, and determination compelling her repeatedly into perilous situations.
And the dreams.
Unintentionally, I've entered her sleeping consciousness these past weeks, drawn by solitude mirroring my own. Initially mere curiosity—what experiences shape human unconscious states? But her dreams called to me unexpectedly, and I returned night after night, sharing visions that intensified with each encounter.
This violates ethical principles. My people strictly forbid mental intrusion without explicit consent. Yet my isolation spans generations, and her mind welcomes contact while her waking thoughts remain unaware of its source. In dreams, my true form inspires fascination rather than fear. In dreams, she meets my touch with desire instead of terror.
In dreams, isolation ceases.
She works steadily through the wreck below, discovering items her detector identifies as valuable. A pocket watch, tarnished but functional. A brass compass permanently disoriented. Personal effects belonging to humans who perished decades before her birth.
I wonder if she contemplates them—lives extinguished, aspirations terminated beneath these waves. Humans demonstrate remarkable empathy when inclined, though they exhibit crueltiesthat would disgrace even the most terrible predators from my world.
