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The recording was clear, despite everything.
The camera's auxiliary light beam restored the colors the deep sea had stripped from the objects, but it was unable to prevent the image from fading at the edges, slipping back into green and blue, only to be swallowed up by darkness.
It was the interior of a building, but one unlike Augustine Platane had ever seen.
The architecture didn't adapt to the gravity of the mainland. Meshes of wire and woven seaweed had been installed on the wall, creating pockets in which various objects of a more or less alien appearance were kept. A sort of sofa with no backrest and only one armrest stood almost in the center of the frame. A thin deep-sea fish, long and sinuous like a spine, rested motionless upon it. It looked a bit like a silver, dark-headed Gorebyss, but its eyes were large and greenish and unfocused.
On a half-column were gathered cloth figures representing humanoid creatures, wrong, covered in waterlogged fur. They had amused, malevolent looks, and sharp exposed fangs. Nothing like that existed in the world Augustine lived in, but he knew they had once been cult objects: he understood, with a kind of reverent surprise, that they were relics of a world long gone.
Everything in that room seemed both foreign and familiar.
It was an inhabited building… and it was completely underwater.
The camera was moving slowly, resting on its operator's shoulder. The sound of his breathing didn't disturb the shot: it was as if he weren't breathing at all, letting the sounds of the abyss serve as their soundtrack.
The image came directly to one of the screens on the research vessel Nihil, where researcher Augustine Platane was observing images no other human had seen before.
The interior of his best friend's house.
«And this» A sonorous voice uttered «Is still my grandmother».
The figure of an enormous, shimmering tail suddenly filled the screen, unfurling in a nervous flicker. It was silvery and scaleless, covered in spots and lines that seemed to glow under the auxiliary spotlight, topped by a red crest that ran over its entire length. It ended abruptly, as if the tip had been brutally severed.
«I can only see a piece» Augustine laughed.
«Oh, apologies. I'll try to move back».
Attached to that tail, large enough to be a huge fish in its own right, was a roughly humanoid torso. Grandmother's skin darkened as one ascended her long, Milotic-like body, until reaching a face so dark that almost all that was visible were her round, luminous eyes, white in the reflection of the artificial light.
«If you like, you can say hello, Grandmother»
«Hi. Don't point that thing at my eyes, Lysandre» Said the sea serpent
«Forgive me, Grandmother»
«Are you sending images up there to your friend again?»
«Yes. He often shows me things from his world; he even showed me where he lives. The right thing, I suppose, is to return the favor. Don't you think?»
«Why doesn't he come down?»
«It's inconvenient for a human, even with their technology. I just wanted to show him something»
«Ah. I'm going to eat».
Grandmother slipped out of frame, effortlessly, as if she were a silver ribbon pulled away by an invisible hand.
Lysandre was a pistrix, as was his grandma: a sentient species that had inhabited the sea for millennia, about which humans had told stories for centuries without ever fully accepting their existence as real creatures.
Augustine was still in awe just thinking about it.
Unlike his grandmother, Lysandre's face had easily discernible features, with well-defined lips, clear eyes, and an elegant nose, similar to those a human might display. A curious evolutionary convergence.
A bit of his handsome profile appeared in the video, along with a hint of his cardinal red mane.
«I think the battery's running low» The pistrix admitted.
«The camera’s?»
«No, that of the phone».
The two were talking through a smartphone Lysandre had brought underwater with him, protected by a special case. The reception was surprisingly good down there.
«Okay, don't worry! You've already shown me a lot of interesting things; I can look at the rest of the footage later. I can't wait to talk to you about it when you get up here» Augustine reassured him affectionately.
«These devices have very little battery life»
«Well spent. Thanks for showing me more of your Ammonia»
Ammonia was the shortened nickname a Stylephorus chordatus, a bizarre and elusive deep-sea fish, and Lysandre's pet: the one that slept on the couch.
The animal puffed out its tubular mouth in its sleep, dreaming of inhaling tasty copepods, and exhaled loudly with a bup.
«Well, mea culpa. But those on the column, those little puppets, are they Labubus? Aliana likes them, she says they’re a mystery of the old Internet» Augustine said, referring to his younger sister «At one point, those little devils were everywhere, then, poof! It seems they vanished into thin air. Apparently, at least a couple ended up at the bottom of the sea. Did you know they're technically elves?»
«What are elves?»
«Ah. Uhm... they're supernatural creatures with magic, capable of casting curses or bringing good luck, similar to humans. Certain sources say they actually exist, and after seeing that a certain other legend turned out to be true... who knows». The researcher chuckled.
«It may be»
«Why do you collect toys?» Augustine asked softly «Do you find them beautiful?»
«Do you think it's the face of something beautiful?» Lysandre lifted one of the dolls and brought it too close to the lens, filling it with those big, out-of-focus eyes and triangular teeth.
«Hey, could be!» The other laughed, raising his hands (even though his friend couldn't see it) «Yeah, it has a cute little face! And why would you have them in the house if you don't like them?»
«Hmm... I think it all started here».
Lysandre put down the supposed elf and rummaged in one of the wall pockets. He pulled out a small plastic figure that could easily disappear in the closed fist of one of the two adults, resembling a stylized boy with big blue eyes, jeans, and red boots.
Augustine inhaled sharply. «Zizou!»
«Cheers»
«No, Zizou... it's that boy, from a cartoon from when I was little. Unless it's a false memory, I had a toy just like this as a kid»
«That's how it is, then. His name is Zizou. Poor child, his parents must not have loved him very much»
«Well, the cartoon never said anything like that»
«This comes from the surface, obviously... a world that was completely foreign to me at the time, a mystery, and every piece that fell from the sky was a fragment that brought me closer to understanding it. Do you understand? A human gave it to me many years ago» Lysandre confided, with a knowing smile. «Or at least that's what I thought when I was young. In hindsight, it's possible that someone had lost some objects and I took them. I don't see why they would give me gifts»
«To befriend you! You know something like that happened to me when I was little?»
«I'm not surprised they wanted to leave you gifts»
«Oh, you’re so sweet. No, no, I meant that I really wanted to make friends with a sea creature. I was, I don't know, seven years old? I was absolutely set on it. Let's just say I took matters into my own hands and I was the one who... left them... in the sea...»
Augustine frowned thoughtfully. It wasn't possible.
«Did you also leave some shells, tied together with a string?» Lysandre asked slowly.
«It was a necklace» Augustine replied in a whisper.
«And there were also some spheres»
«Marbles. I left some marbles»
«Made of glass?»
«With pictures of Pokémon inside».
At that moment, Lysandre and Augustine froze.
The pistrix turned the toy over in his hand. He had managed to meet Augustine because, when the opportunity to rise to the surface arose, that mystery that had begun as a child with gifts from a real human had called to him like the song of a siren (a kind and slightly crazy one, who didn't consider Lysandre’s people as beasts devoid of merit or intellect like real ones did).
There was something magnificent in the idea of having kept memories of his Augustine in his home, before Lysandre even knew it was him.
«The red crest!» The researcher suddenly exclaimed. «The creature I left the gifts for, I glimpsed it from afar, and it had a red crest like yours!».
Just then, the phone died.
Augustine burst out laughing. He couldn't wait for Lysandre to come back up: they really had to talk about it.
Had Augustine been the first human Lysandre had ever seen? Surely Lysandre had been the first pistrix he'd ever met; the sight of that red crest had been the first step in his love for Milotics, the reason he'd undertaken the mission that had brought them together again as adults!
Incredible, but it was him. It had always been him.