The nest was mid-level, three-stories, and backed on to a regulated thermal vent. Melden swam in through the lower deck entrance with a board held firmly with three tentacles. Two others carried a bag of crabs whose limbs were bound, but still moving. The final three propelled Melden across the empty room.
She flowed up to the back wall, dropped the bag of crabs and board on the bed of reclining sand below it, and removed the decorative feature above. A casual backwards flip had it floating towards the entrance. Lifting the new board she placed it on the wall, tilting left and right until it sat at a pleasing angle. It was a found piece from a submerged city, one of the many which littered higher coastal waters around the globe. As an archaeologist removing things from a site was technically an error, and could lead to censure. For sure, without her permission to be on-site, taking something would lead to censure, possibly banishment. Just this once, though, it had been worth the risk. She flipped her limbs and floated back to the middle of the room, admiring the bright blue board, and the three sets of flowing red lines upon it. They found this design in so many places it was almost ubiquitous, indeed, it was hoped the very commonness of its nature would one day allow them to decipher the meaning of it, and all the other script-like things found.
For now, this item, artefact, was a thing of beauty, and Melden wrinkled her mantle in pleasure.
Turning, she pushed the replaced artwork out the entrance and watched it tumble in the currents as it headed down the column, and towards darkness.
Members of the clan at home were all in the feeding room and Melden’s arrival with a bag of crabs was greeted with delight, limbs reached out to touch tip-to-tip, or to stroke her mantle. The crabs were placed in the feed pit, and there was a scrabble to catch one.
“I was at dinner with some friends the other day,” Adjeera said. “We went to one of the new feeding places in Catcher’s Reef.” He fed meat from a crab leg into his maw. “We had crab served out of its shell, arranged on a section of its shell but processed so it was easy to suck and chew. It tasted bland.”
“How are your attempts to make us change our living habits going?” Melden asked. “I almost considered a cover today, but it wasn’t quite cold enough.
“Oh, hahaha,” Adjeera said. “May you live long enough to not require a mantle cloak. Seventy-five cycles is beyond your lifetime, but not your progeny, nor mine. If we do nothing they will be the first to wear them, and to seek waters as warm as we assume normal. We know there used to be areas too cold for habitation by all but the hardiest of our kind. They disappeared long ago. We may be seeing such areas returning.”
A voice across the room called, “I’ve heard about this. The water goes hard. Blocks out light and everything. Sounds farfetched to me. Surely it’d sink down and when more water became hard that would fall. Eventually all the water is hard and we have nowhere to live.”
“Thanks for the insight, Fagoorn. It may sound farfetched, but the mathematics is sound. And it’s no more farfetched than an average lifetime extending nearly twenty times in two thousand generations; or the development of suits to allow for exploration of dry places.” Adjeera flicked out a limb and snared a crab claw which floated in the disturbed water fo the feeding room. He crunched it and sucked the flesh out, then flicked the emptied claw towards the discard corner. “We have shaped things to suit our needs and requirements. The world we live in is moulded as much as possible to be convenient, hospitable. But the world doesn’t care about us. Proof that we weren’t always the dominant species is abundant. The buildings and craft of the land creatures are still everywhere-“
“I bought a piece of one of their buildings home with me,” Melden said. All eyes turned to her. “I put it up in the room below, instead of that hideous thing we were given as a nest present.”
“I like that,” one of the youngest clanmates said.
“Yes, but you’re young and will learn,” Melden said, following the exodus to go view her artefact. A lone crab scuttled across the feeding pit, bound claws waving uselessly, banged against the edge of the pit and stopped, looking lost, unable to comprehend the environment it found itself thrust into.
“What’s the wiggly stuff?” Someone asked.
“That’s called writing,” Melden said. “We think it’s how they showed devotion to their deities. Hopefully, one day, someone will work out what it means.”
“Following Greta Thunberg’s speech to the Unite Nations we’re joined by C.M.N.’s Tim Extaa and P.H.K.S.’s Ben Annery. First we turn to Tim. You’ve met Greta. What do you think of her? Is she as angry as she portrays?”
“Nice to be here, Rita. Greta Thunberg is the poster person climate change needs, and let’s be clear, the term is poster person, not child, or girl. She’s been concerned by the issue since the age of eight. For more than half her life she’s been soaking up the research, the news, the data. And yes, she’s angry. Angry that we’ve known about the issue for so long and refused to take it seriously - and we could have. We did when C.F.C.’s were banned and the hole in the ozone layer repaired. But it isn’t angsty teenage rage Greta has. She’s focused. She has a message and her message is ‘climate change is real, and we can’t live with it, we need to change.’”
“Well, thanks for that Tim.”
The exo-suit chafed where Adjeera’s limbs joined his mantle. The team overnighted in rivers and lakes, during the day they travelled through land-grasses. When the air moved the tall grass swayed, but never with the languid sinuousness of grass back in water. They’d been journeying for three days and each had become a little cooler. There was evidence that the rate of cooling was increasing. In the last three cycles there was reports of hard water in the small ocean at the top of the planet. Now they were travelling to investigate a phenomenon that a had been theorised but never witnessed. Water falling from the sky in crystalline form.
“If I have to spend another seven days in these suits I think I’ll chew my own limbs off,” Pramad said. She adjusted the straps connect her eco-suit to a drag-sled which contained supplies and equipment. The three team members each had similar loads.
“Keep complaining and I’ll delimb you in a rage frenzy.” The anger in Havrah’s voice was a pretence. He and Pramad were working their way towards a mating. This would be their last trip. They would mate and, within a cycle, both be dead, their life’s work ended and the biological imperative completed.
The trio had travelled from the ocean through unsalinated land inflows until the water rushed across them with a fierceness which made it easier to move on land. They followed a long straight route which led out from one of the ancient cities. It was grassy but with a substrate which had once been firm. Moving along it allowed them to travel swiftly, easily.
Adjeera sucked through his gills and the water felt stale, recycled. The suit gave them the ability to go places unimaginable a few cycles ago. The downside was extreme discomfort. They passed a night near another ancient settlement. The pool was artificial, created to hold water behind it. The small, white, light shone in an unusually clear sky with such vividness they had to set up camp deeper than normal to allow for natural sleep. After they set camp Pramad and Havrah suggested they’d like some time alone, that Adjeera’s presence anyplace near would be a distraction.
He headed out the water to look at the nearby ancient settlement. This one had suffered the ravages of time more than most and Adjeera wondered if it was because it was higher up, and unprotected by nearby peaks. The temperature was dropping and he wondered if they would see the elements they anticipated. It had been half-a-lifetime’s work so far. More for Pramad and Havrah. Maybe it was time to start looking for a mate, to start allowing the biological imperative to have some free reign. The problem was he didn’t feel the biological imperative. It should be there, a need to ensure the genetic heritage moves forward, but all he had was a desire to know what was happening in the world around him.
He passed between two ancient buildings and tried to calculate how tall they would have been originally. Based on work they’d done in the submerged cities he figured they were small, two or three rooms tall.
The temperature fell further and the sky darkened, covered by the grey cover which was there most of time. Turning the heat on the eco-suit up Adjeera figured he’d left enough space and time for his colleagues and turned back to the lake.
As he neared the water the temperature plunged further, colder than he ever had experienced. Something drifted in his sight, a flake of something. Then there were more, and more.
It was the crystallised water.
“So, Ben, What about-“
“It’s bad enough that so much attention is being given to the non-event of so called human effected climate change, now we have a child with mental development issues lecturing us like the petulant teenager she is. Maybe if she took some time for personal development, and visited a beautician, she’d be able to enjoy a more normal teenage existence and not be haranguing people who, quite frankly, should know better than to be indulging her. The earth’s climate is always changing and humans will do what we do, live with it.”
Melden and Adjeerah lounged on the reclining sand and stared out across the drop. There was a casual game of predator and prey going on and younglings were swooping around each other, seeking to catch or avoid capture.
“Do you remember being limber enough to do that?” Melden asked.
“I don’t remember yesterday. Who are you to ask? Adjeerah replied. She pointed a limb to the wall behind them, “Do you remember when I brought that home.”
“Yes. You said it was devotional scrawls on it.”
“We thought it was. Of course, you said you didn’t have an biological imperative.”
“So we were both wrong.”
“I’m glad you discovered you’re imperative. I was worried I’d have to settle for someone else.”
“So am I. Though, would it have been so bad? What is it the thing on the board says, ‘Live with it’. That’s what you’d have done.”
“Live with it. Yes. Though I’m glad I live with you, and that you got the proof to change things. I have hope our hatchlings will never need the mantle cloaks you feared.”
words by stuartcturnbull pic from CharlVera via Pixabay