Hearts Still Bleed Underwater (G/T)

6

Keppler hadn't been lying when they said they weren't far. Before long Cory could recognize the flattening horizon as the flats that they had initially met in. The bottle was nowhere in sight, but the crevasse was. And Cory knew that just across that was home. 

Or well, what was left of it.

As the blonde looked around he was once again reminded of how barren the place had become, and a small scowl settled onto his face. As it was before, there wasn't another sign of life in sight.

He really was going to have to pick up and move again, wasn't he? He sighed to himself, wondering where he could even go. The small inlet he had woken up in this morning didn't seem like a terrible option, but he had no idea as to where it was except a vague general direction. Maybe he could pick somewhere with different vegetation this time and hope that there would be more to hunt, or maybe he could go far enough to find other mers once more. Needless to say his mind was racing with ideas of what to pack and where to go, and he'd hardly noticed how far he'd swam until Keppler had called his name. 

Cory pulled himself from his thoughts just in time to see the edge of the crevasse under an arm's reach away. He stopped in his tracks, forgetting for a moment the vastness of it, and looked back over at the tetra.

"..Where are you going?" He asked nervously, glancing at the hole.

Cory quirked an eyebrow. "Home?" He said. "I know where we are now." 

The brunet paused, not wanting to grow closer to where the ground simply vanished. He was curious to see Cory's home, but didn't know that getting to the red reef meant passing this; It was big enough to fit a whole whale down there, let alone just himself! He hovered in place for a while, imagination running wild as his eyes glued to the blackness below. The things down there were probably hundreds of times more terrifying that the normal predators he's seen. He gulped, the shakiness returning to his limbs.

Cory noticed his hesitancy to move. He knew the feeling of terrifying insignificance the sight of it brought, but he couldn't imagine what it must appear like to Keppler.

"You don't have to come with me any further," He offered to the little mer, who looked absolutely dead set in not crossing. But Keppler said nothing in reply.

While he knew he was insignificantly small, especially when put beside mers of Cory’s size and bigger, nothing was putting his stature into perspective quite like the neverending abyss unfolding beneath him. He'd never felt anything like it before, and it gave him chills down to the bone.

But it wasn't just the sight of it that bothered him. As he stared, something else clicked that made him freeze 

'Where light never touches'.

"You don't mean... It's in there, is it..?" He asked after another dreadful minute of silence.

Cory let out a small sigh. "That was my first guess, yes." 

Keppler said nothing, completely transfixed. Pictures of his sister's face appeared in front of him as he stared, and he couldn't shake them away. He had to at least try, for her sake. He sighed, understanding now why the elders had said that it was impossible to obtain-- The two of them really would need a miracle to find it at this point.