Dawn felt a presence over his shoulder. He turned to face it but found nothing but the stepping stones that stretched over the desert oasis ahead of him.
His eyes slid left, then right, nothing.
The young lad shook his head, he wasn't supposed to be doing this so maybe it was just nerves. He had managed to sneak out of his house while his mother slept and his father was out.
He had run this idea through his mind over and over but never had the guts to actually do it. But for as mundane something like boredom might seem at first glance, it had finally pushed him into doing something very foolish.
Dawn staggered to his feet using a fishing rod to steady himself. But, determined as he was, his body was frail and hardly capable of supporting itself. And so, step by step, he placed his chest over the short walls embedded into the stones before moving forward, grunting as he thrust a granite block and his fishing rod ahead of him to ensure he could shuffle past them and repeat the process.
The block was by no means exceptionally heavy, nor was the crude fishing rod, which was more of a simple rope wrapped around a pole tied to a small cage.
But they would have to do. After having juggled himself across several more stones, the boy collapsed into its seat out of breath taking a moment to straiten the circular gold glasses on his nose. Dressed in a black cloak over white garments, his skin was as gray as the stone he sat on, his ruffled hair whiter than the salts that dried at its base. His eyes were mostly blind and faded, a teal green like the water at his feet.
He began tying the block of granite to his ankle. "I know there's a Tulpid down there I can feel it."
He began prepping himself, taking long deep breaths with slow exhales, each time the pungent smell of salt and chlorine stinging at the back of his head.
This would be his deepest dive yet. Gripping the fishing rod at his side, he steeled himself with one final turbulent breath, before plunging himself into the water.
A wash of warmth rushed over him as a plume of bubbles shaped like stars, cubes, and pyramids scuttled over his skin and through his clothes. Normally, Dawn would stay in the comfort of the shallow, but the block tied to his foot sank him further into the cold that was continuing to creep over him.
"Five, four, three, two, one."
Dawn kicked the block from off his ankle, allowing it to sink several meters further beneath him; there, hidden in the depths, was a lake of all its own. It was viscous and dark, a void that hypnotically swirled and undulated with creatures unseen. As the block made contact, it dissolved like wet paper.
"Swim in, do it, swim in." Whispered a voice in his head, it was his own, but he ignored it.
Reaching into his pocket he pulled out a handful of crystals that illuminated his face in an orange glow. Piece by piece each reverberated clear as a chime as Dawn toppled them into the small cage at the end of his fishing rod. After latching it shut, he waved it through the dim green water, allowing its light to shimmer off the tiny squiggling creatures that drifted about him.
Everything was set, loosening his grip the rope began slipping through his fingers allowing the makeshift lantern to sink until it was swaying within the lake's dark mists.
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