You wrap the leather belt around your belly and strap yourself tightly to the hook. Staring down at the voluminous waves of the sea, the cold breeze grazes your cheek, and slowly, her memory flickers in your mind. Her golden eyes, the mole on her chin, her delicate voice calling you. One of the few memories that you can recall of her remains painted inside since the day you came back to this place. This place is your home, but you were unaware of that until a week ago. The fragments of your past, chained to you all your life, now await to be connected. Within the waves, you feel the sea is calling you, just like how your mother used to. Once you were afraid of the sea, of water, of the thought of it enveloping all around you until you felt numb. Now, it’s your only way to look for answers.
“Tank’s all set. Remember, 30 minutes,” Luan says while looking straight into your eyes. You nod.
The oxygen tank is fixed on your back, but it feels odd, like you would become airless as soon as you enter the sea. Your hands shake a little, and you start to feel nervous as you enter the cylindrical capsule. It is closed shut, and then you hear Luan’s muffled voice.
“Ready?” He asks, and you nod in response while trying to hide the anxiety bound in your head. You feel jittery and a bit sweaty, but there is a sense of excitement that makes you energetic.
You dive in, eyes closed, with just the sound of water gushing around the glassy surface of the capsule echoing in your ears. With heavy pressure, the capsule is pushed deeper. While you hear only water, your thoughts drown, and you disassociate. There is nothing but darkness, you feel so much movement, and yet none. You feel like you are falling from a skyscraper, and the gravity is pulling you. Slowly, the pressure stops, and the sealed door opens up, suddenly enveloping you in water. You open your eyes, blinking with surprise, and switch on the headlight. This technology was all new for you, but the anxiety stopped you from being too excited. You look around at the anomalous environment and the murky atmosphere. The immense darkness is only slightly illuminated by your dim headlight. It resembles the night sky, but starless and pitch black, where there’s no light. At the surface level of the abyssal zone, you slowly start to swim and settle into the new environment. 30 minutes, you remind yourself before swimming towards what seems like something solid, a distant structure or a ruin, in between the seaweed and small sea creatures swimming around. The sunlight very faintly glows on the sea surface as you look up for just a second. The timer on your wrist pressures you to stay focused and explore what could be useful. While moving forward, the greyish structure becomes a bit clearer. But suddenly it hits you, your fear of the sea, your anxiety, it’s gone since the moment your eyes opened. You feel warm in an odd way, like the sea is comforting you rather than suffocating you as expected.
At first, you had thought Luan was joking when he mentioned you were born in a city in the sea, but then it was all you could think about. Finding the meaning of home has been hard for you, and discovering such information only made you feel more lost. It did make you feel special because you had been tired of your ‘normal’ life. Day after day, working in the same cubicle, printing papers and copying them over and over. It was exhausting and it had drained out colour from your life. Last Friday, when only black ink was left in the printer, you woke up the next day and didn’t go to the subway station. You didn’t go back to that cubicle. There was nothing that could bring you excitement anymore. But now you are in the deep sea, swimming towards the city ruins where you supposedly lived once. You have almost no memories of your childhood. Sometimes you remember times spent with your mother, but they were never underwater.
Moving closer, you realize it’s not just a single structure but many different kinds of them all around you. Structures shaped like concrete buildings that you see on land, but quaintly designed. They had a gothic feel to them, almost like castles, but with a minimalist feel. Something you have never seen before. While your eyes adjust and the strangely asymmetrical stones of an architectural wall of one of the buildings are one arm away from you, a tinge of pain radiates through your temple, sharp like a needle. It must be anxiety; you slowly calm yourself and take a deep breath. You stretch out your hand towards the wall. Your palm touches the rugged and mossy surface, then gradually you notice how damaged it is. How old is this city if it was still alive 25 years ago? The debris screams at you, and you hear echoed voices from behind it. You feel like there is a presence of life here, something or someone watching over you. With another whisper in your ear, you gasp, and another tinge of pain pierces your head. You close your eyes in pain, and a memory flashes in your mind.
You are underwater, and your hair floats with movement. Hand in hand with a woman whose long red ombre hair floats behind her like a huge flower. You look at the sun illuminating the sea surface. Then, you look at the blurry-faced woman with a grin and she nods in approval.
You open your eyes and grab your headwear, trying to reach your head, but the pain recedes as you swim further away from the wall. It was finally happening. You regained a memory that you had never had before. Was it even your own? You hoped that this was one of the memories that were lost inside you, scattered away in the depths of your mind that you wished to find. You move further and glance at the group of structures in front of you. It paints a clear image, the collection of buildings all around with fallen debris and overgrown sea plants in between the crevices, a fallen city where people once laughed and existed just like everyone above the sea does, people like you. You feel as if the disowned ruins are crying, and you can hear the sunken souls underneath the wreckage. Within the dark, you cannot imagine how large or small the city is. 23:00 minutes left, your timer reads. With more eagerness, you push ahead until you reach the nearby seafloor. Within the ruptured chunks of the structures, there are traces of objects, tethered pieces of some cotton-like fabric, and oddly built items you cannot recognize. You closely examine a few of them. One looks like a triangle bottle covered in a lot of moss, and another looks like a piece of jewellery or a headpiece. You try to lift one that resembles a conch, and it feels like porcelain, mostly smooth with some cracks here and there. Did all of these items belong to someone? A strong feeling of helplessness fills you, and the pain strikes again, sharper than last time, like a thorn and lightly throbbing. It hurts as you try to grab your head again through the glassed helmet and glance around at the destruction. You try to ignore the pain and take a minute to calm down. The demolished lives of those who are not remembered by you, even though this is your home, are on display in front of you.
“Aphomys, that’s the name of the place, the underwater city where you were actually born,” you remember when Luan revealed this to you, the truth that was kept from you.
Tears start to form in your eyes as the pain stings, and you shut your eyes. Another memory appears in your mind.
Hand in hand with someone you stand on the seafloor wiggling your nose in a sea anemone. The woman laughs beside you and caresses your hair. You turn to her, and this time her face is clearer. Your mother, whose memories are only numbered in your mind, yet you have missed her keenly. She stands beside you and smiles.
You open your eyes and quickly flail your arms. You have to keep going. Fastly moving towards the building that looks mostly intact compared to its neighbours, you see it has a triangular roof while the walls have pointy cones along its centre. Almost like thorny barriers to keep everyone away? Maybe its sturdiness is defending something? You draw close and notice something on the wall. While carefully examining it, you realise there is a small inscription on one of the side walls, the symbols that are written are unknown to you, and yet they have somehow survived the catastrophic damage. Your hand touches the writing, and it glows faintly under your fingertips, which makes you gasp in surprise as you lift your hand away. The light remains for a second before fading away. You immediately touch the inscription again, and it slowly lights up sentence by sentence, and you feel it inside your head. It speaks to you.
For those who seek the peace of Aphomys remain with us through timeless connection;
For we are the nautical and the sea is our Neptune.
Your heart splits with agony as your eyes remain fixed on the shining characters in front of you. It is familiar or at least you want to believe it is, this feeling of existing in between the hovering embrace of these long structures, sea culture that is lost within these broken objects, strangely artistic mood of this city that brings you peace, far from all things you have known and experienced in this life. Yet the ruins lie in front of you, untouched, abandoned, and wrecked. You feel like you lost something, but don’t remember what. You feel the agony, but you don’t exactly know why. A high-pitched ringing enters your ear, and the ache is back. You tightly grab your helmet as you let out a shriek. The inscription starts to illuminate brightly as rays of light shoot out of it, and it registers that the agonizing sound is composed by the engraving itself. As your eyes try to shift towards the timer, suddenly you squeeze your eyes shut, a memory takes shape.
You look up at her face, her golden, teary eyes, and whisper, “Mamma…?”
“You shouldn’t say that, especially in front of Astara. I have known Aphomys for years, and I am a part of it. I stand on this seafloor as I always have. Do you see me lose my breath?” Your mother speaks firmly to someone, holding onto your hand, her long hair behind her head like a flower. Your eyes shift towards the other figure, and through the blur, you can make out a shadow. A human-like body with two tentacle-like wings on each side. Their eyes emit a slightly orange glow, and they are holding something small in their hand. Then you hear a deep rustic voice.
“Ah it is… unfair that you are not of the sea as I am, but you must understand it can be harmful to those of the land or rather it doesn’t make sense for you to be down here, these depths might be too much for your… kind,” the unfamiliar figure says to your mother while stepping closer to her.
“Is that it? Would you force me to a place where I make sense?” Your mother speaks with a broken voice. You feel tears rolling down your cheeks as you look at your mother’s heartbroken face.
Beep Beep
You snap back to the present, eyes wide, and look at the beeping timer strapped to your wrist. 01:00 minute left, it reads. Teardrops trickle down your cheeks till under your chin. How can you return so soon when you just want to keep searching? It feels like your mother is guiding you or that she is alive somewhere here. The inscription is back to normal, like it spoke what it wanted to and went back to slumber. The bitter memory repeats in your mind, your mouth tastes salty, and her raspy voice echoes over and over. You look around yourself as if to confirm if all this is real. With heavy breaths, you roll your hands into knots. You feel curious, crushed, and lost in each limb of your body. How did you end up on land? Who are you? With a sudden jerk, you press your hand against the dull engraving, but nothing happens. Frantically, without any thought, you search for another inscription or anything surreal as you crave to uncover the past—splashing all around the building until you see a small round pendant on a basalt rock slightly shimmering in the dark.
You swim towards it as your timer continues to beep. You reach the rock and, with force, push it out of the way, taking the pendant in your hand. It’s an oval-shaped gem emitting a soft blue light. Pushing it open, you see a tiny photograph of three people: your mother from the memories you just discovered on the left, your little chubby face in between, and a human-like stranger who has some sort of gills beside his face on the right. The timer beeps as you stare at the photograph with more questions growing in your head. Who is that? You close the pendant and shove it inside your suit carefully to make sure you don’t lose it. You move your head around in search of anything else and then look at the timer. 00:00 blinks on the screen in red. Your eyes go wide as you realise your oxygen tank is empty and you are breathing underwater just fine…