Etelka could feel the air tubes growing slack behind her. The men were supposed to keep then taught so they wouldn’t get caught on submerged objects. This meant that their boat was directly over head, which in turn meant that she’d have to struggle up the slope of slime covered boulders at her side to go to the other side of the dock.
Could I perhaps go around the dock so as to not require ascending the mast’s foundation only to struggle down three meters a head? She thought.
Turning the cumbersome diving suit to the right, she could make out the outermost support pylons.
Her foot brushed against something. Something buried under the muck which varied in depth, but had been covering her feet the entire time she had been down here.
Backing up, struggling not to trip backwards, she moved back half a meter.
There was a curved object under the mud, barely exposed by the hole left by her boot print. Pottery? She wondered.
She stepped forward and dug the toe of her boot under it as best she could. Not pottery. The broken face of a skull turned to look up at her. Half it’s jaw bone was missing and the adjacent side was smashed in with most of the pieces missing. A startled crab crawled out and danced sideways away into the muck.
Alderman Stolison, I presume? She mustn’t be so sure. N’Aurelia was a cesspool. This could be anyone. Still, it gave promise.
Etelka began sweeping her feet, first one, then the other back and forth stirring up the muck, which was nearly invisible to her once it was in movement. She knew, however, that there was now a cloud of thick mud floating around her.
Her eye caught a gleam in a crack between two large boulders to her left, a meter up the slope of the mooring mast’s foundation.
Etelka walked heavily towards it. Her legs were tired from the trudging and sweeping all the mud around, burning with pain.
The gloves of the diving suit were large with fingers too large already for her slender hands. She glanced around for a small stick to fish it out with. Her eyes settled on a slime-covered reed, which she tested with her clumsy grip. It would sufficient.
Using the reed she bent toward the crack, trying not to fall face first into the mud.
There! Caught you! She had found what she had come for.
Work in progress. Mistakes and misspellings are present. This is a very rough draft. Copyright 2021 Ion Fyr
#sci-fi #fantasy
Ion Fyr 