Story:
He sighed, and slipped further under the water, letting his mane fizzle out more until only bubbles were showing, allowing him to magically breathe under water, and expel the carbon in his lungs without having to take another breath for hours.
For now, he was just relaxing, no need to hit the bottom or anything crazy. He was just waiting, for the tourists to show up. Same old summer, same old routine.
He sank lower, letting just the tips of his ears show as he gazed down into the salty water at the beautiful fish. He loved the beach, loved the reef, the fish, the ever-changing tides, and the ocean itself, he just hated dealing with people that didn’t know anything but had the money to pay his boss to come poke around and disturb the fish.
Honestly what he really wanted was an adventure. Something real that HE did and didn’t just hear about on the news.
He sawm back to the shore, pulled himself out of the water and grabbed a towel to dry himself off, before slinging all this gear over his shoulder and walking back to the research center to take a nap.
On the way, he heard someone talking and paused to listen, the words giant eel grabbed and held his attention. Lately fisherman were telling tales of seeing a huge creature moving through the waters, scaring off the fish. One guy claimed it was a giant eel, another said it was a fabled dragon, while another said it was a giant fish, but they’d all seen SOMETHING, that was for sure. That many fisherman saying they’d seen something that big wasn’t a coincidence.
He stopped listening when they got into a debate on what it could be and started forming a plan. He sprinted to his room, dropped his bag and snagged an emergency bag of his, jotted down a note, snagged some boat keys and took off feeling freer than he had all year. He was, after all, supposed to be studying Oceanic creatures, not showing fish to tourists!
He raced to the boat, running full out to get to it before anyone when looking for him, his plan was to be out on the water, far enough away they couldn’t just call him back in easily. He reached the boat, threw his bag in, unhooked it from the dock, and hopped in, taking off before anyone spotted him, and zoomed out to the area the creature was supposedly located.
There he waited, watching the water, while pulling on his gear to dive, a large spear gun for protection, googles because salt water wasn’t all that fun to look through, and a small air reserve in case he needed it. The boat was anchored, he was ready, so into the water he went, excited, thrilled, and a little afraid of what he’d find, this was truly the adventure he’d been looking for!
He was disoriented for a few seconds until his body adjusted to the water, and his mane because its air producing quality, allowing him to ‘breathe’ under the water. His sight cleared and he watched as fish began slowly swimming back to area they’d vacated when he’d interrupted their day. He sawm from the boat, to get a little distance between him and it and allow whatever was hunting these waters the chance to come out without the boat to scare it away.
He was about 2 hours into his dive when something huge snaked through the shadows.
Excited, he braced himself, sinking more so that he could be closer to the rocks, hoping to see whatever it was. He was looking the wrong way, when he felt something knock against his back, spinning him around to see the head of the biggest eel he’d ever seen. It was shades of brown with some gold thrown in and bright patches of purple. He was both terrified and awed, and brought up his spear in defense, but the eel just watched him, and before he knew what it was doing it snaked its head out so fast he didn’t know what happened, but between one second and the next, the eel was dining on a giant shark, probably the thing that had been scaring off the fish, and would surely have gotten the lone viscet had the eel not been so large or so fast.
Briar was incredibly grateful to the eel and spent a lot of weeks studying him. The eel, who he’d named Levi (Short for Leviathan) was highly intelligent and enjoyed the company. Levi hibernated during winter, and was only active during summer so every summer after that first adventure, when the fish moved to deeper water, Briar would take the boat out to visit his giant new friend.
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