A Love So Deep: Chapter 23 (Patreon)

Ellerie leads me through the lounge and through one of the of the two doors that lead off from this room.  I am surprised to find the “hallway” beyond is not horizontal, but vertical.   From door the floor drops away from under us and a cylindrical shaft delves down what must be a hundred feet or more.  At the bottom isn’t a stone floor but a rippling surface of lightly glowing teal.  The effect was not dissimilar to standing on a high diving board and looking down at a swimming pool.  I grip the door instinctively as a moment of vertigo makes me go woozy for a moment.  I point down at the shimmer.

“That’s the…uh…” Ellerie’s face screws up in intense thought.  “…the…uh…I dunno.  It keeps things on the inside.”  With the Grumplepud tucked under one arm she flits out to the center of the cylinder and beckons me forward.  “You’ll see, come on.”

Pulling the door closed behind me I hold onto the handle tight as I suspend there a moment looking down the long shaft.  I could almost make out a dark shape through the teal but nothing beyond that, it was like trying to look through frosted glass.  As I peer down I feel a hand slip into mine and squeeze it tight.  I look over to see Ellerie bright smile.

“Don’t be scared.”  She says.  “I won’t let anything happen to you.”

While I wasn’t actually scared those sweet words calmed any trepidation that was lingering.  I let go of the handle and together Ellerie and I slowly float down the dimly lit shaft.  Along the way I see the space was decorated, though sparsely, with the odd picture or piece of art as one might expect in a simple functional hallway.  Not being constrained to a two dimensional plane when constructing areas to move through must really open up incredible possibilities for the architects down here.  I found myself wondering what the interior of those globes I saw suspended over the buildings of the city were like on the inside.

Closer and closer we got to the rippling sheet of lighter blue.  Was it a membrane?  The transition point between different densities of liquid?  A magical force field?  I just couldn’t tell.  Ellerie did say it kept things on the inside, so perhaps the latter?  Now that I think of it…what things was she talking about?  What I could see was that the space opened up beyond it, this dim shaft ended where that new shade of water began.

“I love this part.” Ellerie whispers just before my toes dip through.

It is an odd sensation.  There is no resistance but I could distinctly feel the moment I make contact and the border from one layer to another as it glides up my legs.  Right away I notice the water below was cooler, not cold but a few degrees lower than the steady cozy warmth I’d experienced since arriving here.  Followed by that sensation comes a slight prickling that in turn causes goosebumps to rise.  As this fades there comes a very subtle itch that covers everything.  I watch my legs then hips disappear through as if swallowed by a rising tide.  I clasp Ellerie’s hand firmly as I hold my breath and clamp my eyes shut just before my head dips through.

Only once I feel myself all the way through do I take another breath.  The cooler water felt fresh and clean in my lungs and it had a hint of that invigorating aroma immediately following a spring rainstorm.  It felt good!  I take another deep breath just to feel it again.

“Not bad, huh?”  Ellerie says.

Opening my eyes I see…a place plucked straight from an artist’s fantastical dream.

“Wooooah!”

Either by nature or brilliant design the space appears as a natural fissure cutting into the heart of the living rock.  The main central area was about the size of a basketball court though of irregular shape and with various nooks and crevices spidering off from it and three large ledges carved into the walls.   Toward what I would call the back of the room it narrowed to an alcove with a single desk in the center.  At the front is a great window, about ten foot across and towering from floor to ceiling, with a lattice of curvy wending supports running throughout.  Beyond is another view of the sprawling Nerylune even more jaw dropping than the one from my room.  Being far larger in depth than either breadth or length gave the room a cathedral like appearance.  However, the space itself, as impressive as it was, paled in comparison to what was in it.

The room was bursting with life!  A rainbow of wavering feathery soft corals and verdant sea grass mixed with eerily glowing fungi and rippling pastel anemones.  Clinging and crawling here and there are ruddy starfish, opalescent oysters, and bulbous speckled urchins.  Like little lawn areas the ledges and floor were carpeted with softly fluttering flora.  And all through the opens spaces drift tiny disk like jellyfish, each putting off a warm light like that of a candle.  These jellyfish along with the fungus were the only lights in the room outside the glow coming in from the window and a single globe suspended above the desk at the back.  There were enough of them to give the whole room a lovely illumination though with a dreamlike quality as it constantly shifted as the jellies swum about.  

But surely most magnificent of all is the great tree that dominated the center of the room.  Rooted into the lowest point of the cave it grew nearly to the very top, it’s crest was the dark shape I had seen from the other side.  It was a tree the likes of which I had never seen, just as most of the life in here were of varieties I did not recognize.  The trunk twisted like a great corkscrew up through the room.  Curling sparsely spaced branches spouted out from the trunk in regular intervals each ending in lush displays of fleshy deep indigo fronds framing bunches of spectacular snow white flowers.  It called to mind some of the best bonsai I had ever seen just on an enormous scale.

I float there, Ellerie holding me still as I gawp at the wonder before me.  Only after a minute or so do I see a bookshelf carved into a wall behind some sort of bush looking like it had just formed there by nature.  With one spotted others start to appear.  There, there, and there’s another.  Dotted hidden all through this garden of a room were shelves and shelves laden with books and scrolls and folded tablets.

A library?  They called THIS a library!?

Chapter 24