Be careful what you cling to.

We’re now married to the sea. Or buried in the sea. It depends on your point of view. Don’t misunderstand. We love the sea. It’s how we ended up here–we refused to be denied it. But it was never meant to be the only thing we had. There is no leaving now. Unless we want to confront the Surfacers. And they would kill us on sight.

The Surfacers are about control. Why else would they drain the waters that surrounded their beautiful city, only to leave a desolate, lifeless dry flat? The said the sea was dead, poisoned, full of monstrosities. Nothing edible lived under the waters anymore, it could

bring us no benefit. We said that the things that still lived there were beautiful, even if they weren’t edible. We didn’t know all of them, then.

The Surfacers called the sea dangerous. They weren’t wrong about that. But not for the reasons they claimed. They thought the Floaters could come and attack the city too easily by ship. They thought the sea made them vulnerable. It was too big. Things could sneak up to the border in the night.

The Surfacers didn’t listen. They didn’t care. We were a vocal, but small, minority. It wasn’t till the Mind came that things changed. His attempt on the life of the High Commissioner was inspired, and brave, even for one of the Landed. But it was more than that. The Mind minded us: he listened. The Mind was mindful: he thought about the problem. But above all: The Mind minded: he would not let the sea be sundered from us, its devotees.

And it was inspiring to hear him talk. You should have seen him, back in those days, on the edge of the seacliffs, always in his wetsuit, under a cloak the color of the wine dark sea. He was not the sort of dissident that got angry or railed against authority. He was mannered and measured. He spoke of the positive aspects of the sea, of the freedom of air and movement and life that should be granted all people. Somehow the sea became a metaphor for freedom from all the oppression of the Surfacers.

It was an ill-conceived coup. What can we say about it now? We can pour over the details, the missteps, the poor planning, but it was doomed to fail. We were too few.

The Surfacers had a stockpile of harp-guns. Combined with telespectacles, they were deadly.  Barely half of us made it out of the city alive. The details of that time are too painful to recount.

So the Mind led our retreat. Over the dry flat, towards the sea. And down, into Maraea’s sealed sub-liner. And it was peaceful on the seafloor. At least for a while. At first, the gigantic Krake was a rumor. Some said it was just a squid or jellywhale, something that wouldn’t take much interest in us. But then, on the day of the Winter Festival, when we were all out in our diving suits, basking in the lights, it revealed itself. It was attracted to the lights, and the light revealed what a horror it was. A jelly-sac head bigger than our bunks, and pincers to feed it. Invisible, almost, with skin that seemed to suck in the light. A cluster of Medusa eyes, watching everything.

We scrambled back inside our underwater base. It circled us. We turned out the lights. It circled us. We shot gaffs at it. It batted them away. And, for the first time since we had joined with him, the Mind didn’t know what to do.

After that, we Divers especially were scared of the Krake. No one wanted to be a Diver then. We patrolled, and did our jobs, but we were suffocated by a terrible fear.

Then, one night, one of us saw a SubVee, just hints of light gleaming from its cracks, sinking towards our base.