30. Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Aliko
Time moves differently down here. I mean, it’s all the same, but we don’t have night and day like up on land. There is no sun to tell us it’s time to start the day. We just do what we need to do. Rest. Work. Rest. Work. We keep going on our own time, in our own routine.
I do my best to keep track of how long it’s been, but I can’t be sure if it’s been days or weeks.
All I know is that the more time that passes, the more I want to just give up… on everything.
My father commanded that I clear out a section not too far from our colony that collapsed recently—while I was away.
So I’ve spent my time moving large boulders and clearing out the section to move some of our colony to.
The sickness hit a few others while I was away, and the elders have an idea of symptoms now, so we need a place to keep the sick krakens from the healthy ones.
So far, everyone seems to be getting better which is good news.
My father won’t allow me to do anything else, and honestly, I’m not sure why I’m here at all. I guess I knew this is always what I would come back to. Being up there was too good to be true. I’m just glad this happened when the tour was done and not before.
Are the guys wondering where I am? Is the manager?
Is Leif?
I wish I could get word to them, to let them know I’m okay but I had to come back home to… I don’t know.
I just had to come back home.
When my father met me on land, he’d told me that I would have to tell everyone here what I did, but that didn’t happen. He’s holding it over my head instead, telling me I need to stay in line and do as I’m told, or he will tell everyone what I did. Then I’d be killed for letting our secret out.
To think a father would say that to their son?
How?
My mother barely looks at me. Kraken don’t have many expressions, but I can tell she’s disappointed whenever I’m near her, though she hasn’t spoken a word to me.
Of course, my father told her how he found me and what I was doing.
Why the hell am I here? Why am I staying?
I’m miserable down here and I hate it. I want to communicate with people, but we don’t do much of that here.
It’s more of a suggestion than anything else.
We don’t have words, only motions with our tentacles which aren’t much.
They’re used to it. It’s how they live—how I lived for such a long time.
But now that I know there is more, now that I know there are thousands of words to get your very specific point across, a slight wave of my tentacle just won’t do.
Father took my amulet and I don’t know where it is.
I don’t know if there is even enough magic in it to make me shift again, and I didn’t have my ring with me.
That was safe in my room, in the little blue box.
Who knows where all my stuff is now. Was someone smart enough to take it from the room or did it call get lost?
If my ring gets lost… I’m not sure what I will do.
I spend excruciating hours clearing out rocks and making a comfortable place for the sickly. Thankfully, no one is ill right now, but if someone else comes down with it, they deserve to be comfortable.
The first symptom is extreme tiredness, to the point of hardly being able to move. It’s kind of how I feel right, but for entirely different reasons.
I don’t want to be here. I want to be back on land with Leif.
I fucking miss him, and I am so angry with my father.
But I’m also angry with myself.
Why did I come? Why did I agree?
I felt compelled to come back, and I have wondered more than once if there was some sort of spell my father had that made me follow after him.
Why else did I do that?
I don’t want to be here. I want to be in my home. The home I planned on sharing with Leif. I want to be in bed with him, holding him. Fucking him. I just want him back.
But how? I don’t know where my amulet is.
When there is no more work left for the day, I head back to the colony and check in with my father.
He’s with a group of males who are the main hunters for the colony.
They go out and gather meals each day for all of us.
Everyone can get food on their own and are free to do what they want, but these males are in charge of at least bringing in one big meal for us all.
It’s a lot of work, something that would keep me busy.
I head over there and gesture to go with them. My father’s tentacles stiffen and he waves the males off, putting out an arm so I cannot move after them, and I know what the answer is.
There’s nothing left to do tonight but sleep. I head back to my cave, starving. I’ve hardly eaten a thing since I’ve been here. Enjoying raw, and sometimes still moving, fish is difficult after having so many flavors of human food.
A small kraken, just a few years old, swims out in front of me. I stop abruptly, and he looks up at me then shoots himself upwards. He pokes me with a tentacle, and I poke him back. He feels happy.
But that’s only because he doesn’t know what the rest of the world has to offer.
What so many of us could be doing up there if only we’d let ourselves.
We could have better lives. We could be safe up there, living our lives just like all the others.
No one said anything to me because I was a kraken.
No one threatened me or made a bigger deal about me than the other monsters.
Yes, we heard negative things just like all the other monsters, but it was general.
Not specific to me because I was a kraken.
So why is this colony so scared to enjoy life?
The problem is I don’t have any way to tell anyone that. Not while I’m here, at the bottom of the ocean.
I should have stood up to my father when we were on land and I had words, but I couldn’t seem to find them then. Of course, now, I’ve thought of a million things to say to him. I’ll just never have the chance.