Resur woke up to the sound of rustling trees accompanied with chirping crickets, almost tranquilizing him back to sleep. He twists and turns all over the bed, then stretchs the sleepiness out of his body until he can feel his arms and legs. Resur sat up, yawning only to then realizes there's only one bed in the ship. He questions himself where would Thala sleep. He got up and slowly walked up the stairs, his gentle foot steps feels like two stubborn lips pulled away from one another. Once he's on the deck his eyes follow the moonlight casted on Thala, sitting on the edge of the bow. Her hair slowly sways from left to right, if it has sounds it would synchronize with the wind. The moon slowly set below her shoulder, with Thala face turned to the side staring into something. She then turns to look at him, curving her lips into a welcoming smile
.
"Good morning". Thala greeted him softly.
Resur walked closer to her, resting his back against the wall of the bow.
"Good Morning". Resur replied just as soft.
"May I ask if you slept?" He politely asked.
"Not exactly, I had a lot on my mind".
"May I ask if you want to talk about it?".
"Well, I was thinking about that giant thing that rose out of the water that day, it attacked you if I remember correctly but it didn't kill you, and I feel like it attack wasn't meant to hurt, but to do something, medical? Like a doctor injecting something". Thala says.
"Actually, I think you might be right". Resur says, gently pulling his shirt off to reveal the scar on his chest.
Thala gasped, her first thoughts were "Does it hurt?, and why does it look like it's carefully carved out?"
"May I ask if hurts?". She asks considerately.
"Kinda, yeah, especially if touch it or activate the muscle. And strangely it looks like 7 centipedes crawling out of a hole".
He gently touches the scars to test it out and immediately pull his fingers away as if he dipped it into lava. Letting out a pained "shh" in the process.
"Oh god sorry, and may I ask if you saw what that thing actually looks like?". Thala asks.
"I'm usually considerate but it was kind of shaped like a centipede to me, the silhouette I mean, and by the way now I can hold my breath for much longer than before, speaking of that I feel like there's something on my back." Replied Resur.
"Come to my lab, I'll check it for you".
The two walked down the stairs to Thala's Lab, two floors below. He notices rolls of bandages left nearby a first aid kit. To the right there's neatly arranged glass wares, beakers, measuring cups and test tubes. The laboratory looks like it's well equipped, for a room that's in the second deck of broken off bow. Resur took his shirt off, then he sits on a table, once he turns his back to her he sees himself in the mirror. He has monolids eyes, looking like he's always focus on something, with blue pupils, as he looks down he finds his lips to be shaped like hearts, coloured in beige pink. His hairstyle is a green buzz cut, he kept it since a child because it was easy to maintain, and dyed it green when he was 14 because he likes Franklin Sea. His face is shapes like a diamond, and his skin is tan like sand. He smiles and saw dimples near his cheek, causing him to smile harder.
Thala cackles at him for admiring himself. "May you lay down on your belly please?".
Resur did as instructed and felt the cold metal table against his belly. Thala examined his back, she sees small holes, about 0.1 mm wide, arranged together to look like a centipede tatoo on his back. Yet they're not a bump like a pimple. It starts from his lower neck to his hip.
"May I touch you?" She asked.
"Mhm"
Thala placed her finger on his lower neck, then ran it down slowly to his hip. She didn't feel any bumps on the hole, meaning they're not like some weird kind of pimple. She observes the hole closes whenever she touches it, looking like normal skin when it does.
"May I ask if you feel ticklish?" Thala asks.
"Not at all, but I do feel like something on my back is closing and opening".
Thala kept touching them until she remembers the scar on his chest, and the fact the holes are arranged together to look like a centipede. "Centipedes....holes...." She thinks to herself, then she has a Eureka moment.
"Resur, I think I know what you have, these holes on your back-"
"HOLES?" Resur asks loudly.
"Yep, holes...they're very small though, they're 0.1 mm wide and 0.1 mm apart from each other. Anyways so I know a few thing about centipedes and they breath through a hole on the side of their body, called splelele, uhhh, Spiracles! Basically those holes, they absorb oxygen and deliver it to the tissue directly, but I doubt that's what happens to you, since it would mess with your lung pressure system. My theory is that there are sacs under the holes to store oxygen and it get diffused into the capilleries. I'm not sure, but I think that's why you can hold your breath for so long. May you try closing them on command?".
Resur bite gently down on his teeth and closes his eyes. He starts to visualize himself filling holes in the ground with dirt, afte clenching his buttcheeks and flexing his back muscle enough he starts to feels the holes on his back closing, like a puzzle slowly being completed, he kept repeating it until he a hang of it like its second to his instincts.
"Dude, i think this has something to do to your scar, i have a feeling whatever attacked you that night was some kind of Centipede god or whatever" Thala says
"Centipede god?"
"The leviathans kinda have their own leaders or gods, and if it's a centipede, we might just call her or him Sepa" She's an ancient Egyptian god, god of fertility and protection i think"
"I'm going to get pregnant?"
"...I think since you're a guy it would be more of, you can get your partner, pregnant well? I don't know, i guess she blessed you with, Centipede powers? Anyways may you look after the ship for a bit? I'm feeling sleepy.
"Sure sure, i was going to ask why you weren't sleeping anyways"
"....Well, where do i even start, and anyways may you call me Sophie instead?"
"Oh right, weird of me"
"Back to it, i just been thinking of how to get off of this island, i tried many times, those fuckers would just sink my raft or just jump out of the water to eat me, wait a minute i didn't even ask how did you get here, may i?"
"Well, i woke up in a diving bell, got saved by a whale, and got chased by some zebra squids to this island."
".... After seeing your back I'll believe that, now please go up to the deck and patrol" Sophie ordered sleepily, heading back to the second floor to sleep."
Sophie gently got on the bed knee first, afraid to break her hard earned bed frame that took her days to make. "It was annoying as hell to bind this thing together" She thinks. She laid her back on the old matrass, turning to the right as she thinks about her life. Born in 2003 17th of April, raised in Jeju island, Sophie would wake up and go down to the beach every morning, sinking her feet into the sand than dragging it across, pretending that she's sliding, or injured, the beach of Hamdeok would always heal the things she had to go through with her parents, an abusive father who came home drunk every night and day, he was always pissed at something, after constant beating Sophie started to think more of him finding every excuse to beat her instead of thinking she was misbehaving. Just putting the plate a bit too close to the edge for a second would get her a slap across the face, eating her food too slow would get a knife around her neck, her father would immediately grab her plate and throw it at something behind her before getting up to grab a knife, threatening her with it. "Eat it, i said EAT It, i don't give a fuck if it's on the ground and dirty, if you're going to be ungrateful cook for yourself". Says her father as while he cuts through her hair with the kitchen knife, and since it's not sharp enough to just clean cut through he has to saw it while watching his daugther stuff the food down into her mouth with tears in her eyes, "WHO SAID YOU CAN CRY?" He shouts, and slaps her every time he hears a whimper or see a tear. Sometime she would look up to show him she swallowed everything, sometime she'd beg for him to stop beating her but she stopped after realizing it only angers him even more. School was the only place she didn't have to suffer, growing up Sophie didn't have to do too much to be good at something, every problem relating to academics was more of memorizing than understanding. Math, physics chemistry and English, she'll understand it all, but that was when she discovered biology, she loves the fact that something works just because it works, she loves it when something has life, whatever form it takes, it consciousness fascinate her, and she would love to understand from every layer, from hair to skin down to its beating heart, but she would never open up the animal body 's unless its already dead and killed by someone else. April 13, 2015, despite being the best student in her class she got her first F when she let go of a frog. She even helped it escape, rushing it out the front door while getting chased by her teachers instead of throwing it out the window. She understood she'll have to kill animals herself when she's older, but Sophie would rather learn about an animal's biology through a textbook rather than tearing its chest out. Nevertheless she attended Gyeongsang National University, and in just four years she graduated with a doctoral degree in marine life. At the graduation Ceremony she walked off the stage crying, wishing her mum was still alive, to atleast long enough for her to see her daugther graduate. Her mom was the only person who would give her love until she died tragically in a shark attack, Sophie mother's last word's were "Don't hate them Sophie, they're just curious". A 5 year old Sophie could only cry and watch the doctor push her on the stretcher to the ER. On July 19, 2008, witness reports that they saw Thala Grace swimming off the coast of Hamdeok Beach like she always do every morning, the only difference this time is that she was attacked by a great white, lthe autopsy shows that she was bit in her lower right abdomen all down to the intestines dying of severe bloodloss despite her trying to stop the bleeding by using a piece of her diving suit . Sophie recalled the conversation she had with a mother before she got into the water.
"Mommy, why do sharks attack people?" Asked Sophie.
"Well, sometime they think we're seals, espescially when you're a surfer, so the usual case of shark attacks are them coming to take a bite out of us only to realize we're not really on their menu they leave. Trust me they mean no harm. Don't hate them, Sophie, they're just curious." Grace explained as she smiles happily, she heads to Sophie and got on one knee to hug her, kissing her pink cheeks while rubbing her head. Sophie smiled and pull away after enough idling to stare at her mum, Sophie's jowls and wrinkles were highlited by the sunlight, and as she looks down she noticed that her body was still fit, with barely any sagging on her skin. She stood still for a few seconds, only to have her body flicker between alive and a dead bloody body in her swimming suit front of Sophie.
Suddenly Sophie woke up in the morning, screaming all the little breathe she had, her heart was racing and so was Resur. Who came down immediately, coming by her side like a life guard.
"Sophie? Sophie? May i ask if you're okay?"
Sophie breathed slowly, her arms still clutching the pillow, once she remembers that flickering picture of her mother body she quickly threw it straight to the wall as her breathing went back to fast and tight. Resur watch the scene unravel, he got up on the bed with her, and try to comfort her.
"Sophie, I'm here, it's a nightmare, you're not in danger". Resur says softly and slowly, making sure it reach her. Ugh I'm usually considerate but, i don't wanna be a by stander.
Sophie slowly calmed down, her eyes are widen and stretch away from one another by the nightmares haunting her. She feels a big hard ache slowly form in her chest, only for it to halt when Resur hugged her. She held her breath for a bit, and looked up at him. Making sure everything is real, only for the hard ache to continue forming as she cries in his chest.
Resur didn't know what the nightmare was about, what's she's going through, so he could only hold her and gently reassure her everything was okay.
"You're alright, you're safe, nothing is going to hurt you.....i don't know what in your mind, but ill go through all the possible things i can say to reassure you to make you feel better". Resur says, he say them all in such a gentle hush tone, one where only the least of space could allow a person to hear.
Sophie slowly stop crying after 20 minutes, with the intervals between her sucking in her nose and stopping increasing.
"I don't know who and what you truly are yet, i don't know if i should fully trust you yet, but in this moment you're the only warmth i can reach for, and i don't care if you'll burn me later. I'm ashamed of crying but....please, just keep holding me." Says Sophie, pleaded Sophie.
Resur smiled and moved his right arm from her back to her head, pulling her into his chest while his other hands gently pat her back.
"Sophie.... you may cry. Especially in front of me, there is no shame...in being human. It doesn't mean you're weak, and even if it does...you don't always have to be strong. So please let yourself feel, there's nothing wrong with being sensitive. All of us...we're all different elements, and different elements have different melting and freezing points, we shouldn't shame the cloud for raining when it gets too heavy, and I won't hurt you...i don't want to. So may i please ask you if we may get to know each other better...because i want to know how to hold you, how tight ,how gentle, i want to know how fragile you are, so i can store you in a safe place and keep you from harm. Please listen to how i call your name Sophie...because i want to say it so tenderly. My mind work weirdly but, i kinda imagine your name to be an object, one on my tongue...and every time i say your name i have to gently carry it softly while talking so i don't break it. I want to...understand you, there is beauty in the fragility....that beauty is shown the action of protecting taken by those who care about you....and even if you don't agree with me, i want to have the honor to be your exception, if you may grant it." Resur says as he cry with her, the two found themselves holding each other hands, with their finger interlocked, none of them wanted to find the key to unlock it.
After a long while of holding her, he felt her tense body go limp as if almost all the life left her body, left only with enough to breathe. Resur gently lowered her back to bed as if she's a box of glass. He stares at her face, the way she looks so peaceful in her sleep contrast with how she always look like she's worried. He pulled her hair to the side and adjust her head so she'll be sleeping in the middle of the pillow. "Dad always did that for me when I'm sleeping". He heads back up, tip toeing up the stairs to not wake her up.
"Resur....why did i hear two heartbeats from your chest".