Dyaus swam down by Youko and poked her back. This was dangerous and Youko wished she’d knock it off.
“Dyaus, why are you always like this?” Ganapati sighed. “Fine! I’d just be worried about you. I’ll come, too. But where are we headed?”
“Our ultimate goal should be dry land,” Youko said. She always found herself speaking more politely with Ganapati. “Right now, we can only breathe through gills, but maybe the gacha near land will have organs that making breathing air easier.”
“This seems very poorly planned.” It was unusual for Ganapati to phrase things this bluntly.
“That’s what makes it fun!” Dyaus said, clearly excited.
Their goal was set. But they still lacked the means to carry out the plan. What land should they head for? They couldn’t just search blindly. There was no map around. Even if they tried to make one, that would be really difficult without any paper. Their best bet was to go to the water’s surface and search for land. Dyaus was best suited to that mission. Youko and Ganapati were both designed for bottom dwelling, and it would be difficult for them to reach the surface. But Dyaus was a Girl able to swim freely in three dimensions.
Dyaus swam up and up. Catching the currents with her fins, she rode them higher and higher. The surface shouldn’t be that far away. After all, there was plenty of sunlight filtering down.
Dyaus had never left the water before. Without Youko, it would never have occurred to her to head for the surface. Once again, she was grateful Youko was there. Youko was a great Girl. As long as she was with them, they could have so much fun. Just thinking about all the adventures they were going to have got Dyaus excited. She had been so bored. Ganapati was a nice Girl, too, but not exactly a thrilling companion.
The sparkling surface of the water was getting closer. The waves made white bubbles.
“Woohoo!”
She burst out of the surface, leaping through the air. Blue. Blue as far as the eye could see.
She spread her fins to the fullest, plunging back into the water. By spreading out the portion of herself in contact with the surface, she could distribute her weight, floating on the water. Strong sunlight pounded down, baking her body. It itched, like her surface was drying out, withering. She quickly looked around. There. A line crossing the blue. That was the land Youko spoke of.
Land had a lot to offer Girls. Giant Girls were reaching their arms to the heavens. Were they sunbathing? They seemed to be enjoying themselves. But land did not seem to be a paradise. Even Girls good at sunbathing could not escape this world’s struggle over points. There was an indirect war going on, a struggle to steal sunlight from each other. Girls were using giant mobile parasols to steal the sunlight their rivals were soaking in, Girls were encasing lighter air in membranes and floating themselves above their rivals to claim the sunlight first, and those who had their sunlight stolen were unable to sunbathe and perished. To escape death, some Girls made more direct attacks. Strangling each other with their feelers, shooting darts, ripping surface flesh open with claws and slurping up the juices, gathering light to start fires, consuming symbionts... The Girls were all fighting and without really knowing why. Without understanding why they had to feel such suffering.
Dyaus sensed none of this. She was no philosopher. All she thought when she saw land was that there were a lot of Girls there good at different things. The sun was drying out her gills and it hurt, so she dove back into the sea.
“I found land! You were right, Youko!”
Youko was relieved to hear Dyaus’ report. Land was closer than she thought. They could check the direction of the sun and know which way to go.
Dyaus surfaced two or three more times, making sure of their directions. Fortunately, it was not a great distance away.
The three friends set off on their journey together. But each of them had a different means of propulsion, speed, and rate of exhaustion. Dyaus was the fastest, but only in ideal circumstances; she struggled when the currents were in flux. As they got closer to the land, the waves got bigger, and Dyaus struggled more. Those moments were Ganapati’s chance to shine. Dyaus would lie face up under her belly, holding on with her feelers. Dyaus was frustrated by her inability to swim freely, but Ganapati seemed to enjoy it. It was hard to read her expression, but they’d been working together long enough that Youko could get a sense of her mood.
Youko was the least mobile of the three. Her mandibles and gills offered up considerable resistance, slowing her down. She considered changing up her cards to make movement easier, but blowing points leveling everything up again seemed like a waste, so she also took a ride on Ganapati’s belly. Dyaus was thrilled to have a fellow passenger to talk to, but this seemed to make Ganapati grumpy, and she refused to join in the conversations. It was pretty awkward.
As they neared the land, there were more Girls around them. They were floating, swimming, crawling, and tunneling. Some fled when they saw the three of them coming, while others recklessly went up against them and were torn to pieces. They’d yet to find a threat that was a match for the three of them together.
The surface was quickly getting closer. The water was cloudy, and all the different chemical smells were making them dizzy. Branches washed down from the land were piled up, making a maze several layers deep. There were Girls lurking within the maze, too.
From this point on, even the three of them were forced to be cautious. The cloudy water limited their vision, and the chemicals rendered their sense of smell useless. The situation was extremely ripe for an ambush. Ganapati had the highest defenses, so the other two stayed underneath her, and they all moved slowly forward.
Then Youko heard a voice.
A voice in pain, calling out in desperation.
“Help... Somebody, please... Help me...”
Youko paused, looking around her. This was a voice speaking directly to her soul, the way Girls spoke to each other.
“Mm? What’s up, Youko?” Dyaus asked. Had she not heard the voice?
“Someone’s calling for help.”
“A voice? I didn’t hear nothing. Whatever, just ignore it! Prolly a trap, anyway. Better keep our distance.”
But Youko couldn’t simply ignore it. She wasn’t sure why. She just felt like she had to go towards the voice.
“It’s bugging me. I’m gonna go take a look,” Youko said, and started swimming towards the voice. It was in the maze of branches.
“Wait, Youko! It ain’t safe!” Dyaus tried to follow her into the branches but her fins were in the way and she couldn’t fit through.