Jellyfish - Chapter 3 Under The Sea

“What do you say, darlin’? Wanna have some fun?”

The Queen of the Jellyfish held the tendril of her brethren with a gentle touch. Her hand swelled up to twice its size and turned a shade of pink that matched the gelatinous medusozoa she was courting.

At the bottom of the ocean, a variety of these creatures had spawned after evolving enough times. Sunlight could never reach the bottom of the abyss, but these beings made it so there wouldn’t be a need for the sun. They glowed, perhaps from the things they had inside them, in various incandescent colors. The ocean floor was alive with little spirits that haunted the dark.

The Queen, on the other hand, was dead weight on the ocean floor. Her feet were barely gliding over its surface. Her companion’s tendril slipped away from her dying fingers as her grip floated away with each bubble.

You might ask what she was doing there, fooling around with a bunch of Jellyfish, at the bottom of the sea.

Well, the world above the water was still slightly inhabitable, with nothing much to see up there other than the occasional rock or cloud of poisonous gas. A few storms came around once, and glass fell for a hundred years. The planet had just one mass of land at the time. It seemed that a good 90 percent of all things was water, and the other 10 percent was stuff jutting above it. God, the strange administrator who couldn’t care for how life turned out on one of the many worlds, didn’t bother to place the Immortal anywhere close to where land would form. When the first rains began to pour, she had stayed in place and cooled off with boiling water as the earth beneath her feet became solid.

So really it was only natural to see her here at the bottom of the sea.

Surrounded by her children, the Queen thought to name them all after herself. The one that just slipped away from her would be called “Rei.” The others were Rei Two, Three, and so forth until the numbers got absurd. It didn’t matter whether she remembered their names or not because she just gave them a random serial number.

“I wonder if you’ll ever get tired of living, Rei 2101”

She held a blue jellyfish in her arms as if it was a teddy bear. The original Rei kissed the Jelly’s head and promptly drowned in peace. Her next life continued the process of holding and taking comfort in the squishiness of the creature. Sometimes, Rei became food for 2101 as she died. Other times, it perched on her head and stung the girl as much as it liked. One time it kept floating through the water and tried to swim through Rei’s face, which the Immortal thought was a sign of affection. A few years passed like this until Rei realized the other Jellyfish had gone away somewhere and only number 2101 remained.

It turned out to be immortal.

They would travel then, Rei following behind Rei 2101. She released it from her arms and watched it float away through the sea in its polyp form. The immortal 2101 led the way with Rei close behind. A few more centuries passed as they wandered through the dark. She watched the jellyfish shrivel up, lose parts of its body, but always revert to a child and grow once more. It never stayed the same as she did, but it was still undying just like she was.

“Where are we going friend?” asked Rei, finally getting bored with this routine.

“Away.” replied the Jellyfish through swimming and glowing.

Rei accepted this answer.

More time passed, and the world had grown to sustain life on land. Strange primitive fish and unholy monsters began to migrate above the seas. One or two might have gone up and died, but the rest of the mindless animals followed once per millennium. Eventually, a fish with legs got up on the sand and wiggled the water off its back. Somehow it could breathe the fresh air, experience the life above the dark sea, and do all sorts of other things. The possibilities were endless, anything and everything could happen up there!

The first thing it did was die.

Don’t worry though, more fish creatures with more mutations swarmed up that beach. They became the first reptiles on land, and then the first actual animals that roamed the world. With every birth, they mutated and grew an extra leg, maybe glass armor, and sometimes another penis. Freaks of nature began to normalize as everything that wasn’t deemed useful by nature got killed off.

Before anyone knew it, it was time for monsters to claim the continent for themselves.

Rei caught wind of this when she had finally walked all the way to the first continent while trailing her friend. 2101 seemed to have felt the urge to walk up there, or maybe it was the sea current taking it along. Either way, the girl was faced with a decision. The time seemed right, and perhaps things would work out correctly. Maybe a monster with immortality nulling claws had spawned above and would kill her.

Her feet moved slightly, and a first step took her forward on the climb. Rei looked back, sadly towards 2101 and knew that it was time to bid farewell. With a salute, she let out tears to her only friend in immortality and started to move up again after crying for a year. Her tears became part of the sea. Somehow, the Jellyfish came to realize that Rei was crying. The sadness emitted by the girl brought 2101 closer, then it raised a tendril with its own sorrow and stung the girl’s shoulder to reassure her.

“I’ll take you up.” it seemed to say.

“Really?” Rei bawled through her tears and the water in her mouth.

Together, just as 2101 had led her through the ocean before this moment, they rose towards the shimmering ceiling. 2101 looked up and felt the sun shining on its body. The blue light, drowned out by the gold rays of the sun, made it seem dull. For a brief moment, 2101 felt fear and stopped as it met the unknown. Rei, gazing upon her transparent partner, saw the light dim and offered her hands to it. Holding 2101 as she had ages ago, like a plushie, they breached the water together. Gasping and breathing in fresh air for the first time in eons, she cried tears of joy and celebrated.

Finally! They were here! The new world. Possibilities awaited them, monsters of all sorts that could maybe kill her. Rei smiled and laughed. She whooped and shouted at the red sky, and her legs felt heavy for the first time in a long while. She fell on her knees while looking up to the orange clouds, and in that moment the Immortal closed her eyes.

She held up 2101, who was limp and withered as the sun bore its heat. The jellyfish could barely lift a tendril under its weight, yet with Rei’s help, it rose to the sky while out of the water.

Then it died.