Other Peoples Stories - Tumblr Posts

I know people on tumblr looove stories of underwater cave diving, but I haven't seen anyone talk about nitrogen narcosis aka "raptures of the deep"

basically when you want to get your advanced scuba certification (allowing you to go more than 60 feet deep) you have to undergo a very specific test: your instructor takes you down past the 60+ foot threshold, and she brings a little underwater white board with her.

she writes a very basic math problem on that board. 6 + 15. she shows it to you, and you have to solve it.

if you can solve it, you're good. that is the hardest part of the test.

because here's what happens: there is a subset of people, and we have no real idea why this happens only to them, who lose their minds at depth. they're not dying, they're not running out of oxygen, they just completely lose their sense of identity when deep in the sea.

a woman on a dive my instructor led once vanished during the course of the excursion. they were diving near this dropoff point, beyond which the depth exceeded 60 feet and he'd told them not to go down that way. the instructor made his way over to look for her and found a guy sitting at the edge of the dropoff (an underwater cliff situation) just staring down into the dark. the guy is okay, but he's at the threshold, spacing out, and mentally difficult to reach. they try to communicate, and finally the guy just points down into the dark, knowing he can't go down there, but he saw the woman go.

instructor is deep water certified and he goes down. he shines his light into the dark, down onto the seafloor which is at 90 feet below the surface. he sees the woman, her arms locked to her sides, moving like a fish, swimming furiously in circles in the pitch black.

she is hard to catch but he stops her and checks her remaining oxygen: she is almost out, on account of swimming a marathon for absolutely no reason. he is able to drag her back up, get her to a stable depth to decompress, and bring her to the surface safely.

when their masks are off and he finally asks her what happened, and why was she swimming like that, she says she fully, 100% believed she was a mermaid, had always been a mermaid, and something was hunting her in the dark 👍

"The Uphill River"

A small little blurb from chapter ten of the rewrite. Yes I am still writing it.

The next task she was put to was pulling stems of apples for Quinn and Kol as they worked on the list of the Queen’s pastries. Yale assisted in gathering whatever ingredients needed for their work, dashing to and from cold storage to fetch various dried and fresh fruits and herbs. And a crock of butter almost as tall as Nenani. She walked around it, eyes wide in wonder, battling the very real urge to stick her finger into it. Without even looking away from the list in his hands, Yale reached over to lay his fingers on her shoulders and gently turned her away from the butter. He pointed to a spot closer to him in a wordless command and another bowl of apples needing their stems plucked for the Ibronian pastries they were making.   

Nenani knew a little of Ibronian cooking, only due to having lived in fair proximity to the Ibronain sailors and dock workers littering the port. They liked their wine sweet and liberally applied anywhere there was room. The apples Nenani prepared were lightly crushed, only to break them open, and put aside to macerate in wine as the dough came together.   

“Are ye sure it doesn’t say anything about butter in this recipe? Even at the end?” Kol asked as he pressed the shaggy dough into a pile and drive the ball of his fist into the center.

“I’m sure,” Quin replied, reading over the recipe one more time. “No butter. The next recipe looks like it uses a good bit, but not for this one.”

“Don’t seem right not to have butter in the dough. It’ll be flavorless.”

Quinn flicked Kol’s ear as he passed him with the bowl of apples and wine. “If you add butter and we get torn into because ye broke some sacred Ibrinaian pastry law, I’m shaving yer head after we’re released from the stockades.”  

“Fine, I won’t add any butter,” Kol replied with a petulant frown. “Just don’t see how it’ll taste very good. Would make a nicer crumb.”

They stopped their work briefly to eat a small meal. Bowls from one the large cauldrons that Yale called “the perpetual brew” were doled out to everyone. It was a dark colored stew not unlike forever pottage, but instead of a thick soup of grains and barely, there were root vegetables, various bits of meat, and several types of beans.

As Nenani ate her portion, she fished something odd from the bottom of her bowl. It was as long as her finger and looked very much like a stick. She tried to bite into it and grimaced. It was a stick. When she showed Yale, he and the bakers all burst into laughter.

“Must be a bit of sweet pine,” Quinn said.   

“I forget sometimes Humans don’t really eat trees, eh? Supposed yer teeth are too soft for it,” said Yale.

“What? You eat trees?” Nenani asked.

“Sometimes,” Yale explained. “It’s more common to eat them in winter when stores run low. Ye cut down a few in spring when they’re sweetest and store them in the cellar for winter. Grind it up for bread. It’s not as nice as wheat, but it’s food. Mostly folks pop a few branches into soup for the flavor. Like ye were saying about the bay laurel.”

“And if ye can’t afford sugar or honey, lots of folks use a spoon carved from sweet pine and use it to stir tea and it’ll sweeten it a bit,” Kol added in. “Not as much as sugar or honey, but it works well enough.”    

Nenani observed the stick held between her fingers with equal measures of curiosity and revulsion. It had softened somewhat from its time spent boiling in the stew. But it was still unmistakenly a stick. She could not decide if they were trying to trick her or not. Looking between the three of them, they seemed sincere enough. She put it back into her mouth and chewed on it. The fibers broke apart and she could taste a faint sweetness. “It’s a little sweet.”

“Told ye,” said Yale.

She removed it from her mouth. “But it’s still a stick.”

“Ah, yer teeth are just too soft to fully appreciate sweet pine,” Yale replied. He fished a piece of sweet pine from his own bowl and ate it, chewing happily as Nenani made a face at him.   

  Quinn laughed and added, “Don’t tell her about pinecone jam.”