tiamat

The astronaut is falling in a small round pod toward a tumultuous yellow-green ocean. He strikes the surface and unstraps himself. Outside the large pod window: vast opaque yellow in all directions, distance impossible to calculate. The vessel lurches, red lights flash, and water spews through a breach in the hull. The capsule door bursts open, and the ocean pulls him into itself. He tumbles in the swirling waters, watching his only real protection sink into bottomless yellow below his feet. Then from the deep, a dark mass emerges like a mountain from fog. Edges lost in the haze, it stretches across the horizon, dark skin a planet unto itself, encrusted with algae and twisted coral. The astronaut rotates and an eye the size of a city block faces him, staring open but covered by a milky lid that slides away like a curtain, revealing a vertical pupil he could fit inside. In the coloring of the surrounding sclera: a network of capillaries like wires. The horrible truth strikes him: This creature, she is machine, a living weapon. In the shadows of her pupil are the click and whir of watertight machinery unimaginably complex, designed millennia ago by some forgotten civilization. He is destined to be swallowed. Were her creators, in their hubris, swallowed too? He is nothing in her massive shadow. Nothing, nothing. The water shifts as the creature turns its head so massive its width stretches beyond his peripheral. He can only stare at the intersection of chaotic teeth, each one a skyscraper resolving to a point as razor-sharp and precise as a sword. The mouth begins to open, creating a current that pulls him forward. The throat is a purple cavern leading into a black pit, scale unimaginable. Forgetting himself, he closes his eyes and accepts his fate. He waits for death. A great roar emanates from the abysmal throat, shaking his fragile human bones, ruffling his thin suit, and pushing him back. But, beyond fear, his eyes remain shut. Another powerful roar, but this time with a hint of pain. Curious, he opens his eyes and sees the creature has turned its mouth away, and inside its eye are sparks like lightning. Its body pulses and jerks wildly and its jaws open wider than they should and release one final terrible shriek, then it is still and silent as it sinks. The astronaut watches it disappear, wondering at all he'd witnessed and pondering it in his heart. After moments that seem like ages, a white beam of light pierces the ocean, and he feels himself pulled to the surface then into air mercifully warm and dry.