Empyrean Iris Story Collection

Swimming

Sunny had never seen so much blue before. The sky above and the water below stretching out to the horizon in all directions. The polar field in the sky above was a beautiful metallic rainbow that reflected off the water causing the entire planet to sparkle like a prism.....

It was terrifying.

Sunny had never seen so much water before. Of course their planet HAD water, it was sort of important when it came to life sustaining a planet, but most of it was in shallow rivers, and abandoned underground lava tubes and caverns. Most of her planet's water was fed by underground springs, and the largest lake was located thousands of miles away on the other side of the planet meaning she had never actually seen it before.

Even those times she had visited earth, they had been located in the center of the landmass, and it barely occurred to her that the planet was almost 2/3s water. The humans seemed very excited about the entire thing, but as Krill had stated before, the vast majority of humans LOVED large bodies of water. She had no idea why, whether it was cultural or evolution that caused this, but it was sort of terrifying.

She found herself poised on the edge of lunging forward as her marines, and mostly Adam, leaned out precariously over the edge of the boat. She feared that the humans would fall in and drown or something and wished they would just relax, but there Adam was holding onto nothing more than a taut rope, feet braced against the side of the boat and leaning out over the water held up by a single hand. Wind whipped at his hair and shirt eyes closed and smiling.

She would generally have been glad to see that he was happy if he wasn't hanging over a trillion gallons of liquid death.

Their boat cut a little right, and, in the distance, sunny could see a tall peak of rocks surrounded by a little beach that was no more than a football field all the way around. Clinging to the rocks she could see some sort of strange colorful plant-life, but it was too far away to see at this point.

She spent the next few minutes trying to keep the marines from falling off the edge of the boat, which in the end only earned her some weird looks. Krill floated mildly at the front of the boat, and oddly enough it seemed as if he was more relaxed than she was.

In his case, she was worried that he was going to fly off the edge of the boat and end up sinking into the depths below, but luckily, they made it to the tiny island, and the human hopped off onto the sand. The scientists began taking their samples , the water, the sand, the strange plant life. When everything was cleared, predictably, humans began touching things, mostly picking up the sand and marveling at how soft it was.

She pointed out they had no idea what kind of dangerous things could be in there, but Adam, the commander, lying on his back in the sand looked up at her with a grin, "Nope, not with the new protocol I made up. It's called the TISICTI for short, or for long the "Test it so I can touch it" protocol. Krill threw a fit enough times I thought it would be a good compromise." He motioned towards the scientist, "What do you think we have them for."

She frowned, "I sort of assumed they were here to do, you know, science and stuff. Like samples and testing and whatever else."

The man shrugged, "I mean yes, but more importantly, they are here to make sure that we can safely touch things."

He leaned his head back against the sand with his eyes closed, "Honestly, this planet isn't exactly of particular interest accept for the water and beaches. NO sentient lifeform owns it. The biggest creature are weird sort of whales, and most members of the GA don't want anything to do with it, so here we are." His single eye popped open, "Oh, that reminds me." He stood from the sand and motioned to the marines, "Break out the cooler, and radio to the crew that the planet is non-toxic." He rubbed his hands together with a grin, "Let's do this."