Prompts - underwater ruins

Today's prompt is from a Blog o' Odd Things I have in my Google Reader. It's a list of "7 Most Fascinating Underwater Ruins," and my favorite is -

"Situated 68 miles beyond the east coast of Taiwan, Yonaguni Islands are a remarkable place for its rugged and mountainous coastlines. The special attraction is the submerged ruins located in the southern coast of Yonaguni: a superb 100×50x25 meters man-made artifact out of solid rock slabs stands erect at right angles. Its is estimated to be around 8000 years old, which is remarkably early for the kind of technology that has been used for carving it. Different theories exist about the possible identities of this structure.

While some say these ruins are the remnants of the missing Continent of Mu, other archeologists attribute them to be the outcome of unexplained geological processes, although, when you see the finely designed hallways and staircases, this ‘natural phenomenon' idea will appear sheer out of place.

The megalith was discovered quite accidentally by a sport diver in 1995 when he had strayed beyond the permissible limit off the Okinawa shore. The interesting thing about this massive stone building is that it had arches made of beautifully fitted stone blocks bearing resemblance with the building architectural style of the Inca civilization. Debates were rife about the ruins being associated with the prehistoric Motherland of Civilization. Surveying the ruins minutely takes time and skill because of the rough oceanic currents."

Link!

Here's to hoping everything formats correctly. Anyway, wow! Underwater ruins! Giant steps! Missing continent of Mu! Resemblance to Inca architecture off the coast of Taiwan! It sounds to me like the set-up for a Lovecraftian tale, and my two readers will know that I am quite the Lovecraft fan. A quick glance at Wiki shows that the lost continent of Mu did indeed show up in the Cthulhu mythos. Fantastic.

But perhaps I should branch out a little today. Instead of my beloved Mythos and instead of my beloved UFPE (I did a couple more panels over the weekend), I'll try something else.

Oh, now here's a funny idea. Let's see if I can make something of it.

*****

Aurorasdatter was sick of it.

She hated the endless hours she passed wrapped in cotton-wool, shielded from the frightening new turn her world had taken until they were sure that she was ready to face it again. She hated the fashionable psycopathy and the practiced melancolia. She hated everything she had left behind, but she hated even more how much she missed it all.

Most of all, Aurorasdatter hated her name. It was not really a name, or at least not really her name. She would not have one of her own for another nine months, not until she had survived this new world for a full year. It was a morbid custom, but who could accuse these people of morbidity and keep a straight face? And if Aurora should bring another one, another girl, into this frightening world, how would they ever tell the two of them apart?

For all these reasons, and for the vestiges of the spirit of wanderlust that had pervaded her life before the change, Aurorasdatter was running away from her protectors, her teachers, her guides, and her tormentors. She was going to one of their far Eastern enclaves, a tiny place beneath the waves where she could walk about at any hour, without fear of death or discovery. The very thought of living in such a strange, inhuman place made most of them uneasy, but it was that same inhumanity that drew Aurorasdatter. Wasn't that the beauty of this new world of hers, the chance to experience the inhumane?

She would stay belowdecks for the interminable weeks of the passage, surviving off the prey she had captured for just this reason. She could keep him alive for perhaps half the duration of the journey, she estimated, and she would endure the rest of it as long as she could stave off the restlessness that had driven her thus far. A map and an antique astrolabe stolen - was it stealing? - from her own estate completed her luggage.

Aurorasdatter. She winced. What kind of creature of the dark named herself after the dawn, she wondered. She had never met Aurora, not that she could recall; her inheritance consisted of a very silly moniker - daughter of the sunrise indeed - and a group of elders who would have kept her locked in a closet for a decade if she had not taken control of her new life, such as it was. Beneath the gleeful maliciousness and black humor they wore like expensive sable, she supposed that a sort of kindness and fellow-feeling must lurk in their still breasts, but it was a concern that suffocated.

At her feet, the prey moaned softly. Aurorasdatter kicked it irritably, and it quieted. She put her ear to the ship's creaking hull and closed her eyes. Outside, she could hear the waves, shifting and splashing against the wooden planks in a song as old as her people. The wind was older, but it did not carry the same promise it once had, not for one such as she who could no longer brave the open sky with impunity. The waves would welcome her, though. She would walk the carven steps and trace her fingers over the silent, secretive tablets that waited on the sea floor.

****

I have a tendency in speculative fiction to keep secrets unnecessarily from the audience. I know it's a bad habit, but who wants to reveal right away that their main character is a vampire? Maybe it's okay in this context, at least. The shifts in tone in this piece boggle me, but it was fun to write and fun to imagine. Way underneath the ocean, surely it's dark enough to vampires to hang out all day without worrying about a deadly sunburn. It would be cool if they had entire cities underwater. Maybe she's getting into more than she knows! Maybe there's a reason these guys kept themselves away from the rest of vampire civilization.

I'm not sure if anything will ever come of this, but nothing has to. It was a fun piece to write and a fun task to try something beyond my first (or second) instinct for a prompt.