They followed the light, and though the sun was getting low in the west enough of its rays still filled the upper levels of the ocean to illuminate the reef that they came to next. Colors were vivid in the shallower waters, and the fish that darted past them were, for the most part, smaller and less toothy than the Basin's denizens. Tal paused his tired dog paddling to float for a moment above a particularly weird lump of coral that was nearly as big across as he was tall.
It looked like a brain, vivid pink and covered in whorls and wrinkles laid down in the hard, brittle stuff that was like and unlike stone.
He was blissfully oblivious - for now - of the coincidence that placed it directly in the cracked open skull of some ancient oceanic behemoth. The vast skeleton stretched out beneath and around them, mostly hidden beneath various clumps of coral and seagrass that at least looked prettier and more harmless than what they'd left behind.
That probably made it safe, right? Which might have been why the courier reached fascinated fingers towards the soft, noodly-looking fronds of a big green lump attached to one side of the brain coral, waving gently in the current.
