Their driver opened the side door, which caused a gust of wind to wash over Lexi’s increasingly heated body. She was thankful for it because she was ready to climb on top of him in the back seat and forget the date altogether.
“You’re something else,” she crooned into his ear.
Rao helped her out of the car by lightly touching her lower back, then took her hand once they had both emerged.
The ocean on Nova Aurora was a dazzling salmon shade of pink, occasionally matching the radiance of the sun. Lexi had to blink a few times to remind herself that she wasn’t tripping out, that the ocean before her was indeed not the deep blue she was used to.
Other than the color, the waters were exactly the same in temperature and general structure as the oceans on Earth. Rao guided Lexi to a globe-shaped glass submarine-looking device. It rode the calm waves of the waters with a man in a scuba suit standing by.
Rao held his hand in the air to greet him. “Leo!” Rao called out.
The man was tall and much less muscular than Rao, but he still possessed lion-like features. He grinned at Rao, then at Lexi, who returned it with a smile of her own and a wave.
“It is so wonderful to meet you both!” Leo proclaimed.
He shook Rao’s hand and gave him a brief hug, then did the same with Lexi. His eyes were a similar shade of green as Rao’s, except far more dim.
“It is great to meet you, too,” Lexi replied.
Leo showed Lexi and Rao the inner workings of the globe sub, explaining how to plunge into the depths, turn on the lights after deeper submergence, and how to rotate the globe so they could view everything around them at a 360-degree angle.
Once they were shown the safety precautions, Leo stepped away. They transformed their outfits into the scuba suits, which was a vibrating, strange sensation that slightly startled Lexi. They giggled together, which helped ease some of Lexi’s anxiety.
The ocean itself didn’t scare her. It was the unknown of it all. She had grown to trust Rao greatly, but there were still some elements of their relationship that she wasn’t entirely sure about.
Sensing her hesitation, Rao climbed into the sub first, holding his hand out to her. He smiled when she stood there, watching the sub rock against the waves of the pink waters. The look made Lexi’s soul glow.
“Do you trust me?”
She wanted to, desperately. “Yes,” she said.
She climbed into the sub and settled into a seat while Rao closed the lid and started up the engine.
“I won’t let anything bad ever happen to us,” he said, placing a hand over hers. “Ready?”
Lexi nodded, trying not to squeeze her eyes shut. With that, Rao took the controls, and they plummeted into a foreign world.
It wasn’t at all what Lexi was expecting. She had watched a handful of nature documentaries about the oceans on Earth and, thus, had a vague understanding of what a deep sea adventure would look like. But all of that paled in comparison to the abundance of life, colors, and overall supernatural magic she observed beneath the depths of the Nova Aurora waves.
Rao showed her around a giant undersea garden of bioluminescent plants and ocean life. There were creatures she’d never seen before, all subtle variations on sharks, dolphins, and neon-shaded fish that she had seen on TV. Plants pulsed with various shades of light, a neon radiance flickering through the dancing shapes like an underwater lightning storm.
It looked like a bustling city that they were soaring above, and Lexi was moved to the depths of her soul. No one had ever done something so beautiful for her. It was more than a gesture. It was a proclamation.
She felt her eyes swelling with tears as she reached out to touch his hands on the controls. “Rao, I …” Just as she was about to thank him, something big and powerful rocked against the top of the globe.
Rao flicked his head behind them, and because the entire submarine was transparent, Lexi gasped at the abrupt, hideous sight. Something resembling a giant carapace crab had smashed against the globe, a brilliant shade of orange and dark blue.
Its eyes peered down at them like spotlights, irises as black and infinite as any shark. Its pincers clicked and floated through the water like a blown-up jaws of life, the sound faint yet still menacing.
“Fuck,” Rao growled.
To Lexi’s ear, Rao sounded more irritated than frightened. That was a good thing because she was terrified beyond belief.
“Rao!” She screamed. “Let’s go!”
Rao immediately flung the globe around and zipped past the massive crustacean, jetting through the water with a stream of bubbles behind them. But that wasn’t the only thing behind them.
“Hold on tight,” Rao said.