AllFreeNovel
Share Us
The crescent moon watched over me sadly as tears poured silently down my cheeks. “I know he’s alive.”
“You are mistaken.”
“I know he’s still here because we share the same heart. That heart is still beating, even if it’s broken. I would feel it if he was gone. I know I would.”
“You need to stop this nonsense. Aslan Avci is dead. It’s time you accepted that.”
He hung up.
I bowed in the sand.
And I cried.
Chapter Thirty-Six
*
Nerida
AGE: 23 YRS OLD
*
(Love in Maori: Aroha)
*
Three years...
I STOOD ON THE DECK OF THE FLUKE, staring at the mid-afternoon sun. The weather was hot, bright, blue, and beautiful, yet today, the sublime perfection of the ocean didn’t affect me.
The glittering sunlight couldn’t pierce my lonely heart.
The swooping seagulls couldn’t turn my sorrow into a smile.
Three years.
My constant headache pounded, my ceaseless guilt suffocated, refusing to believe it.
Three years...
Nine days ago, I’d turned another year older.
And today was the anniversary of Aslan’s death.
Despite my heavy cloak of misery, the year had passed quickly. Teddy and Eddie had enlisted the help of a local builder to construct the plans they’d drawn. I continued fundraising and even managed to get a few newspapers to take notice of us. We also received a moderately sized donation from the Sydney Aquarium to fund our progress, with the proviso that the day we created a liveable environment, they would have access to the first sphere for their own uses.
Their request had given me the idea to sell future leases. For a few thousand dollars, those who could afford it could rent a biosphere and have their names noted on the founding investors, all while Lunamare was nothing more than an impossible dream.
Unfortunately, testing on the strange-looking decagon had not gone well. After months of tweaking, welding, and amending, the structure never remained watertight in our pool for long.
Eddie was the more rational minded out of me and Teddy, and he grounded us with reminders that we were trying to do something no one else had ever done before. Sure, there were pods around the world that marine biologists, engineers, and saturation divers lived in while doing infrastructure work and deep-sea welding. Sure, there were rigs and outposts with moon pools and submarines, all built to withstand the immense weight of the ocean.
But...they were for short-term use—to visit and then leave. Not a forever home with sunlight, a permanent letter box, and whales as your next-door neighbours.
Regardless that I needed this to happen quickly. Regardless that I clung to the one-day hope of vanishing into a different world, the process couldn’t be rushed.
As more failures happened and more frustration set in, we constantly pushed each other to come up with better ideas. Working took over my life, giving me somewhere to hide from my grief.
