Psssst... Hey, next time you go to sleep, we're gonna show you the ocean, ok? I hope that's okay. I think you'll enjoy it.
[The next time Laika falls asleep, she appears in a white void, with a strange sense of lucidity that you wouldn't usually get in a dream. She sees a small cartoony calico cat standing on two paws and waving at her aggressively.]
"Halloooo!!! It's nice to meet you I thought it was really really sad that you never got to go to the beach and never will so now you get to! Have funnnn!"
[The cat plops out of existence with a squeak and Laika's surroundings slowly start to morph into an ocean beach, with no other people on it besides... Some human figure in the distance.]
-💖
By the time the voice cuts through her sub, Laika is already in her cot. Laying on the precipice between the waking world and subconscious, she can offer no reply besides the way her body twists— as though trying to physically escape the threat to her slumber.
The headache she'd sustained from her escapades in photography had yet to leave her and while keeping her eyes closed against the never ending light from her submersible was helping with the pain, actually drifting off was proving to be a challenge.
Laika had never truly gotten used to sleeping on the ship, the stagnant air that laid so heavy it could choke. The unnatural warmth that Laika had known exclusively through body heat now overwhelmingly consistent. Sweating through her button up alone felt more unbearable than freezing next to someone.
Yet, for all her reservations, her bed had been calling to her ever since the nosebleed. Not just from how light headed she felt—no. This was something else. The way she sunk into the mesh material of her cot, how the overhead lights didn't breech beneath her eyelids like usual, the rocking of the Omega breeding lethargy rather than nausea.
Laika doesn't even clock she's asleep at first, and the way her eyes blink open on instinct has her mourning just how close she'd gotten.
Before the void stares back at her.
There's only a millisecond of eternity that her brain tolerates before it latches onto something it can comprehend, even if with only slightly better understanding. Because Laika knows what a cat is, there were a few that lived on Eden after all. None of them stood on two legs though, and maybe she just wasn't worth the conversation but she didn't think they talked either.
Maybe it isn't a cat at all, but whatever it is, whatever it's saying— It's lost in translation as Laika instead grapples with the questions she has that get trapped in her throat. And it isn't until it's saying its goodbyes that she regains the ability to talk, blinks away her deer in headlights expression, and physically jolts into action.
"Wait! Don't leave, I don't—"
Her hand grabs air. And suddenly an incomprehensibly void peels away to reveal something just as mind bending— even if for completely different reasons.
The salt in the air hits her first like a punch to the gut, and her muscles tense up accordingly. Laika is reminded just how lacking her imagination truly is, because being able to taste it had never even registered as a possibility during her attempts. But it's undeniable, the way her throat closes up in protest against the assault on her senses despite merely breathing it in.
Laika's eyes water, and she doesn't even know the saline carried in the breeze is partly to blame. Though her assumption that it's from awe alone is an understandable one. Especially when placed in the context of what lay in front of her.
A spectrum of colors she didn't even know existed bends on the horizon, threatening to break against the curve of the Earth as the sun sets. There's one in particular she knows all too well though, one she never thought she'd see again.
Her favorite.
["Like your eyes??"
“Okay, ouch— don’t go poking them out or they wont be blue for much longer but yes. Like my eyes, silly.”]
The sound of water lapping at the shore becomes the backing track for Laika's emotional descent as the sight of it all makes her feel faint, her tears fall heavier. Her knees buckle, she hits the sand, and the tide hitting her knees is what finally snaps her out of it.
She's seeing the ocean, touching the ocean. The beast sailors failed to conquer, the savior humanity lost in the rapture, the pipedream she thought impossible.
The wish her sister never stopped making.
["You know you're supposed to be asleep, what are you doing up?"
". . .Did the pictures make you sad?"
"What?"
"You're crying. . .was it the pictures? I can beat them up if you want."
"Pffttt. No Laika, it's just— It's not the pictures themselves. I suppose I'm just feeling a bit homesick."
"But— we are home, aren't we?"
". . . maybe you are."]
Something about that memory she had forgotten all about becomes clearer in the aftermath of the sight she struggles to describe.
Laika was been born on Eden, she'd barely been four when God decided to take the stars and planets like a thief in the night. The ocean she'd come to yearn for was one from books, archives, photographs. The one Jordan mourned was real— forged from water, coral, and life. Not paper and ink.
With the small pinhole Laika had known Earth through, she could never understand her sister's grief even if she sympathized. She harkened it to someone being born blind and another losing their sight well into adulthood. Both tragedies, ones neither of them truly grasp even with its overlapping symptoms. But now— in the face of a small fraction of what her sister had known—she understood.
How could anyone who'd bore witness to heaven be at peace in its substitutes?
Part of Laika wonders why Jordan didn't cry more, didn't collapse into herself from the weight of it all, the way she knows she will the moment she wakes up. Of course, Jordan had always been the stronger of the two— it'd been a miracle she'd been caught crying at all. It's that reason that makes Laika suddenly feel wrong for assuming her sister would fall victim to her despair the way she felt so comfortable doing. They may have been cut from the same cloth, but Jordan's had never needed as much patching up as hers.
The reminder has her attention going to the sleeve of the button up she wears. The tide had drenched its cuffs, and there's an automatic instinct to pull away, to not let the water taint it anymore than it had.
One Laika ignores in favor of submerging her hand up to her forearm. Something about the last thing her sister had worn being completely covered in sea water— it just felt right. But she wouldn't go that far, mostly because she feared if she submerged herself in its depths she'd forget any reason to come back up.
The morbid thought forces her eyes off the water and back towards the shore, where she does a double take at the figure sitting there.
"Jordan. . .?"
She hadn't said her name out loud in so long, a streak she didn't mean to break. Maybe it was a combination of the fact her sister was the only other person she associated with the setting and she'd already been thinking of her. But upon seeing whoever that was in the distance? It slipped out— a wish of her own.
It was impossible, but Laika stood up anyway. It was impossible, but she was already standing in the biggest impossibility was there— right? Laika knew it was impossible, and she made her way towards them anyway. Picking up speed. Hoping beyond belief that her sister would be the one sat on that shore. That all her trials had been worth it, all her obedience finally counted up, maybe she was finally getting her reward.
I guess you do take requests rn so I wanted to request smth. I don’t know if you write for Kevin, but he’s kinda stuck on my mind lately and I just can’t seem to be able to get him out. If you don’t write for him then you may just leave this aside, there’s no problem!!
If you can write this though, then let me explain my idea. So, let’s just say that female!reader is a K-pop idol as well that debuted before tbz and she’s a year younger than Sunwoo (and the maknae in her group although that’s doesn’t really matter). Her group and the boyz are not in the same company but the two groups’ members are all friends and she’s also Jacob’s cousin. She’s didn’t really plan on confessing but as she was at the IST building (yes this happened years before) with an unnie/best friend of hers waiting for their older brothers, as they were trainees at the company, she kept saying how charming Kevin is and how she wanted to confess but she was scared because she was 3 years younger and what if he rejects her and blah blah blah. Kevin thought so happened to have heard everything and her unnie/best friend saw him but reader didn’t cause her back was facing him. So he decided to take the upper hand and confessed as well without hesitation!
I know I might be asking for a lot and you ofc may make any changes you want, but I would like to know what happens after a couple years of being together if you can, like fast forward to now or sumn. And what the others have to say as they find out about the two lovebirds!!
Again if you don’t want to write it there’s literally no problem AT ALL so don’t pressure yourself!!
Thanks for your time bby❤️🥰
hii love🩷 thank u sm for sending this in!! and yes hehe i do write for other members too (just haven’t had the chance to post anything yet 😭) so no worries—i’d be happy to write for kevin!
and omg look at you with this cute lil storyline💖 its an idol au with fem!reader who’s 3 years younger than him right? i love the setup already! might go with a soft/fluff vibe for this one hehe alsooo i might change or add a few things to the plot here and there, and im thinking of making it into a oneshot au if thats okay with you!! if you’re good with that, i’ll start working on it soon 🫶🏻 i cant promise when exactly i’ll be done since i’ve got a few wips im still working on and planning to post first! (so it might take a long time) but i’ll tag you once its up!!
thank you again for the sweet request, really💕 cant wait to bring this one to life!
Oh!! You mean Dimensions of Darkness?? Yeah, definitely!
It’s not on any regular fanfiction site tho, it’s all under a thread on Serebii forums :0 Also Book 3 has been on hiatus for forever but the first two books are finished!! (Book 2 is my personal favorite lol)
Anyway, here they are:Book 1 (The Explorers of Nightmares)Book 2 (The Explorers of the Core)Book 3 (The Explorers of the Beyond)
Hey hey hey, did you know that some of us anons actually live on pre-Quiet Rapture Earth? Well, not quite, it's more of an alternative universe cause our technology isn't nearly as crazy as yours is. Like, it's 2026 and we haven't even colonised Mars yet. Welp.
Anyways, not the point. Do you have any requests for pictures or anything we can tell you? :D
For now, have this picture of the ocean I took while back in my hometown:
[The following picture simply appears in Laika's mind.]
There's not nearly enough time granted for Laika's brain to catch up with what's been said before she's hit with the image, and she can feel the way her brain cramps in response. Like an ant that's seen a motherboard, that comprehends it for only a moment before it's lost again. She's left reeling, having physically stood from her chair in the aftermath of what feels comparable to a bomb being dropped on her.
Her mind, something usually as blank as the starless expanse they called a sky, was suddenly brimming with the picture. And it was beautiful. The grainy depictions in the textbooks she'd been smuggled didn't hold a candle to the one she could see when she closed her eyes. And it isn't until it fades fully that Laika finds the ability to recoup.
"That was. . . woah."
There's another few seconds of silence that fills of sub while Laika tries to think of what to say, tries to think of anything but the ocean she's just seen. It doesn't even register to her that maybe she should be frightened that this voice over her speaker can beam images into her brain, she's too grateful for the gift she's been given to look it in its mouth.
"And— and you said you could keep showing me stuff like that? Like, even if I can't give you anything for it?"
The skepticism is understandable, at least in Laika's mind. She doesn't have much to offer and the concept of these people— Anons they called themselves?— would just be willing to hand her the equivalent to gold on a plate, for what? It seemed too good to be true, and that scared her. This idea that she would be given things she couldn't even earn.
Yet, despite that, she still answers. Though she feels greedy for doing so.
" Could you. . .can I see a photo of the sunset on an ocean? Jordan always said it was—"
A pause. She's talking too much and scolds herself for it. Requests don't need side stories attached to them after all.
Hi , hope ur having a good day ^u^ !! Can I request a esmp season 1 Joel stimboard ? Also if possible could it be paint/clay/crafting focused/inspired ? Thank you !! <3
i'm having a great day thank you!! :D mod martyn almost started on this request until i found out about it and stole it from under his nose, i have been!! wanting to do an e1 joel stimboard for a while so!! your stimboard is posted!!
