“A xenophyophore colony centuries old — it has outlived every expedition.”
A Silence denizen of The Unsounded
3 known connections · an open question
It was old before the first submersible, old before the first depth charge, old before the surface world knew the trenches existed. The Ancient is a xenophyophore colony centuries old — one cell, a fist-sized test, a memory longer than any expedition. Every ship that came looking found it already there, unimpressed.
It sits the deep in its motionless centuries, outliving the listening posts one by one. The younger Xenophyophore of the Sirena Deep tends its silence; the Hadal's young are told: ask it nothing, it has heard every question.
Expeditions end; the Ancient doesn't. It will be sitting there when the last ship sails home, and sitting there when the next age's ships arrive. The only question is whether it will still be one cell, or whether centuries more will have taught it something new.
“A listening post in the Sirena Deep recorded the Sound three years ago and has been quiet since. The technicians swear the tape has hours of nothing after the call — hours of nothing, and then, once, something that might have been an answer. The tape is sealed. The technicians have stopped sleeping well.”
Three years ago: a call, hours of nothing, maybe an answer.
“The Ancient hasn't moved in anyone's memory — but the sediment around its test shifted last year, in a perfect ring, as if something enormous circled it once, slowly, and left. The Bristleworms won't discuss it. The Foraminifera Mat built over the ring like nothing happened.”
A perfect ring in the sediment. Something circled the Ancient.
Creatures so seldom seen they may as well be rumors. A seasonal rite — only three of each may ever exist, and most keepers will never see one twice.
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