Hiya, this is my second version of the idea that follows on from a thread I made on the discussion forum, as I thought it might be fun to have some writing prompts!

The last two were 'vessel' and 'scapegoat', and there were some really awesome stories written. I'm going with another one-word prompt, but if anyone else has any other ideas let me know/make your own prompt story thread!

The word I picked for this thread is 'scale'. I like it because it can be a many-meaning-ed noun, or verb!

I'm going to post my interpretation of the prompt below this as a 'chapter 2', so that my submission doesn't sway anyone's ideas on what to write, and hope you guys will get involved with your own takes on the prompt by adding new chapters/story paths below! Love to all of you -- I'm thinking of turning this into a monthly thing :)

Riot45

I think I am a case study in failed nominative determinism. Or maybe I am a redepmption arc. Regardless, the point is, my name just so happens to be Mariana Delmar, and I only just switched my career to marine biology after having done my Master's. And, one SCUBA certificate later, and far older than I should have been, I find myself aboard a submarine for the first time in my life. Not on any interetsing mission, mind you, a routine check on some coral reefs, maybe help a deep sea animal or two, but nothing groundbreaking.

I awoke this morning not all too excited for my canned fare of chili and stale dinner rolls. However, my dismay was quickly assuaged by the view outside: the vast blue sea, streaming past in bubbling waves, the burst of colour that came from the shallow light the submarine produced, highlighting maybe a metre of pinks and purples, green-blue fish and yellow-finned creatures before bleeding out into the dark of the deep sea. I returned to my bunk to retrieve my logbook, running into my bunkmate, Stephanie Kellogg: a younger girl, but far more expert, blonde hair tied up, her bottom bunk covered in brilliant hand-drawn illustrations of all types of sea-creatures. The ocean thumped against the metal, screeching beneath the screaming of the propellors.

Stephanie glanced up from her sketchpad as I ducked back through the hatch, logbook tucked under my arm. "You look like you saw a ghost," she said, grinning, though her eyes were already back on the porthole, tracking something in the blue.

"Just adjusting," I admitted. "Didn't expect the ocean to be quite so..." I searched for the word. "Loud. Even through all this metal."

"You get used to it. Sort of." She patted the bunk beside her, scattering a few loose pencils. "Sit. Dr. Alvarez says we'll hit the reef line in twenty minutes."

I sat, opening my logbook to a blank page, feeling obligated to look busy next to the hurriedly sketching Stephanie. For a while we just watched the submarine's floodlights carving out their small, drifting theatre of colour, fish flickering in and out like sparks, soundtracked only by the faint sounds of pencil against paper.

Then she went quiet. I followed her gaze to the porthole and felt speech die in my throat.

Something was moving out past the edge of the light. All I could make out at first were edges: a curve of something pale, a ripple in the water that didn't match the current. Then it turned, and a plate caught the soft glint of the subamrine's light. The single scale's plate was vast, corrugated, each one the size of a dinner tray, overlapping like roof tiles down a length of body that kept going, and going, past the edge of the porthole before I ever saw where it ended. It shimmered yellow. The purple. Then red.

"Steph," I whispered. "Steph, do you see--"

"I see it." Her voice had gone very flat. "Mariana, what is that?"

The shape rolled, and for one moment something caught the light that might have been an eye, if eyes could be that large, and patient, unblinking against the barrage of saltwater being funnelled into it by the propellors.

Neither of us moved for a long moment. Then Stephanie was up, scrambling for the intercom panel by the hatch. "Marco," she called into it, static crackling back at her. "Marco, get up here, you need to see this--"

Static crackled back.

"Marco?" I tried this time.

Stephanie's knuckles had gone white on the panel. "He was in the aft compartment." She grasped the soft verge of the panel, attempting to shake it, slamming her hand down on it again and again, before turning to me with wild eyes. "Mariana, why isn't he answering?"

Somewhere below us, deep in the belly of the submarine, something struck the hull.