I Dream of Disney (One-shots)

Atlantis [Male! Kida x Reader] Part III

For Kag1995 and anythinghewwo, who were both opportune and inspiring. Enjoy the read. There will be more. 

Part III - But Here the Buried Waters Take No Heed

Professor (Y/n) Caspian had once been a small child growing up in the chill of West Yorkshire, though she would be loath to admit that she was ever so young and clueless. There had been days in her childhood when her parents, on sabbatical from their demanding jobs in education, had been given a two-month period to travel around the country and satisfy their urges to study new branches of science (as they were both rather prominent scientists - her mother, a microbiologist; her father, a geologist who wrote a column for a scientific magazine). To their young daughter's dismay, they always chose the worst holiday spots because of their cerebral desire to study and discover something new - not their desire to entertain their daughter.

Which brought them to Mappleton Beach in the summer of 1889.

"It's not even hot," (Y/n) sulked. "It's not even sunny. It's not even -"

"Worth complaining about," Her father finished, "As your mother will be at work studying the organisms that she finds in the tidepools, making diagrams and notes about their ecology and environmental relations, while I will be focusing on the rock formations and categorising the stones I find on the beach. It's going to be just splendid once I finish the geological publication for the magazine," The man seemed to swell with pride, "They'll be so happy. It'll be just tickety-boo once I'm done with it."

That was one thing, the girl had to admit, that was abundant on the shore. There were all sorts of rocks that she kicked beneath her boots as she loped up and down the dirty-looking, mud-thick sand. These strange, misshapen rocks crusted the shore in the same way that blackheads blemish the cheeks of a teenager. There was only a thin trace of blue in the sky. The rest was covered by clouds - a pandemic in England, it appeared - that were so grey and gloomy that they reminded her of the opaque, marbled granite pillars that they had in the bank. This was the sort of remark to come from a geologist's daughter, though (Y/n) counted herself unfortunate that her head had to be filled with such boring facts. They always left the other kids stone-faced.

Whoops. Pun. And not even a very good one.

The waters were tepid, dark and evil-looking. Yet her parents demanded that she try to go for a swim (Truthfully, they were both rather distressed by how disastrously their daughter was disturbing their studies. Each time her father was about to finish a splendid paragraph for the magazine, she would run up the coastline and splash his notes into a graveyard of black, inky marks. When her mother had just categorised each organism into their scientific names, (Y/n) wrapped her hands around a particularly meek Octopus vulgaris and started crying when it inked all over her hands). So, she was changed into a swimming costume (now that her day dress was smeared in octopus ink) and she was forced to stand, knee-high, in the grey waters.

(Y/n) started to howl, "But I'm going to be -"

"No sharks are going to eat you, honey," Her mother disapproved, "And it's really harmful to propagate that stereotype. Sharks might look scary on the outside but most of them won't cause you any harm. Besides, the only sharks that you'll see at that depth may be a small nurse shark, which are very friendly to humans. There have been no documented attacks from nurse sharks."

"Until today!"

"Stop whining!" Her father scolded.

"Why? Am I scaring the rocks?"