A statue on the starry plateaus

Exploring the abyss alone is dangerous. Irresponsible and suicidal some would say. While being true the prospect that any accident, however small, could end the adventure never discouraged me. It made me overly cautious and motivated me to document my findings in the finest detail, for humans die but knowledge persists. Yet lately things have changed. Despite my fondness for solitude, someone else has been joining me more and more often on my trips to the underworld. Being cautious and wary of this sudden change in my habits I had limited the trips to known superficial locations so far. But the day has come and our common enthusiasm for longer expeditions took us much further to the algae-covered plateaus where the lilies grow strong.
It is truly a fascinating place with a unique geometry and biota. These rifts are formed by gaps in gigantic slates of bedrock. As they overlap and overhang, the slates create a wild landscape of enormous terraces and gaps, extremely flat and smooth in nature and sometimes slanted. “I feel like an ant in a pile of broken floor tiles”, she said after a couple of hours of scaling the monumental slabs and I myself could not come up with a better analogy.
Nourished by the thick steamy atmosphere and the rich mineral surfaces a thick algae-like mantle has coated the area. This slimy substance has in turn given rise to a rich and unique flora, the most prominent being the lilies. Walking on the smooth slopes feels like drifting in a starry sky as every single blossom dimly shines.
As we took some rest on a ledge overlooking that magical landscape I couldn’t help but observe my newfound companion who was lying down serenely.
Despite my reluctance to get distracted my admiration for this person had been growing over the last weeks and I couldn’t ignore the beauty of her figure anymore. She could have been chiseled out of the purest marble, sculpted there, under the cold shine of a thousand lilies. A divine ghostly figure in the hazy layers of the algific rifts.
The captivating elegance emanating from her sharp stare froze time and had me paralyzed in awe. Waves of warmth and vertigo successively rippled through me in a way I had not experienced in a long time.
I looked away. I couldn’t let myself be distracted in such a dangerous and unknown environment.