Sitting on the edge of the pool in his home, the lizard grumbled as he tapped around on his phone. A friend of his had moved away some time ago, and he wanted to visit them, but it was going to be quite the trip there and back; it might take multiple days. Currently, he was trying to find the most convenient way there, but nothing was looking good... Then, something came to mind, and he quickly texted his friend. "Hey, you said you've got a pool where you're at, right? Can you send me a picture real quick?"
After about a minute, a return text was sent back. "Right, you're a weirdo and you really like those :P", accompanied by a picture of his friend's pool. Seeing its dark teal tiles, the lizard smiled and set his phone aside, closing his eyes as he focused. His pool, and his friend's... A set of directions entered his mind. Nodding to himself, he grabbed his trunks and put them on as he started taking deep breaths. Soon, he dove into his pool, swimming to its bottom, only about 12 feet down. He put a hand on the tiled wall of the pool, focusing again... Then, a large circle around it lit up, and he swam straight through the wall!
As the lizard entered a new but still familiar and flooded space, he looked around at all the tiled surfaces, the little bits of otherwise impossible geometry, the assortment of tunnels going into other rooms... He'd returned to his home away from home, the Poolrooms. A seemingly endless expanse of pool-like rooms, this place existed outside of normal space, and it - and those that lived there - operated under different rules. As off-putting a place as it was, the lizard had an odd feeling like he belonged there; his 90 minute breath hold, his ability to gain mental directions to anywhere inside, and the respect the natives showed him all combined to make the Poolrooms a great place for him. He could even use it to get around Earth faster, as distance was more of a concept than a constant in the water-filled space.
After a happy burble, the lizard took off swimming, navigating the place as if he'd already explored every inch of it. Some parts were easy, simply requiring going through tunnels connecting rooms, but some were more complicated, needing things like swimming with his eyes closed, moving through what looked like a solid wall, at one point even going through a floating ring several times in a row, somehow being sent to a different room each time. He may not have understood why he had to do any of these things, but he long ago learned it was safe to blindly trust his directional ability.
20 minutes into his swim, after going through a narrow tunnel where he needed to crawl upside-down for whatever reason, he found himself in yet another odd room, this one having an identation in its floor as if it had a pool of its own. The lizard was feeling a bit tired from continuously swimming for so long, so he sat on the edge of the not-pool to rest for a little while. Just after he did, a group of creatures emerged from a nearby wall, dolphin-like in shape and covered in tile patterns of their own - tilephins, he'd named their species. He smiled as he watched them swim by, finding their odd cubic and tile-like bubbles as interesting as ever, before a dark blue one swam right up to him. He could just make out a smile on its face as its square eyes looked at him, puffing some bubble cubes from where its equivalent of a blowhole was.
In his time with the Poolrooms, the lizard had found that he was the only one its natives universally liked. Others were only shown the same respect if it was clear they were with him, and more than once he'd had to rescue someone from being attacked. But, for now, he didn't have to worry about that, and gave the tilephin a hug, glad its body was softer than it looked. After he let go, it made an odd noise - his abilities didn't extend to understanding the speech of the natives - before swimming back to rejoin its pod, phasing into another wall with them. Suitably rested now, the lizard felt it was time to resume his own journey, hopping up from the edge and continuing through the room.
Another 15 minutes passed, and the weirdness wasn't letting up as his chest was just beginning to heave. At one point, he swore that there was briefly another of himself swimming alongside him... That was a new one. But, finally, he got to the last room. Quite a few of the tiles in there were different colors - connections to pools on Earth, which the lizard could open. He didn't even need to look around, as his instincts immediately drew his vision to a dark teal tile. That was the one. Swimming up to it and pressing a hand to it like he had earlier, another glowing ring appeared, and he passed through back to Earth.
Recognizing his friend's pool from the picture, the lizard swam up to the new surface to finally gasp after his lengthy dive. It was always surreal to him, being able to get so far in such a short time using the Poolrooms... He wished he actually understood the place better. Maybe he could use his direction finding ability to find information about it? But, regardless, that was for another time, and the lizard climbed out of the pool, wagging his tail as he thought about how surprised his friend was going to be!
Keywords
male
1,222,216,
anthro
228,841,
feral
96,395,
monster
26,141,
lizard
25,021,
swimsuit
16,083,
underwater
9,113,
ambiguous gender
8,968,
pool
7,503,
dolphin
3,802,
swimming trunks
791,
poolrooms
10
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3 months ago
08 May 2025 21:56 CEST
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