bioluminescent
This Dreaming has a sea. That's really all Pela requires, even if some of the marine life is unfamiliar to her - but then, hasn't the Dreaming been foreign to her people for a long time? She'll learn to adapt, and to sacrifice, even if it hurts her pride. For now, she is swimming near a long wooden dock on the beach at high noon, sunlight bright ( Read more... )
She glances over her shoulder in the direction of this supposed ramp - isn't this big dock thing also a ramp? Why is there one in the middle of land space? While she assumes there is a reason (Pela doesn't think as poorly of humans as some other Mer she knows) she's still not sure she understands.
"Mm. I come through a reef, come here, and all the Rorqual are in the wrong place. They're in the sky." She's utterly entertained by this; her face changes when she smiles, broad and at nothing in particular beyond that she loves whales - they're the best part of the ocean to her kind. But she remembers she's talking to a human and must be on her guard, so then she ducks down into the water again so that it's up to her chin, watching James.
"Like, um..." She rolls her eyes upward, trying to think of the word in English; it'll actually only take her a couple of days to acclimate to the language, but this is about her third exposure to humans...ever. The first one involved saving some, the second involved serious trouble for that feat. "Rrr-pt-rrr--yes? You've seen?"
That, by the way, was a mermaid imitating the sound a plane makes.
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It takes James a minute to figure out what she means, and then - with a query in his expression - he mimes a small aircraft. Like a little boy might, arms out and leaning. To be sure: "A plane, you mean? As a matter of fact, I've flown."
Her caution is interesting, but not much of a surprise; he figures he'd probably be wary of strange human men if he were a mermaid, too. (A train of thought he's not pursuing any further, what in the name of God.)
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"You go in them, yes, because they're machines and not alive," she nods - that had concerned her when she first heard about people riding in planes - and then hesitates, teeth momentarily snagging her lower lip. Pelagia has noticed that he doesn't seem overwhelmingly thrown by her here, so maybe humans in the Nexus aren't so surprised. And he's not tainted in any way, she'd be able to tell.
"Sometimes," Pela adds, silvery voice a little unhappy, "the planes drop things. In the water."
You know, like bombs or other messes the Mer don't really appreciate.
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Pela, he is incredibly thrown by you. He's going to deal with that by drinking and swearing a lot in private, however.
There is, unfortunately, a very telling pause. "Yes, I know they do."
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"Why?"
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"Well, that often depends. I'll tell you the short answer, though, the short answer is that sometimes it's just a good way of pissing somebody else off."
The way he tells her this is oddly gentle.
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She's drawn closer, by now, and curls her fingers around the steel bars on the underside of the dock, looking at it, and over then at James, with one eyebrow raised for just a second as if to say oh. Pela knows that none of the humans realize they're probably angering Merfolk as well, and...although it makes her very upset, she knows that she likes to get under people's skin sometimes, too. Ahem.
"I see." She tugs at the edge of the dock; it doesn't rattle much, she's not trying too hard and she's only about as physically strong as...well, a very strong human man, unlike some of the other Merfolk.
"Will this fall?"
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"Probably not today," he replies, with an implied 'why'.
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That implied why is answered when she starts hoisting herself out of the water onto the dock.
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...well, then. James leans over to offer her a hand the rest of the way up.
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Sorry, James, mermaids pretty much take the cake for being proud little creatures. She spares a glance at his hand and makes a noise that is pretty much an approximation of 'ffff' vocalized. Once she's on the dock (by herself, thank you very much), Pela looks down at her tail, still gleaming brightly in the sunlight, and wills it to alter itself.
And then it does.
First it shifts, slowly, into two segments that take the shape of long legs in accordance with her height, and then her scales begin to disappear in segments, replaced by skin that matches the rest of her body. When that's accomplished, she runs a hand over her nearest calf, assessing her changed body with a thoughtful frown.
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While her reaction to his hand is actually something like really adorable, and James doesn't bother trying to hide the fact he finds it entertaining, we're right back at 'incredibly thrown' when her tail stops being a tail.
"...you don't see that every day," he says, faint, only to recover with the more wry line: "Well, I don't, at any rate."
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"I don't either," she says, studying her legs, aware of the wryness, "I have never been on land before."
Now she has to stand up, which is slow going, but eventually she manages. Totally lacking in self-conscious about her nudity, she gives her legs another critical glance.
"Is that how they're supposed to look?"
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"Good god, yes." James is, you might say, something of a connoisseur.
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"Oh." She catches his tone, and there's some amusement in her expression- look, for all their pride and prickliness, Merfolk are not puritanical- but there are other things on the menu right now.
Like walking.
She almost stumbles and falls with the first step. It's less that her legs are weak; their musculature is fine, and corresponds with the athleticism that was in her tail, but she's simply never done this before.
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Her pride and prickliness aside - and she has, from his observation, plenty of both - he's just not the sort of man to sit there and watch a pretty woman stumble. "Nobody sees the point of toes," he says, conversationally, coming to his feet (and full six foot, two inches height), "until they don't have any. Would you like a hand?"
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