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... )
James isn't swimming, although he's thinking about it for later. No, he's carrying his shoes, his sleeves and trousers rolled up and his jacket over his arm, wandering down the dock from the beach. He's carrying some newspapers (from assorted sources), and this is a nice enough place for a bit of privacy to pick through them and see if there's anything that jumps out at him.
As it were.
He sits down, his feet hanging over the edge.
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...what.
Humans are so oblivious, she thinks, snaking forward under the water. Pela can feel vibrations, even above water, though they aren't quite as strong there, and she's somewhat surprised she's gone unnoticed- but then she's swum underneath boats full of fishermen and stolen their lures without ever getting caught. (That was when she was a tiny thing, though, she's a nix now and knows better. Mostly.)
He might notice something - a female shape, gold-brown eyes, unblinking - watching him from under the water, after a while.
Because that's not creepy, or anything, Pela.
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Oblivious is a word. It may not be the word for James, but it's one that could be used. It doesn't take him especially long to realize he's being watched, and he twitches aside one half of his newspaper at a corner to look down to see who or what has their eye on him.
He's beginning to consider that the nexus might actually be some kind of psychotic break on his part, but (he notes this coolly in the back of his mind) despite everything, it seems unlikely. Which means that there is an otherworldly woman of some kind watching him from beneath the water.
He raises his eyes to what passes for sky around here with an expression that might translate well to fuck my life, and then he gives her a politely apologetic smile and pulls his feet up onto the dock, tipping his head. Hello? Yes?
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Oh, well, now he's noticed, she notes with some satisfaction. It took less time than a lot of humans probably would. She rises out of the water up to her bare shoulders.
"You should keep your feet up," she says, matter-of-fact, "there are sharks. I hit one earlier."
...yes, she is implying she casually struck a shark, because she did and would do again. They're like big unruly dogs to Pela; while they might try to prey on some other supernatural sea beings, she isn't really concerned. (To start: her apsarae means that she's poisonous!)
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"I'll keep that in mind for the future," he replies, responding to her like he would if she were any other woman and not one who'd been staring unblinkingly at him from beneath the water, at once entirely natural and wholly alien. Circumstantial evidence is thus far leaning towards 'not human', and that's a bit of a mindfuck that he'll analyse when he's not in the midst of it. At least she's not a damn space whale.
The short version, then, is that he responds with an easy bemusement, a half-step away from playful or flirtatious, as if this is something he does every day - and just a little bit skeptical of her vaunted shark-wrangling skills.
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She flips onto her back - naked from the waist up, shimmering, brightly-scaled tail from the waist down - and dives down under the water. She's been in for a good few hours, and she supposes it's about time she goes on land. When she rises up to her shoulders again, instead, she's eying him with a contemplative expression, as though she is considering asking something but isn't sure she ought to let herself.
"How do you get here? On land." She is also skeptical of the dock, apparently, much more openly so than he is of her shark-wrangling skills. (If pressed, she will kill one to prove it. Let's...not press her, oh god.)
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...good grief. She's easily the prettiest fish he's ever seen, he'll give her that much. (And he's...really not going to press her on her shark-wrangling skills. ...right now.) "If you go along the beach back there a ways, there's a ramp."
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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 ( ... )
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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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