Fish out of Water [ Missed & Dev ]

[Devxx]

How? How had she possibly gotten herself into this situation?

The day had started out simple enough when she took her boat out into the water to do some fishing. It wasn't something Sera did professionally and she hardly ever caught anything but she loved the sea and found it impossible to stay away for very long. She had spent a good hour just floating lazily in the water with her net cast waiting for any large fish to be dumb enough to swim into it. Some of the fishermen around the area had been talking about seeing a very large fish around there lately with talks of it being a mutant bass or even a shark but she wasn't worried about it. Usually Sera counted herself lucky if she could even get a couple of minnows and preferred it more for the solidarity of the sea more then anything. Yet just when she was about to doze off in the warm sun she suddenly heard the net snap and a bell go off signaling she had caught something. The whole incident had taken about half an hour and she'd had to pull like crazy as the load strained against the net. Finally she had managed to pull it up before dropping it on the deck of the boat.

At first it had seemed like she had managed to catch a couple of fish but there was something in there that she was not expecting at all. In between the smaller fish there was a very large tail connected to something that looked decidedly human. Sera had probably spent about ten minutes just staring at the thing wondering if she had gotten sun stroke or was still dreaming. After dumping some water on her head and pinching herself the girl had finally managed to convince herself that what was in front of her was real. Her first instinct was to toss it overboard and get the hell away from there. He was bruised and bloodied though and she didn't think it would be able to survive if she tossed it back. No, she'd have to bring it back home and see what happened.

So that was how she found herself with a fish thing splayed out in her bathtub while she rambled on to herself trying to get all of this under control. "Mika! Stay away from there." Emerald eyes turned towards the little calico kitten that had been trying to attack the tail since she got it here. Mika smelled fish and she did what any other cat would do, she was trying to eat it. Brushing back a strand of auburn hair she picked up the kitten and made her way down to the living room. It had been hell getting that thing off the boat and into her house without the neighbors seeing. Hell, Sera could only imagine what they would think if they saw just what she had caught.

"What am I going to do?" The girl groaned as she took a quick drink of water to try and calm her mind. Could she call a vet and have them come over? Would anyone actually believe her if she told them what she had in her bathtub? Everything in her was telling her she knew just what that thing in her bathtub was but the logical part of her mind was telling her just how stupid that was. Those creatures existed only in myths about sailors being lured to their doom. Besides, weren't they only supposed to be women? She might not know much about this but it didn't look like that thing up there was wearing a sea-shell bra.

 

[missedstations]

Curiosity had driven him to explore shallower waters, and he found out exactly why so many of those who travelled there did not return... Fishing nets, especially commercial ones, were virtually invisible to his eyes. The first time he had swam into one, he panicked, tearing the net apart, but also himself. The plastic cut deep into the flesh. The blood made him try to swim fast, to disappear as soon as he could, so as not to attract predators. But then there was another net. And he hadn't had as much strength.

The third... He just gave up, letting the mixture of exhaustion and blood loss take away his consciousness. Switching from breathing water to air was always weird, and it was easier when he wasn't even aware of it. His gills were like slashes across his ribs, and with his head out of water, strange clear goo had closed them.

He had seen humans before, but they had never seen him. He was a strange thing: scales ran halfway up his spine, but only to his bellybutton at the front. His hands and arms were scaled and webbed, and fingers very long. The scales themselves were bottle green, lighter on his stomach, and his tail fin was almost see-through, long and bony. His human parts weren't quite as human as they were in the stories. His hair was the same colour as the scales, and his skin very pale, almost bluish. His blood wasn't red, but closer to a dark blue, closer to a squid's than a human's.

Maybe he was a little smaller than a human male, but he was probably longer, with all the fragility of the tail. The tip of it was outside the bath, not quite fitting in. The muscles of his arms and shoulders looked strong, developed – like any swimmer's.

Coming back to consciousness was uncomfortable, and not just because he felt like shit. He elbowed the side of the bath, with the resulting twinging pain, which meant he thwacked his hipbone on the other side, and then his head, and then so much of the water ended up on the floor as he twisted and tried to work out where the fuck he was. Oh. Oh. Oh. Why was there so little water here?!

The sound that he made was definitely in some way a whine of despair.

That, and he had no idea what humans did with his kind. He had been pulled up with a net, he knew. He also knew that sailors liked tattooing representations of his kind on their skin – utterly bizarre – but he had never heard of any merfolk ever coming back from land. Ever.

 

[Devxx]

Sera was pulled out of her thoughts from a sound coming from the upstairs. It was unlike anything she had ever heard before. She wasn't quite sure what it was but it sounded like a creature trapped with no way out.

"Mika! Get back here." The cat had bolted up the stairs before Sera could do anything to stop her. Sighing heavily she climbed up the stairs following the cat as it headed to the bathroom. Finally walking to the doorway she could see the tile had been covered in water as the thing inside the tub flailed about knocking even more water on the floor. The cat looked over at the thing in the tub and let out a hiss before jumping up on the sink so it could get a better look at what was going on. Sera had hopped that the thing would have stayed asleep until she got someone else to help her but it didn't seem like that was going to happen.

Taking a deep breath she gingerly tiptoed over the tiles walking closer to the tub. She held her hands up in an attempt to show him that she wasn't hiding anything. Right now she wasn't even sure if the thing there could even see outside of the water.

"Er...h-hello?" Her tone was a little wary as she edged closer to the tub. Could he even speak let alone speak English? Maybe he spoke whale or something. Dammit, right now she could have kicked herself for throwing away that CD of whale songs her aunt had gotten her a few years back. Maybe that would have been the only way to actually communicate with this thing in front of her. Oh who was she kidding, even if it had been her only hope those stupid whale songs got on her last damn nerve. They might be majestic creatures but they sounded like someone let out the air out of a very large and annoying balloon.

"My name is Sera. You got caught in my net today." With the first sentence she pointed to herself before trying to make some net motion out of her hands. Either the creature in the tub would understand her or it would think she was very very slow. "Who...what are you?"

Did the thing in the tub even have a name? She still wasn't sure if he was a mermaid or not. Sure he had the fin with the human like upper body but he wasn't like any mermaid she'd ever seen in cartoons or movies. If this was what a real mermaid looked like then Disney was way off when they made their movies. Oh well, maybe this way she wouldn't have to worry about some evil sea witch coming to take someone's voice. Well, maybe. Right now she was having a one sided conversation with a mermaid, nothing was out of the realm of possibilities at this very moment.

 

[missedstations]

For a while, he stared at the cat more than at Sera. Small and fluffy? Thing? Hm. He did not know what it was at all.

His head flicked back to Sera when she came close, and he fell back down a little into the tub. A deep sigh. He would have found her beautiful, if she did not have those leg things. She had pretty eyes. None of his people had that green-coloured eyes... Maybe he spent a little too long staring. Awkward. If asked, he would claim it was very bright up here, above the surface.

He was a curious one. A person did not end up in these situations without a potentially lethal amount of curiosity. He had listened to human speech more than once, had even began to understand some of it. His kind used the same sort of language when they spoke above the surface, so it had not been too difficult. But what were the right manners to use on a human? Good question.

Her net? She caught him? He narrowed his eyes a little at her, not quite knowing what to feel about that. “I am Enhar of the Serhnai Clan.” He suddenly realised that it meant absolutely nothing to her, since she was asking 'what'. His people had long since chosen to avoid human settlements, mostly because of the pollution. It got in their lungs and led to strange illnesses, and it was best to be avoided. Oils would stick to their gills and make it harder to breathe, and would eventually be deadly. It was best to stick to the depths of the ocean, the places that humans could not reach or cared very little for.

“I think your people call us merfolk,” he said, not entirely sure of it. He scratched his long tangled hair, it feeling a bit odd as it was starting to dry, but it was also a gesture of bafflement. He gave her a vague smile, as if to say well, I am here, I am your mercy. He knew that she was human, at least. Sera, she called herself.

“What is that thing?” he had to ask, pointing at the cat. He had seen them before, sometimes by the sea, very rarely on ships, but he had never had anyone to ask about it. Most of his people just shrugged and went 'land thing, not important'. But he'd wanted to know.

 

[Devxx]

Huh, so he could talk. Surprise registered on her face as she heard him speak in coherent English while telling her his name and just what he was. Apparently her first guess had been correct and the thing in the tub was a mermaid....well, merman actually by the looks of it. Being little more then a foot away she got a good look at him now that he was awake. Sera wasn't sure but she could almost call him pretty if mermen were allowed to be pretty. His features were strong and more exotic then anything she'd ever seen. The almost blue skin and those strange eyes looked like something right out of a story a grandmother would tell her grandchild right before they went to bed. Yet there was something about the tangle of hair and the long fin that almost made him look delicate at the same time. Needless to say he was something altogether very new and confusing.

"It's a pleasure to meet you Enhar." Sera tried to mimic the way he had said his name but she felt a little tongue tied when she was repeating it. He had said something about the Serhnai Clan and she could only imagine that merfolk lived in Clans instead of countries like they did on land. She actually began to wonder if they moved around like a school of fish or if they really did have underwater cities like Atlantis and such. There were so many questions she wanted to ask him but maybe right now wouldn't be the very best time.

The woman turned towards where he was pointing before the corners of her lips pulled up into a smile. Mika was now currently sitting at the edge of the counter top with her neck stretched out as she tried to get a good sniff of the strange creature in the bathtub. No doubt the cat was very confused as to why he smelled like a fish and yet didn't look like any fish she'd seen before.

"That would be a cat. They're a land mammal that we keep as companions." Strange, she'd never actually had to explain to someone what a cat was before. She just took it for granted that everyone already knew. "This one in particular is named Mika and she's trying to figure out if she can eat you." Chuckling a bit now she walked over to the cat before scooping her up in her arms and bringing her closer to the tub. Mika wasn't hissing anymore and it looked like she was as curious about Enhar as he was about her.

"So I'm guessing you'd like to go home as soon as possible huh? You got cut up pretty bad and I was too scared to actually treat your wounds without knowing how you would react to our medicine." No doubt he wasn't very comfortable in the tub and would probably like to be back in the sea as quickly as he could. Yet he had lost a lot of blood and she wasn't quite sure just how to treat him or his wounds. There was also the little matter that she had a creature of myth right in her house and would kind of like to keep them around just a bit longer.

 

[missedstations]

Enhar had to smile a little at her attempt at pronunciation. His teeth were a little sharper than a human's, but not significantly so. Not really jarring. Well, nowhere as near as the fish part of him! He flicked his tail a little, putting it under himself and sat up and leaned against the side of the bath.

It was reassuring that she was interested in what he was and who he was. He wouldn't get turned into fish fillets. He did not seem to smell too much, more of sea and salt. Fish only began to smell fishy when they started to rot. He was most certainly not rotting, and he was some weird cross between a mammal and a fish anyway. His people did not share the fascination with cataloguing that humans seemed to have.

“Cat,” he repeated, trying out the word. He wasn't sure what to do with the knowledge now that he had it. “Aren't I too big for it to eat?” he asked. What a silly creature. He still reached out to touch Mika, wondering at the softness of the fur. The only fluffy things he had really managed to touch before were seals, and this was completely different.

“I lost my clan,” he said. “I do not know where they are now.” They would probably have waited, but then moved on without him. But, really, he had chosen that. He knew the routes that they liked to travel, so if he really went looking...It would take something between a few months and a few years to find them again. He did not mind that. He was young and strong and to swim across the ocean was not such a difficult thing. “But this is... Very small. What is this thing? Big pot thing?” It was also not salty. That felt a little weird.

“I do not know anything about human medicine,” he said, with a little shrug. They still used traditional remedies, like different types of kelp, sands. They did not have much technology. Nothing was constant in their world. Landscape changed too much to build much, currents carried away anything not nailed down. Not at all like here, where they could put up a building and it could stand for centuries.

 

[Devxx]

Mika mewed in her arms and stuck out her head before licking gently at his hand. While the cat was cute she seemed to have absolutely no sense of self preservation but at least Sera was comforted by the fact that Enhar didn't seem to be violent if he was willing to play with the cat. "You know that and I know that but she doesn't really think about that. Especially when she decides to take on the Rottweiler next door." Hell, he probably had no idea what a Rottweiler was either. Funny how their worlds existed side by side yet they knew so little about the others life.

"That's rough. I guess you can't just pick up the phone and give them a call." Dammit, she was doing it again. It was going to be difficult to communicate with him if he had no idea just what she was talking about. Still, she couldn't really imagine what it would be like to lose her family and not know where they were. If his people traveled around then who knew just how long it would take for him to find them again. Sera couldn't help but feel a tinge of guilt at the thought that it was her nets that had pulled him away from his clan.

"This is what we call a tub, it's where humans take showers and clean up. Actually, we might have a bit of a problem with this little arrangement. I'm sure you're a nice...merman and all but this is the only bathroom in the house and I'd really like some privacy." There was no way she could keep him in her bathtub until he was all healed up. She had a pool in the backyard but it was open and all the neighbors could see in if they decided to. One of her neighbors was a well meaning but very nosy old woman and Sera had no idea how she would be able to explain Enhar to her.

"Well, I don't think you were cut too deep so hopefully just a little salve and some bindings should do the trick. I'm not sure how long it would take though and I'll have to find some things that can hold up under water." Bandages would break too easily in the water and the antibacterial cream would wash away.

She was now directly in front of the tub where she bent down so they were now eye level. There was something just so strange and foreign about him that she couldn't help but stare at him. The scales, the tail, she was just so curious about him.

 

[missedstations]

He pulled his hand back quickly when the cat licked at it, surprised at the feel of the tongue. But then slowly he put his hand back, stroking the kitten gently on the top of the head, still a little puzzled by the creature. The look that Enhar gave both the cat and the human was definitely questioning: Am I doing this right?

What the hell was a Rottweiler? And what was the phone? His face was completely blank at both words. “I chose to travel alone for a while,” he said though. “I wanted to go look at other things.” And it was a little obvious that he did not want to be too specific about it, perhaps embarrassed. Maybe he felt his zeal for exploration was childish. He had wanted to feel shallower and warmer waters, but maybe humans were at least some motivation. His people had plenty of stories and legends about humans, and sometimes they saw them, or were seen. But these were not the days of 'here be dragons'. It seemed no one human actually wanted to admit merpeople existed. They took it for having taken too much of their drug that they liked to drink so much. Alcohol, he'd heard it called.

“Showers...” he repeated. Cleaning up? Another idea that baffled him a little. It wasn't something that he had to do. Maybe sometimes rub his scales with pumice, to prevent growth of algae or parasites.

“I can live outside of water,” he told her. If she really needed the room sometimes. “It is your territory, after all...” He was very conscious of that now. To be in her... House? That was what humans called them, right? It would be immensely awkward, of course, and more flopping than anything else, but he had sometimes wanted to explore beaches and been stranded on sandbanks. It could take a couple of days for his scales to start becoming too dry. And his arms were strong: he could lift the entirety of his weight on them.

“I heal quickly,” he said, fast, sounding dubious at both the idea of salve and bandages. Maybe he just didn't trust human medicine.

And since she was staring so obviously at him, he took the opportunity to do exactly the same. Sera's colours were so different to any of his kin. Warmer. No wonder that sometimes, the old folk called humans 'people of the sun'. Her skin looked so warm, and soft. And her hair looked so smooth! Enhar would have rather liked to touch, but he felt shy. He did not know anything about human females, after all...

 

[Devxx]

So he had chosen to go out on his own and see the world for himself. It's not like she could blame him, she did that herself a couple of years ago. Her mother had almost lost her mind when Sera had decided to leave home and move halfway across the country to start her own life. Mika let out a small mew before purring slightly and arching into his hand. Apparently the kitten had decided that she would much rather have Enhar pet her then keep trying to eat him.

"Yeah, a shower. We live outside of the water so we can get kind of dirty which means we need to clean up." Sera felt like she was talking to a child and doing a crap job at it. These were all things that she took for granted as everyone knowing and now that she had to explain these things that she used everyday she was finding it hard to get everything out into coherent words.

Turning her attention back to the problem at hand she tried to think up a plan of just what they could possibly do. "Well, I do have a pool in the backyard that's a lot bigger then the tub which would give you more room to move. I could turn off the chlorine if it would be a problem. Do you live better in salt water or fresh?" Dammit, how had she completely forgotten about that part. Sera had lost many fish because of the difference between salt and fresh water. Actually, the longest she had ever been able to keep a fish alive had been a whole two weeks and only because her father had taken over the brunt of the responsibility. If she couldn't keep a goldfish alive how on earth was she going to be able to deal with a Merman? The last thing she needed would be for someone to call the police about a fish-man being belly-up in her pool.

Getting him up into the bathroom had been a major pain in the butt involving a little red wagon, a whole bunch of rope and sheer force of will. Getting him back downstairs would present its own challenges with having to make sure he didn't end up sliding down the stairs completely and turning into a fish pancake. Then there was that whole messy business of keeping him a secret from prying eyes.

"If you say so. The less we have to test things out on you the better." Who knew just how he would react to everything and she'd rather not find out.

It was funny how they were both so curious and looking at each other like two little kids peering at a stranger. Sera found herself wondering if his skin would feel scaly like a fish or if it was soft like a humans. Catching herself staring she coughed a bit before getting up suddenly. Her mother had told her time and time again how it was rude to stare so she wasn't sure if he would find it rude too.

"So...are you hungry? Do you want to sleep? Do you want to try moving you to the pool?" The whole atmosphere was still pretty awkward and she wasn't sure how to treat a house guest who happened to be a merman.

 

[missedstations]

There was another twitch of surprise from him at the noises that the kitten made. Ooooh. It was more adorable than it looked! He almost totally stopped paying attention to Sera. Everything fascinated him and it was hard to concentrate on any single thing for a long period. The only human dwellings he had ever seen were the ancient ones, of the cities that had fallen into the sea due to tectonic movements. He had wandered through ancient Greek cities, looked at sunken ships, lost airplanes. This was far more... Well. Modern.

“I suppose so,” he said, looking around the bathroom. The squat little bowl thing must be where humans... Voided their bowels. Of course, he did his business in water, but when there was so little of it... Hm. That was a good question. The taller bowl thing... What was it for? This was all so complicated.

“Chlorine? The poison?” Poison to him, if he tried to breathe such water. He had tasted it once, and it had burned his gills and lungs for hours afterwards. “It would kill me,” Enhar said, knowing it instinctively. “The type of water doesn't really matter.” He'd been up the Amazon, too, because he'd really wanted to see a piranha. “I can live in both. I must be a great inconvenience to you...” He trailed off. Like keeping humans alive was for them. At least he was capable of taking care of himself, unlike a goldfish.

Enhar, at the same time as she was wondering at the texture of his skin, was wondering if she was soft all over, and what it was like to touch her feet. He'd never actually touched a foot.

“What do humans eat?” he asked, not quite knowing the answer to this one either. “I know some of you eat fish... I always wanted to try one of those red round things from trees.” How was he to know that was a horribly unspecific thing to say, and that there was far more than one red thing that came from trees.

 

[Devxx]

He seemed to be so curious about this tiny bathroom that she actually wondered just what he would say when he actually got a good view of the outside. One one side of her house was a secluded beach where they often kept their ships and on the other side he would probably be able to see the sky scrapers in the horizon. If this was interesting just think what would happen when he saw airplanes or cars. How would she even explain such things to him anyway? Maybe she could just say they were large metal animals and leave it at that.

"The poison? Ok, so no Chlorine." Sera let out a breath of relief that she had even actually bothered asking him about that. It would take a bit to take the chlorine out and refile the pool but it wouldn't be too much of a hassle. At least then she wouldn't have to deal with him dying. "Well, I kind of caught you and took you away from your home. This is the least I could do." After basically kidnapping him the least she could do would be to give him a place that he could actually be comfortable in while he healed.

"Besides, you're not as much of an inconvenience as Mika. At least I don't have to teach you how to use the litter box or have to worry about you tearing up my furniture." The kitten looked up at her as if she knew she was being talked about and gave off what might have been an innocent mew. Sera wasn't buying it for a moment though and knew that as soon as her back was turned she would find little bite marks on the grandfather clock she had in the living room.

"Well we eat fish as well as most other animals. There are also fruits, vegetables, breads and all sorts of other things." Sera decided it would be best to leave out some facts that there were humans around the world that even ate cats or other strange things. For some reason she didn't think that would go over well and then she'd have to try and spend hours trying to explain it to him.

Red round thing from a tree? Her green eyes shifted over to his as she rattled her mind and tried to think up what he was talking about. A small grin spread on her face as she suddenly had a eureka moment before putting down Mika and bolting down the stairs and into the kitchen. After a few minutes she was back upstairs with something clutched in her hand. "I think this is what you're talking about." Sera said as she held the red fruit out to him. "We call it in apple. Go ahead and try it, it's pretty sweet."

The girl handed him the apple and waited for him to take a bite and say what he thought. Never before did she think she'd actually be this excited about someone eating an apple.

 

[missedstations]

While there was some sense of fear – of what would happen to him, if he could ever go home – there was mostly, at the moment, a deep sense of fascination with absolutely everything! He wanted to see outside, what human cities were like. Enhar had hard they were huge. Undersea cities were small, only places where his people's clans liked to meet for exchanging of information, for marriages and festivals, and where elders lived. They tended to be only places for teaching what one's clan couldn't, with a few dwellings.

“No, it was my own fault,” he said, blushing... green? It could have been anyone's net, and she might have been watching on the news a story about a bizarre discovery instead. He was a little embarrassed for at his own incompetence. He should really have carried a knife, and just cut the nets, instead of trying to tear them. Most of his injuries were self-caused... Where fibres of the nets had cut in deep and torn through his skin.

Enhar found it very difficult to believe that the little fluffy thing – cat, he had to keep reminding himself – could possibly be the vanguard of destruction that Sera seemed to imply. He gave Mika a puzzled look. But he was not given too much time to think about it, because Sera was answering his question about food. Breads? What were those? Very curious. He would have to ask later.

(While he was waiting for Sera to return, the kitten began to groom itself. His assumption was that Mika wanted to be clean, so, naturally, he poured some water on her. He got a hiss and the kitten running up onto a laundry for his effort. His expression was probably priceless, and completely shocked.)

He leaned forward to look at the thing Sera was offering him, but the bath was slippery underneath, and Enhar slid back down with an awkward splash. He blushed again, probably even brighter this time, before accepting the fruit. “Apple?” he said, wondering if he was saying it right. He studied it for a little first, at the pattern the colours were close up, at the smell it had, and only then bit into it. His teeth were an odd shape for it, so he chewed slowly, but with a rather amazed expression. Sweet and crisp and a note of sourness. It was better than he'd thought it would be, but also a little harder. It took him a while to get through a bite.

“It's very tasty!” He wanted to try more of her food now. She could probably have hours of fun feeding him things and watching his reactions. “When your people's ships used to sink all the time, we used to get your people's food,” he told Sera. “But very rarely now.” He had to take a little more bites, unable to decide whether or not he liked the skin of the thing. The whitish inside was definitely very nice, a little crunchy. He caught the juice with his tongue, so it didn't drip onto the floor.

 

[Devxx]

Sera had to giggle when she actually saw him blush and turn green. The only time she'd ever seen someone's face turn that color was when they were sick but it was funny on him. The girl couldn't believe just how amazed he was with the solitary apple though she supposed that if she lived under the sea with only fish to eat she'd be amazed too.

"Yeah, I guess the ships we have today would be a lot harder to sink then the older ones." With all the mega yachts they had these days she couldn't remember the last time she had heard of someone's ship actually going down. "Well, I have a lot of food in the house if you want to try some. It's a shame I can't take you to a grocery store but I think people might be a bit thrown off by the fin." While the whole image of a merman being carted around in a grocery store was pretty hysterical she really didn't want to think of what would happen when people realized the fin wasn't just part of some costume.

Looking down on the ground she could see that the floor had been splashed some more and Mika was currently sitting on top of the laundry hamper with a very pissed off look on her face. No doubt Enhar had splashed the kitten a bit and she didn't take to it very well. Well, what did she think would happen if she hung around a merman?

Moving foreword she leaned her hands on the tub to get a closer look at the man. From his chewing she could see that his teeth were shaped differently then a normal humans probably coming from a vastly different diet. It wasn't like he could really build a fire under water so she had to guess that most of his diet consisted of fish and the random seaweed here and there. Sure sushi was the extent of her raw fish diet but she'd much rather have a steak then munch on bass all day long.

Even just sitting there she had the urge to touch his scales and see just what he felt like. She'd held the tail earlier when she had brought him in the house but it would be different when he was actually awake. "Hey, um....would you mind if I touched your scales?" It was like a little kid who saw a new puppy in the window and just wanted to play with them a bit. Enhar was the strangest thing she had seen in a long time and she really couldn't resist the urge to poke at his skin or see what his hair was like now that it was drying.

 

[missedstations]

He blushed even deeper when she laughed at him, and if there was enough water, he'd have hidden under it. If he was in the sea, and she was one of his clan's women, he'd have tried to hide under a rock, probably.

“Grocery store?” Enhar asked. If you wanted to eat, you had to hunt it or gather it yourself.
They did have some places where they cultivated underwater plants, but without a concept of money, he couldn't quite grasp the concept of a shop. He always thought that humans just found gold and silver and that weird paper money they used now particularly pretty, not that it was actually used for things.

He crunched the apple quite happily for a bit, eating even the core until just the stalk was left, and he seemed a little confused as to what to do with before placing it on the side of the bath. That bit didn't seem edible. Curious.

“Ah.” He seemed a little bit confused at her request, as if surprised that someone might be so... Forward. There were far fewer merfolk than humans, and they tended to maintain more personal space. But still. She had saved his life, and he was in her dwelling... “Of course,” Enhar finally said, very politely, changing position for her, lifting the fin out of the water and placing it on the edge of the bath.

“This is awkward. I have never spoken to a human before, even though... I, ah... I might be what your people call a siren.” Sailors felt so gay whenever they were sang overboard by a male, probably. Enhar had always been a little shy to actually do it, and lacked the will to actually drown people afterwards. There were clans with a taste for human flesh, but he was not one of them. If it was sentient, it wasn't food.

 

[Devxx]

"Yeah, it's a place we go to get our food or other things. We don't really do much hunting or gathering so we buy it at a store." It was so much harder to explain everything to him instead of just show him. Depending on how well he could be out of water she might be able to get him in her car and take him around the city for a bit. At least that way they could hide the tail and he'd still be able to see some of the sights. It had been a while since she'd had some friends from out of town come over and she was excited by the idea of showing him around the city. He acted like an amazed little kid with even the smallest things so she couldn't wait to see what he would think of downtown.

Well, at least it looked like he realized that the core wasn't edible. She probably should have warned him about that but he had figured it out himself.

Hesitantly, she reached out her hand and brushed it gently against his fin. Sera wasn't sure just how much feeling he had in it so she didn't want to cause him any pain. It felt almost like a fish's fin and her hands slipped over the wet scales. There were obviously strong muscles under there which allowed him to move under water and she could feel them under. "Wow, it's so different from legs. It's....kind of slippery." Her mind couldn't exactly process just what her hands were touching so she was having a hard time putting it into words. Still, a small giggle escaped her as she gingerly ran up the fin.

"Wait a minute, did you just say you were a siren?" She turned her head to him with surprise. For some reason she got a mental image of Enhar in a sea-shell bra on top of a rock luring sailors to their doom. Well, with the long hair and if you were a half drunk sailor he might be able to pass for a girl in the fog.

He didn't really seem like the type who would go out of his way just to kill people considering he was blushing like crazy just by having her near him. No, it didn't seem like Enhar had much experience with humans so she doubted he had been the cause of any deaths.

 

[missedstations]

He folded his arms on the edge of the bath and rested his chin on top of them, puzzled and lost at what he was being told about the human world. It was all seeming so terribly complicated... Far much more so than he'd ever imagined.

So long as she didn't try poking his gills, Enhar didn't mind her touching him. Poking a merperson in the gills was very much like sticking something up a human's nose – weird and slightly disgusting. The way Sera touched his fin, while odd, was not uncomfortable. Her hands were very warm. Strange! He smiled a little at her laugh, unsure of what it meant. It tickled a little as she ran her hand the wrong way up his scales and his tail twitched.

“What are legs like?” he asked. No doubt Enhar had been a horrifically annoying child, probably swimming off all the time and asking complicated questions about everything. He still wasn't that far off from being a child: still very young, by his clan's count, not even old enough to have seriously thought about courting a wife.

“Yes.” Considering her surprised look, he realised that the thing he'd been told about humans was right. They all tended to think merpeople were all female. How would that even work? “It's an... Inherited thing.” He scratched behind one of his slightly pointed ears. “I haven't even ever done it, you know. Some of my friends used to do it for laughs, you know, lure swimmers to little uninhabited islands, and then the humans wouldn't even know how they got there...” Another thing he was embarrassed about. Perhaps that was the siren equivalent of stealing traffic cones while drunk.

“Is it true humans think we're all female?” To him, it was a little like thinking that the earth was flat.

 

[Devxx]

She looked up from what she was doing and tried to think up an answer to his question. "Legs?" Stretching her own legs out in front of her she wasn't sure just how to explain them to him. "Well, they're soft but hard under the skin because of the bone. I guess they're kind of like having two tails expect we have toes at the end." Her explanation was half-assed at best but she honestly couldn't think of how else to tell him about them. They were something she was born with and something she just took for granted as to what they did. Sure in school they had learned just how muscles and bones functioned to be able to move but she didn't think that was the answer he was looking for. "Just imagine your arms except longer and on your bottom instead of on your torso."

"What about your tail? What's that like?" Sera herself had always been curious as a child and that had sometimes landed her in more trouble then she'd like to think of. Still, it wasn't like she often had the chance to ask a merman about his body so she might as well take the chance while she still had it.

"So it's kind of a skill passed down from generation to generation?" Funny, she hadn't thought of it that way but she supposed it made the most sense if it was something that was inherited. "You'd lure swimmers to uninhabited islands for fun?" She felt a bit of annoyance at that but it wasn't like she could really fault Enhar or his friends for doing something like that. Hell, she'd done some pretty stupid things with her friends when she was younger and this past weekend they had broken into an old warehouse just for fun.

Apparently it didn't matter what the species was, kids would always be stupid and look for trouble wherever they could.

"Kind of. In all of our media we always learn about mermaids so everyone just kind of assumes that they're all female. I guess there's supposed to be something romantic about the idea of a big, strong sailor falling in love with some beautiful fish woman." Personally she had always believed in the theory that some drunk and horny soldiers had seen some dolphins in the water and wanted to feel better about it so they imagined they were part women.

 

[missedstations]

“Hrrm,” he vaguely replied to her explanation of legs. It could not at all be like a tail. Legs seemed to have only a few specific folds, while his tail was far more flexible, and very powerful. It seemed that his hipbones were not at all like a human's, and that below waist his bone structure was more like a dolphin's. Enhar was just a little surprised that she hadn't taken the time to look while he was out.

“You can touch, see?” Enhar placed her hand so that she could feel how the muscles moved when he flexed his tail. “I do not know what these things are called in your language...” he said, regarding the more exact explanations of anatomy. Well, they would no doubt have plenty of time to stare at each other while he recovered.

“Yes,” he said, regarding singing. A skill. A very useful skill, now that humans wanted to know everything about their world. “Some of the elders use the song to make people forget about us... To think they have seen nothing. Or if they cannot do that, to drive the human insane. It was agreed on, a long time ago, at one of the Clan Meets,” he told her, hoping that he was using terms that she knew. So that would be why every so often there was some crazy who said they'd seen something half-fish half-human, and why most people never believed them. The clans did not have many laws, but those that they did were rarely broken. Enhar certainly wasn't planning to lure her to her doom in the bathtub.

Enhar had to laugh at the idea of a big strong sailor falling in love with a mermaid. It happened sometimes, but very rarely. And every single time he'd heard about it, it ended with the human drowning. He wasn't cruel, he was just realistic. How was such a union ever to work anyway? “I would like to hear some of those stories,” he said, assuming in what was a probably silly way, that like their kind, humans told stories to each other. Since the sea wiped away most writing, their history was a spoken one.

 

[Devxx]

Her hands felt the muscles under the scales as he flexed his tail and she let out a little sigh wondering just how far the differences went. Apparently legs and tails weren't as similar as she had thought in the first place. "They're muscles, at least I think they are. Strange, you can pretty much bend your tail wherever but our legs can only bend at the knee and ankle." Stretching out her own leg she pointed to what she was talking about.

Well if someone really wanted to keep themselves hidden then using what talents they had to erase people's memories would probably be the best way to go. "Er... you promise not to drive me insane? I'd kind of like to keep whatever sanity I have left." Sera giggled nervously and while it seemed like the merman was pretty harmless she wasn't quite sure just how much she could trust him. After all, they'd only been talking for about an hour and humans had no qualms about lying to people's faces so why should a merman?

"See, now that I can help with." Grinning, she pushed herself up off her spot and headed out the bathroom towards her bedroom. She knew she had that dvd lying around here somewhere. After searching through the messy shelves near the TV and looking under the bed she finally managed to find the disc in question. Picking up her portable DVD player she inserted the disc before bringing it back to where Enhar was.

Pushing the play button the screen was filled with colorful images of a fairy creating a castle before it cut to the main page. "This is the most famous story we have about mermaids. Mermaid princess falls in love with a human prince and proceeds to act really stupid just to get a man she's never even spoken to." Lifting the screen so he could get a better look she placed it up on the edge of the tub. Never in her wildest dreams would the woman ever have thought she would be showing the Little Mermaid to an actual merman. Funny how life decided to throw all sorts of twists at you.

 

[missedstations]

“Er, I promise?” The fact that he was too shy to sing whenever anyone was looking at him – or when they started looking at him he made an awkward 'eeep' sound and shut up – didn't make it exactly a difficult promise to make. Sera still seemed nervous, so he added, “On my honour.”

“Huh!” He stared at the DVD player with utter fascination. Pictures. Moving. “Is this magic..?” he asked vaguely, poking it. For a while he was unable to take in what was going in on screen at all, staring at the machine. It was probably good that he didn't try to touch it, too shocked by it, since water probably wouldn't have helped. The only electricity Enhar was used to seeing was lightning.

“How does it-?” Enhar shook his head a little, choosing to forgo the explanation for now, finally starting to pay attention to what was actually happening on screen. He began to giggle when he realised that all the mermaids wore sea-shell bras. And that the palace was made of gold. And that they all had lovely hairdos. And the king had a beard – his people did not grow facial hair.

“Why are your people obsessed with seashells?” he asked, quite unable to stop staring at Ariel's chest. It certainly wasn't the breasts that fascinated him, but the things covering them. Why would it be needed?

He could, at least, see that it was a children's story, and even his people's myths had talking animals and evil witches. He could accept Sebastian and Flounder more easily than Triton's beard. He couldn't do anything but snigger each time he saw it, trying to stifle his merriment with a hand. It was certainly an incredibly romanticised version of an underwater world, by someone who had never seen such things.

“Why do humans wear clothes anyway? Are you always cold?” Enhar had never worn anything except a bit of jewellery when he wanted to look a bit better for important ceremonies. “We don't have such things. Sometimes we weave rope and cloth from sea plants, but it's only for decoration. We don't cover ourselves up like that...” He looked both amused and confused at the same time, and it was a very awkward expression for his face to hold.

 

[Devxx]

"No, not magic. Just technology." Sera was very grateful that he had been distracted before he had the chance to ask her just how the DVD player really worked. The girl wasn't always on friendly terms with technology and considered it a good day when the toaster didn't catch on fire. Actually explaining to a merman just how a DVD player worked would have been an exercise in futility leaving the both of them incredibly confused and frustrated.

It was funny watching Enhar become so fascinated with the pictures on the screen. He was like a little kid who was watching the movie for the first time while giggling and staring intently at the screen like he was in his own little world. It kind of made her wonder just what his people did when they were bored or if they wanted to pass the time. Not like they could just sit down and watch a movie or even really read a book.

"Huh? We're not obsessed with seashells..." Confusion was evident on her face as she tried to figure out just what he was talking about. Then after a few seconds realization dawned on her as she realized he was talking about the seashells Ariel was wearing as a bra.

"Wait a minute, does that mean even your females just swim around naked?" The girl groaned slightly as her mind was flooded with images of mermaids swimming around with everything out in the open. Couldn't that lead to a lot of really awkward situations for all involved?

"No, it's not because we're always cold. Well, not completely anyway. The weather up on land changes constantly and we have to protect ourselves from the cold, the rain, snow and all other sorts of things that could lead to us getting sick." She figured that the weather under the sea didn't really change from being wet. Sure it got colder depending how deep you went but it wasn't like they had to bundle up in a blizzard or something.

"Up here we don't really like seeing people naked out in the open, it's not modest. Not to mention there are a lot of people who really shouldn't be naked." Sera tried to suppress a shudder that went down her spine as she thought of the nude beach that was just ten miles away. It always seemed like the people who really didn't have any business being naked were the ones who chose to do so. "Clothes are also a way for us to fit in with different groups or show where we belong in the world." There was no way she was going to get into a discussion with him about fashion and how it showed which groups or which part of society you belonged to. Maybe he'd just get distracted by the pretty colors and she'd get off easy.

 

[missedstations]

As far as Enhar was concerned, technology was magic. It would be a long time, if ever, that he was able to accept that things worked even if he could not see exactly how.

“Yes,” he answered, regarding swimming naked. “Why should they not?” He was used to seeing naked bodies, it wasn't as if it was kinky or particularly exciting. Breasts were, well, breasts. Part of the anatomy. He did not see them as anything particularly sexual or indecent. Sure, some girls had prettier ones, and sometimes he had tried to seduce one or two on that basis alone, but that was how things went.

“I thought modesty was about not bragging about things you had done,” he said, looking at her in a very puzzled way. What did covering one's skin have to do with that?

“We use scars and jewellery for showing our rank. I don't have any though,” he added with a little laugh. “I'm too lazy, they always used to say... I'm not very interested in hunting things like giant squid.” He gave a little scowl at that idea, as if he found it a little distasteful, and then continued. “And I haven't got any wives, so...” Getting married was probably the first important act that someone like Enhar would have in their life. It consolidated a person's position within a clan as a responsible adult. Something Enhar definitely did not behave like.

“Humans are so strange,” he sighed, flicking his tail along with the music. He did find the screen very distracting, as well as the bright colours and the voices, so he probably was not answering as carefully as he could have, nor paying nearly enough attention to what Sera was saying. “This is ridiculous,” he said wincing as the prince failed to kiss Ariel. “Why can't she just ask him if he is willing to mate?”

 

[Devxx]

"Well, because it's...." What answer could she possibly give him to justify why they shouldn't swim around naked? There were plenty of places in the world on land that people would walk around naked as well. Still, she just couldn't wrap her head around swimming naked in the ocean with a bunch of other merpeople around and having no problems with people seeing it. "I don't know, it's just weird." she said finally with a sigh after not being able to come up with a real reason.

"It is but it's also about not showing off your body to random people. Usually on the surface the more skin you show the less people think of you. Especially if you happen to be female." It was strange how differently they saw things in their own separate worlds. Swimming around naked might be normal for his kind but up here you'd definitely get a bunch of strange looks and get talked about behind your back. Looking down at her own clothes she picked at the fabric of her shorts and wondered just what it would be like to walk around without any fabric on and be ok with it. Sure she'd gone skinny dipping a couple of times but it had been dark and she'd been drunk with her friends.

She nodded her head slightly as she listened to him explain what scars and jewelry were used for. "So you get rank by hunting and getting wives...wait, as in more then one?" Considering the low-tech aspect of their world she could understand why hunting would still be seen as a status symbol. You bring enough food for your clan and obviously you'd be seen as a valuable asset. The more then one wife thing was a little confusing though. Having a bunch of nagging mermaids telling you to do the undersea equivalent of putting the lid down would have gotten on her nerves a long time ago. Apparently it was a status symbol though.

It was funny watching him flick his tail to the tune of the music, almost like a conductor leading a band. Sera laughed a bit as she watched him with amusement in her eyes. He was more fun to watch then the actual DVD and she didn't have to worry about him trading his voice to an evil sea witch.

"Because you can't just go up to someone and ask them if they'd like to mate unless you were incredibly drunk. You'd end up getting slapped or arrested and it wouldn't be worth the hassle. You have to talk to them and go on dates before you actually mate." Jeez, did his kind just go around screwing whenever they felt like it? Well, it would take all the hassle out of the bar scene but it seemed like a series of one night stands.

 

[missedstations]

“Haven't got any husbands either...” Enhar added, before realising it was the polygamy that she was surprised about, rather than just polygyny. “Ah...” He had to pause, think about it, surprised. Obviously humans did things very differently. “One marries a lady to help raise her children, when she wishes to have some,” he explained, finding it very strange to have to say this. “A marriage is an obligation for a lifetime.” Apparently instead of inventing the divorce, they added the possibility of marrying more people.

“It is very complicated,” he said with a sigh, “It is also way to make sure a person from another clan has family and is taken care of. When one chooses to leave one's clan, it is very difficult. To choose to travel with other people entirely, that they may not know.” So a marriage was also about security, about making a little chosen family rather than a family tied purely by blood.

“Dates?” Enhar had to ask. He realised that she needed some explanation of how they did things as well as him needing explanation of her world. “Well, uh.” This was so awkward to talk about. “If you are interested in someone, then you ask if they would be interested too.” Why was he blushing again? “If they say yes, then you do things, and, well, it is expected that the person who did the asking gives a gift as a symbol of appreciation.” Presumably a difficult to procure gift. Apparently it was not so casual a thing.

As to regarding the plot, “Well, when the person is from another clan, there is not much time to get to know them. Clan meets only last a moon cycle, after all, and why would a person want to marry someone they have not had relations with? It is a good way to get to know someone better.” Enhar seemed to think of sex as more of a thing to start a relationship with, rather than its end goal. “So really, she should have just asked him rather than have gone to the witch...” It was probably a novel interpretation of the tale.

 

[Devxx]

She quirked her eyebrow at him when he mentioned that he didn't have any husbands either. "You can have wives and husbands? Usually here it's either or." Well, that was unless you lived some secret double life with a whole other secret family. Polygamy was strange enough to hear about but polygamy and being bisexual was pretty damn rare. Still, she should see just what would be appealing about having multiple spouses. Marry women to have children and grow your family and marry a man to help hunt and protect your territory. "Ah, it's supposed to be a lifetime commitment here but not many people follow through on that."

So by marrying they could integrate better into a strange clan and start their own connections with it. It seemed like an almost archaic idea of when royalty would marry each other simply to create alliances and such for their own kingdoms. Though when you depended on a clan as a unit in order to survive then you had to build as close knit of a family as you could.

"Dates, like when you hang out with someone and talk or when you go out to eat together." Did the merfolk not have dates? Well, it's not like they could go to some underwater movie theater and make out while eating popcorn. Yet the idea of just going up to someone and asking them if they wanted to mess around seemed like something a really horny and drunk teenager would do, not something that you'd build an entire relationship on. It was kind of funny watching him blush as he explained it to her, kind of like a nervous mom explaining to their kids about the birds and the bees.

Huh, so they gave a gift to symbolize appreciation when they did mate. Well, that definitely was more romantic then waking up in a strangers apartment and them giving you cab fare home. The two worlds had grown side by side but they had such vastly different ideas of social norms. And when you did have a time limit to how long you could spend with someone that would kind of put a rush on things to see if you were compatible in more then one way.

"Yeah, but if she had just popped up out of nowhere and asked him to mate he probably would have thought he was dreaming or had lost his damn mind. It's not very common for humans to find mermaids you know." Sera couldn't believe she was actually having this discussion with a merman about a kids movie. Then again she couldn't believe she had a merman in her bathtub in the first place.

"I never really figured how that worked anyway. How do you guys mate?" Now it was her turn to ask the awkward questions and probably embarrass poor Enhar to death. "Do you go the whole fish route with laying eggs or do you...you know, do it the dolphin way?" Sera gave a little cough at the end as she realized just what she was asking him. In all the depictions of mermaids she'd seen it didn't look like they had any holes to speak of. Enhar's tail was completely smooth as well so she wouldn't know where he was hiding any genitalia to speak of.