Too late.

The last thing she sees is her own face, inexplicably reflected in the not-eel's gaping mouth.

Moments later, she's outside what looks like a large wooden cabin, looking down at the beautiful mountains below. The air is cold, and so is the snowy ground, gently compacted under her body. It's a beautiful winter wonderland, with a cluster of tall buildings near the base of the mountains in the distance, full of warm and inviting lights.

OH WHAT

WHAT

What is this what happened why is she on land

WHY IS IT SO COLD

Okay, well she's – not dead?! That's good?! (How, though?!)

Why is it so cold, this air is literally colder than she's ever been, how is that allowed.

And there's all this… soft, white… it's almost like sea foam but she's pretty sure it's not… and it's somehow even colder than the air?

There's a building here, and there's buildings over there, which means there are humans around.

Hahaha she needs to get out of here now. Now now now. As if the cold wasn't enough reason.

Is there a direction where there are not buildings, or humans, or other things associated with humans?

There are woods, where she'd be able to agonizingly crawl to. But as she looks around, a woman wearing a snowsuit and helmet notices the mermaid lying in the snow. She instinctively runs over, trying to pull her indoors. "You can't be outside like that, you're going to freeze!"

AHHH HUMAN

NO NO NO THIS ISN'T FAIR SHE DIDN'T MEAN TO BE HERE

CAN THE GOD-OR-WHATEVER THAT DID THIS TO HER PLEASE JUST PUT HER BACK

She tries to crawl away, and when that inevitably fails she tries to flail out of the human's grasp. But like, the human is a lot bigger and stronger than she is, so.

She's just gearing up to bite, when she realizes –

– she still looks and feels like a mermaid.

She still has her tail, and it still feels like a tail.

She touches it, and it still feels scaly.

She hasn't been glamoured. At all. Into a human or anything else.

What?!

Huh?!

Is this totally random human Unveiled?! That seems so unlikely!

…Okay, to be fair, she knows nearly zero things about humans. For all she knows, they might have entire secret ?tribes? of humans who are in on it. Maybe she just landed in one. (That in itself seems unlikely, but then again, on reflection she's not convinced this was an accident, so.)

She… will cease her flailing. For now. Unless the human starts doing something weird.

"You're gonna die if you're out here covered in water like that, we need to get you indoors and heated up lightning-quick!" She shouts for help, and 2 more men come outside, working together to lift her up. They do it slowly and gently, wanting to make sure she feels safe with them moving her like that.

And her body still isn't glamoured at all! Tribe of Unveiled humans, tentatively confirmed?

Okay, well. Good. Good. She doesn't owe any gods anything, then. And if these humans are all Unveiled, they'll know not to show her to anyone who isn't. So she'll be fine.

Unless these humans are evil, of course. Yara may have been the literal worst useless, but the cautionary tales about humans probably weren't just made up on the spot.

But it… sounds like they're trying to help? This cold seems really bad, and it sounds like they agree and they're trying to get her out of that. So she'll… let them do that.

…Wait.

She can understand them?!

They're not speaking Shawmish at all! They're not speaking anything that sounds even a little bit like Shawmish! She's pretty sure humans are physically incapable of speaking it! How come she can understand them?!

Can she… also speak to them…?

…She's not gonna try it just yet. She's just gonna pay really close attention to what they're saying.

Gauging her response, the trio of humans carry her to the far warmer indoors. They take her over to one of the rooms on the first floor of the lodge, opening the bathroom with its pool built into the floor and turning on a shower to quickly fill the air with pleasantly warm steam. "Can you move all your body parts? Is there any part that seems numb? We'll be here to help keep you warm, don't worry."

Oh gosh is that warm water? YES PLEASE.

Are they still holding her? Can she reach the stream of water to stick her arm in? Or possibly her entire self, if it turns out the water is in fact warm?

They release her when they see her eagerness to get into the water, letting her flop into slowly rising tide. The 2 men smile gently at her, before the woman tries seeing how she's feeling about the temperature of the stream pouring out of the shower and into the pool.

It's SO NICE. It's PERFECT. It's just like home! Maybe even a little bit warmer than home! She doesn't know! She doesn't care!

As she flops around in the deliciously warm water, she ponders her situation.

These humans have to be Unveiled, right? She isn't glamoured.

But… she understands their language. A language she's definitely never learned before. That seems like a pretty glamour-y sort of thing.

Maybe some god is behind this after all. But… she doesn't owe them anything for doing a language glamour. Even if these people are Veiled, doing just a language glamour doesn't count as hiding her. They can't demand payment for that. That's not how it works.

And maybe it isn't even a god. If there are whole tribes of Unveiled humans, maybe they can do really strong glamours that make people understand them.

Either way, it's… probably safe to talk back to them, even if a god is going to make it come out in their language.

She sticks her head out of the water and stares at them. What do they look like?

They're wearing boxy and loose jumpsuits, with panels of a strange material in bright, unnatural colors. The clothes make it hard to make out their physiques, but they're all light-skinned and rather young-looking.

Hm. So they at least look like bog-standard humans, and not some kind of human-like fairy or something. (Not that she's ever seen a fairy, so maybe she wouldn't know the difference.)

Okay, here goes…

"…Did you bring me here?"

…Whoa this language feels weird to speak. What the heck is her throat doing.

(From the humans' perspective, she sounds like a starling imitating a soft-spoken teenage girl.)

They just nod at her. "Yes, we saw you out there, and we understood you needed help. The cold could easily have killed you!"

When one of the humans says 'Yes', Twintails's brain goes into overdrive as she tries to figure out the fastest and most forceful way to ask WHY and HOW and also WHY LIKE SERIOUSLY WHAT THE HECK –

…But then she hears the rest of the sentence.

"No. Not here. Not this… building. Over there." She points in the general direction of where she thinks she was carried in from. (She doesn't know the word 'outside'.) "I don't know how I got there. You didn't do it?"

The woman says no, as she instinctively shakes her head. "We have no idea how you teleporting out here, like this, is possible... but you're here now!"

…Oh. Must've been a god, then. (Unless the humans are lying, of course, which seems like a distinct possibility.)

"So you can't put me back? What can you do?" If they're all Unveiled, at least one of them's gotta have magic, right?

"Well... we can help you have a good life here? We'll take good care of you, if that's what you want. And you would get to see the world."

…What.

Is she having some weird dream? Is she dumb for not thinking of that sooner? (Probably. She is frequently dumb.)

"…Take care of me how? See the world how? …Have you even taken care of a mermaid before?" Are there humans who just… do that? Wouldn't she have heard of something like that? She's confused.

(Somewhere in her home world, the head of the Canadian Commission for Water People sneezes.)