Oh! Thank goodness.

"Okay."

She tries to remember what the question was.

"Are the gods supposed to do something here, or what?"

…

"I think I don't understand the question. Unless I'm remembering it wrong."

"Gods haven't stopped me, or anyone else you've seen, or this phone from seeing what you really are. If they've managed to hide the existence of people like you from the world for so long, why are we seeing you this easily right now?"

"…I just told you. They're clearly not hiding magic from you three right now. And I already said I don't know why." Actually… "Or, I guess I didn't specifically say I don't know why, but I thought it was implied. Anyway, like I said, they might have different rules, or they might have whims instead of rules, or they might have made an exception specifically because of me showing up here from another world, if you're right about me being from another world."

"Want to find out? We can show you around, see if other people can see you like we do, see if you can also be seen on the phone by other people. You'll find that out later, I'm quite sure."

"...once you start finding out where you'll want to live. It's too cold outside, and it's too small in here, and images on the phone say very little... how are we going to handle this?"

"Um… I'd want to find out if it was definitely risk-free, but if it turns out there are gods here and some of them do hide magic, then you might end up showing me to someone that the gods decide to hide me from. And if they use the same system 'my world' uses, then I'll end up in trouble for that. The gods hiding me isn't free, I would owe them a debt." She looks at the first human. "I tried to get away from you when I first saw you, because I was scared of what I'd end up owing the local god for hiding me."

you can also be seen on the phone by other people

Another adrenaline spike. She didn't even think of that. They just have this image of her now, and they could show it to anybody.

…Maybe it wouldn't count? Plausible deniability counts for something. Being seen directly and up close in broad daylight almost always triggers intervention; being seen from very far off or in the dark often doesn't, because the human can mistake what they see. But… she doesn't know exactly what mechanism that operates by. She doesn't know if the important thing is that they misperceive in the moment and don't even consider that what they're seeing looks like a mermaid, or if the important thing is that they tell themselves it only looked like a mermaid because of a trick of the light and it must have been a seal instead.

Besides, even darkness and distance don't reliably protect from intervention. It's hit-or-miss. So a 'recording' would probably also be hit-or-miss at best.

She could ask these people to not show that 'recording' to anyone, but even if they say yes she'll have no way of knowing if they're being honest, and she'll have no way of stopping them if they're being dishonest or if they change their minds later.

Now she wishes they'd asked before making a 'recording' of her. But they wouldn't know about these things, so of course they wouldn't know there's a reason to ask.

But maybe they wouldn't have cared even if they'd known.

She's completely at their mercy.

She lowers herself into the water until she's only just high enough to still talk to them. She's clutching the edge of the pool like it's the edge of a cliff.

"Don't show that recording to anybody."

(She looks and sounds angry, but mostly because she's hoping that if she seems intimidating rather than fearful then maybe they'll obey.)

"Absolutely I will! I'll destroy it right this instant, as a matter of fact." She taps a few times on her phone in a panic. "And now the recording has ceased to exist! Hopefully that gives you some relief."

She panics a bit when she hears "Absolutely I will!", but then hears the rest and figures the human just misspoke or something.

"I don't know how that thing works and I don't know if I can trust you, so for all I know maybe you already made copies, or maybe you already did something that lets other people see the recording. But if you're being honest, then I'm grateful you cared enough to destroy the recording right away. Thank you.

"Anyway, let's not show me to anybody else, please. Maybe we can find out if there's magic or gods here some other way, and then maybe if I'm convinced that everybody can see me then I can start meeting more humans."

"What are some ways to figure that out, then? You're sort of stuck in the water here, so what's there to even try?"

"…I'm not stuck."

She's confused. They had that whole conversation about finding another place for her to live, they know she's not stuck…

"If you're wanting to find out if there's magic or gods here before meeting other humans, I mean? You clearly didn't want me to let other people see you. I'm not sure how to move you around without other humans getting to see you."

Oh.

Um…

"If you know where other humans are going to be, you could avoid them? Or tell them to… not be there? Or to look the other way?" That's kind of what she was imagining they would do, but maybe they can't for some reason? "Or you could… cover me up with something?"

"Well, I don't think you know what a cruise ship or a plane or a train or a city is. There are an incredible number of people around, it'd be impossible to have everyone there look away! Covering you up would be... more possible. You can't really walk around to begin with, so that's somethinh we have to find out how to handle anyway."