Twintails is gonna get that eel over there. The one that's swimming weird, like it's injured or something. (That's why she's gonna get it.)
She swims closer. She is so gonna get it. Look at it, it's soooo slow.
…Uh. Wait. Is that even an eel? That actually doesn't look like an eel, from this distance. And she can't figure out what it does look like.
…Which means that it's Something Weird and she needs to Get Away NOW.
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.)
"We haven't cared for a mermaid before, no. But we're happy to do so, if that is what it'd take to let you be happy."
THIS IS SO CONFUSING.
She doesn't even know what her question is, but she definitely has at least one question!
She thinks about it. She figures out what one of her questions is.
"Why… Why do you think I'm not happy? I just got here. You don't know me. And… even if I'm not happy, why is that the first thing you offer? Don't you know mermaids come from the ocean? Why not offer to take me to the ocean? Or just ask me 'What do you want'? And… why do you care so much if I'm happy in the first place? I just got here!"
"Everyone deserves to be happy, don't they? And you didn't look happy lying in the snow outside, so I suspected you needed something from us, like maybe this warm bath you're in. I didn't believe mermaids existed anywhere in reality, so I would have no idea about what you might want for yourself. I've never seen anyone even remotely like you!"
'I didn't believe mermaids existed anywhere in reality'?
"Aren't… Aren't you all Unveiled? How do you not know what mermaids are?
And… And that still doesn't make sense! I know you don't know what I want, that's why it's confusing that you didn't ask! And then offered such a big thing, right away! Warm water makes sense, but… you offered to 'take care of me' and 'help me have a good life', which is totally different! 'Life' is a long time! How can you just offer that? What if your family needs things first? Or what if I need ten times as much food as you? Or I need something you don't even have? Do you just use magic to get everything you need all the time forever?" (…That's probably it, isn't it.)
"Well, nuclear energy and a globe-spanning industrial society are close to enough to magic to our tastes, yes! We have quite a vast amount of resources, and if just letting you float away into the ocean would give you what you wanted, that's absolutely something we can 'just offer', as you put it." As she says this, she looks over the mermaid, curious about whether what she looks like made much sense at all.
Good question! Twintails has no opinion about whether her appearance makes sense, but the humans are free to form one! Here's what they've had a chance to notice so far:
She is very small. By height and width, she looks like a 6-year-old child; but her proportions suggest that she's more mature than that for her own species.
Her upper body looks basically human; the skin looks like normal human skin. She's Ambiguously Brown; without any other examples to go on, it's unclear if this is an indication of some kind of mermaid ethnicity, or if this is just the universal mermaid skintone.
She has dark brown ?hair?, which is somewhat wavy and hangs down to the ends of her ears. It looks normal from a certain distance, but by now the humans are standing close enough to see that it's not actually hair. The strands are too thick, for one thing. And they… seem to move on their own, a little bit, especially when she's agitated. (A human from her own world might draw comparisons to Medusa, though Twintails's 'hair' isn't nearly that thick.)
Her lower body is scaly and silvery. If the humans' concept of a mermaid typically has just one tail, it will probably stand out that Twintails has two. Sort of. About halfway down, or maybe a little more, her tail forks into two ends. It… doesn't really look like it's supposed to be like that, though; one of the tails looks a bit… supernumerary.
She's missing an eye. (Either that, or she's been keeping her right eye persistently closed for no apparent reason.)
They're standing close enough to see that her arms have some thin, faint scarring, like something was digging into the skin in a lot of different places.
It's actually not clear whether she's a girl or a boy. She's completely naked, and by now they've probably seen her from nearly every possible angle — with all that flopping around she did earlier — but she has no immediately obvious genitalia. Meanwhile, her torso looks like a buff man's. (Although notably there are no nipples.) If they're thinking of her as a 'she', it's probably mostly because of her voice and her hair length.
She has no clue what that first part means. 'Close enough to magic'? She'll get back to that in a minute.
'We have quite a vast amount of resources'… She doesn't know what 'vast' means, but from context it sounds like it means 'a lot'?
"…You have so many resources that you can just decide to take care of anybody that shows up, even if you don't know what they need in the first place?!"
That sounds completely ridiculous and fake, but everything about this situation is already ridiculous and fake.
"Do you think we're wrong about what you need, miss? It looks mostly like it's warm water, something to drink and something to eat. Do we really not know what you need, or am I saying something that's true enough?"
She closes her eyes and sighs. (Eugh, it's been a while since she was last on land, she forgot how the land reflexes feel.)
"Even if you're right, you didn't know that before you offered… And you don't know what I eat… And if I get sick, you don't know how my body works… If you're saying it doesn't matter because you have so many resources that you can always get the stuff I eat no matter what it is or how long I live, and you can fix any sickness no matter what it is or how my body works, then what you're saying could make sense, but it's hard to believe anybody has that much stuff. I guess it could be true if you have really good magic."
They really don't seem to understand why it's weird to just assume they can help her and not even ask what she needs first. So they either really do have ridiculous ?magic? that can do basically anything, or humans are way weirder than she thought. (She would say 'dumber', but humans have done a lot of things that they probably couldn't do if they were dumb. Besides, lots of times she thought something was dumb, but then it turned out she just didn't understand it because she was dumb.)
"And I didn't get what you said about something being 'close enough to magic'. Why do you need something 'close enough', what about actual magic? And I still don't get how you've never heard of mermaids, either, you're obviously Unveiled…"
"What do you think you might that we do not have? If this heated pool, far within an icy landscape, is a surprise to you, as it seemed to be, then I think it'd be strange if we didn't have similar wondrous ways of fulfilling any of your other needs. We've never heard of mermaids outside of stories we tell each other! Clearly, you're from someplace we've never looked. You remember your life before you got here, right?"
A few thoughts race through the head of the woman looking at Twintails: where would she want to stay, would she ever want to see the outdoors, how would she be able to move around? All her curiosity directs her to think of inventions for the little mermaid before her; it'll probably be fascinating to find out what she does to navigate this world.
They still don't get it! Possibly she should just let it go
"Even if it turns out you do have some amazing way to get everything I need, it's still weird you didn't ask what I need first. Just to make sure. Because you couldn't know ahead of time. Especially if you've never heard of mermaids."
(Okay, now she'll let it go.)
"…So you're saying this thing is magic?" She looks up at the shiny thing that's been pouring warm water on her. Humans make all kinds of things out of this shiny stuff, but she's pretty sure it isn't magic, the stuff is everywhere when you go on land… Maybe the shiny has nothing to do with magic, maybe that's just what it's made of, and the magic is just making the water come out of it…
"No, not at all! It's just hooked up to the heating system that also keeps this entire lodge nice and warm. But things like these would seem like magic to those who've never seen it and don't understand it, and the end result is much the same, wouldn't you say?"
???
Heating system…? What does that even mean…?
(The only reason she believes them that it isn't magic is because she's spent enough time on land to see a lot of human things that look like they have to be magic, but are way too widespread and openly visible to be magic. Unless every place she's ever been on land happened to be a tribe of Unveiled, which she really doubts.)
(…Maybe now that she can actually talk to humans, she can find out how all that stuff works…?)
"Yeah, it does seem the same… But you keep talking about things that 'seem like magic', or are 'close enough to magic'. What about actual magic? I keep asking that but you keep not telling me…"
"What would make something magic, as opposed to ingenuity? For all we know, we could be doing something that is magic, just not realizing that it was because we had gotten so used to it!"
Blink.
Blink blink.
"I think you'd know if it was magic! It's really different from all the other things people do and all the other things that happen in the world! Haven't you ever heard of magic before? You're Unveiled! Right? Aren't you?"
(Wait, is she dreaming? Is this a dream?)
"Unveiled isn't a word that makes any sense to me in this situation. And yes, we've heard of magic, in stories we tell each other. The issue being, we didn't think it made sense to think of things as magic after we had done them."
They don't… even know what Unveiled means?
And they don't… think of magic as a real thing…? They don't know magic? They haven't seen magic?
But… But… She looks the same… So a god isn't covering for her… And there's nowhere in the world the gods aren't looking, because of the agreement they made… So they have to be Unveiled… But… But if they don't know about magic, they can't be Unveiled, that's logically impossible…
Is everything she was ever taught a lie?
Did Yara lie so that she'd be scared to ever ask humans for help?
No, she… wouldn't… she was useless but she wasn't evil…
Right?
Twintails is not going to cry in front of these people, so she ducks back under the water, where crying isn't a reflex that happens.
They wave at her as she dips under the water. "It looks like you need some time to yourself. Feel free to just... enjoy the warmth and relax."
Twintails lies at the bottom of the pool and thinks for a little while.
She… supposes it actually could be possible to be Unveiled but not know about magic. For instance, if you were Unveiled but then you lost all your memories, including your memories that magic is real. Would the gods decide that person is Veiled again, or would they still count as Unveiled? She's not sure. But she's heard that some gods steal their clerics' memories sometimes. Maybe some of the time they go around not knowing about magic.
And actually… she's also heard of people who can do enough magic to count as Unveiled, but they haven't discovered their magic.
And she's also heard of mythic creatures where you could be one and not know it, if nobody told you. And those all count as Unveiled.
She doubts all these people are one of those, but… it means it's not literally impossible that they're Unveiled but don't know about magic. Which means maybe she wasn't lied to.
That's all she really needs.
Only the woman, who is sat down, looking around the room and thinking to herself.
"It's electric. We... generate a magnetic field in a gas turbine that produces an electric current that gets sent here which heats up the water you're swimming in via resistive heating."
"I felt like you wouldn't! Unfortunately, there are a lot of things to know before you can understand those things, and I wouldn't do a very good job of explaining them. But... none of those things are what we'd call magic. Not everyone has been told what magic is, you know!"
"I still think you'd know if it was magic. If it doesn't seem different from other stuff you do, except for being more… complicated… it's probably not magic. And… even though I didn't understand what you said, I don't think that's how the explanation would sound if it was magic. So, maybe you really don't have it. But I don't really understand how. Nothing about this situation makes sense."
She sighs. (Blegh.)
"So what happens now?"
"Well, I don't know what you'd want to happen. You seem happy enough in the pool, and I guess you could ask for some food to enjoy, but I don't know what else you might want to be doing now."
"…Wait, so I just live in this thing now? Why was it here? Isn't someone going to want to use it?"
"It was used by one of the men I was with, because baths like this can be fantastic, and they will want to use it, yes. Longer-term, you will want a more permanent place to stay, maybe even with me, but I was thinking more about what you would want to happen now."
"Well, I don't know. I don't know what can happen. I don't know anything about this place. And sometimes, to know what to do now, you need to know what you're doing later. So, what kinds of places can I stay permanently? How do I choose?"
"You can stay in quite a few places, as a matter of fact. If you want to see a few places, I can show you some on my phone, and take you a few places if you want to see them in person. Once you've found someplace you like, I'll walk you through the process of joining the basic income system so you'll be able to afford staying there permanently."
She takes the phone out of her pockets, showing Twintails a few images of all sorts of places: beaches, forests, jungles, and cities built out of skyscrapers reaching as far as the eye can see, together with all kinds of pools full of people playing or just like the one that Twintails is enjoying. "The thing I'm holding, where you're seeing these places, is a phone. And it also lets you join the basic income system that supports you to let you live in most of these places."
WHOAAAAAAA
She SNATCHES the phone, and starts trying to do the finger motion the human was just doing to make the picture change.
(If anyone's wondering, yes, her hands are very wet.)
She instinctively recoils from Twintails as she reaches for the phone. "The phone is still mine, you maniac!"
Twintails recoils as if struck, and ducks most of the way back into the water so that only her eyes are visible.
"...should I not have called you a maniac? Anyway, don't surprise me like that! Tell me if you want to get something from me first."
She rises just enough to be able to reply. She's not looking the human in the eye.
"…Okay.
…Didn't mean to surprise you. Never seen a thing like that before. I was excited. I wanted to play with it. I didn't think first."
A modicum of social grace comes out of its long hibernation, just enough for Twintails to add:
"…Sorry."
"That's everything necessary for you to say. Now... I suspect that you very much want to not live in this pool out here in the frozen north? What was the place you lived before you teleported here like? Do you think you want to live somewhere similar?"
"I lived in the ocean. But not a part of the ocean that I like. And…
"Even in the nice part of the ocean, mermaids aren't made to survive on their own."
She wasn't going to say that second part, but then she realized it doesn't actually give anything away.
"What are those places you were showing me? Are they places I can live?"
"Yes, they are places you can live. If you lived in the ocean, you might want to stay in the ocean or a river or something else, right? But you might also want to live where you can do the things you like doing when you're not in the water. And that also has a say in where you will want to live."
Twintails is not sure what part of "Even in the nice part of the ocean, mermaids aren't made to survive on their own" was not understood, but she's just going to chalk it up to human weirdness and move on.
"Can you show me the places again, on the… thing?" She's already forgotten the word. "…I won't grab the thing again."
"Yes, these are just a few of the possibilities; there's really just so, so many more to choose from." She picks a few images of huge cities, warm beaches, beautiful tranquil lakes, stunning fjords, picturesque mountains, and a vast variety of other kinds of places. "Did seeing these give you some ideas for where you'd most want to be?"
"That's fully up to you. It sounds like you'd prefer living in a building; if so, I'd expect it to be one with a big pool where everything you need to have done is around the pool? That's a relatively rare arrangement, but I can find some places like that for you."
…She's not sure what she said that made it sound like she'd prefer a building, but that's fine.
"I don't really know yet what I want. Buildings sound probably safer, but I don't know how living in a building works. I don't know what they have in them, and I don't know how the humans get their food, or… what they do all day. Or… anything. I don't know anything. I think I need to know more things."
A moment's pause, and then:
"Like, what if lots of buildings have things in them that are totally fine for humans but are toxic to mermaids somehow? You… don't know anything about how my body works, compared to yours. Maybe it's better to find that out first, if you have a way of finding out?" Maybe their not-magic can do things like that.
"Or maybe I could just live on a beach. If it's warm and doesn't have land predators hanging around, I'll probably be fine. …Well, except, if the ocean next to the beach is cold or dangerous or doesn't have much food in it, then I don't know how I'll get food."
She sighs. (That reflex still feels weird, but not as weird as the first time.) Her 'hair' strands are twitching and jerking a little; it's reminiscent of the way a cat flicks and swishes its tail when it's annoyed or frustrated.
"This is a building! Try living in this one for a while, and that should help you know many more things! Wouldn't you agree?"
"Yes of course! Ask them anything at all, they're more than happy to help."
She walks off, coming back with the 2 men. They had been waiting just out of sight of Twintails. They wave at her, trying to seem friendly and approachable.
Does Twintails get the impression that they were nearby enough that they actually heard the whole conversation?
The 2 men look at her. "We heard you wanted to talk to us, and that you need to... know more things about living in buildings? Was that what you said?"
Ooh, this one's voice is deeper than the other one's. Come to think of it, when she's gone on land most of the human voices she heard sounded more like this one than the first one. Does the first one have an unusually high voice? Now she wonders what the third one will sound like.
…Also, this one has longer cirri than the other two. It's technically within normal variation, but it could mean that they travel less, which might mean they're higher status, if humans work that way…
…Wait, actually, no, those don't look like cirri at all! They're super thin and they haven't moved on their own even once since she got here! How is she only just noticing this?!
…She's getting sidetracked. That's going to get her killed someday.
If being unobservant doesn't get her killed first.
"I was just saying to this other human…"
Twintails tries, to the best of her ability, to repeat what she said earlier. She doesn't get it word-for-word, but she manages something equivalent.
"…So, what do you have to say to that?"
"I mean, even on beaches there can be storms or powerful waves or drastic weather changes? Or maybe there's a beach that's perfect for not having any of those. If you were in a building, you'd be protected from all that. And it'd be easier to get to other people, and get food to eat."
Twintails ducks her head under the water, mainly to hide how much her 'hair' is fluttering with agitation.
After a few seconds, she pops back up. Her 'hair' is still twitching, but only a little.
"I don't think you're understanding what I'm saying. Am I talking to you wrong? Am I speaking your language wrong somehow?"
"Well, it's just... your world is so different, and it's really hard for me to think how a beach can be better than a building! But you can have robots bringing you food whenever you want, and you can use the television to see what's happening or read or watch people doing performances, and of course the temperature and climate will always be fantastic for you, just look how cold it was out when you arrived here. There are many good reasons that people live in buildings! I'm... just not sure which of them mean anything to you. And the thing about things being toxic to mermaids... I think we're much too similar for that to have any chance of happening."
She is not looking forward to figuring out what to say to all that, which is why she instead says, "What do you mean, 'my world'?"
"Well, the one that has mermaids in it? This world doesn't have mermaids in it. So this one can't be your world."
She suppresses a sigh. (She's never suppressed a sigh before, it almost feels weirder than actually sighing.)
"In 'my world', most humans don't know about mermaids. Most humans don't know about magic at all. So you not knowing about mermaids doesn't mean this isn't my world."
She has to admit, though, it never actually occurred to her that this might not be her world. That could be a really big deal. And it sure would explain a lot. Like why she isn't being glamoured in front of people who sure act like how you'd expect Veiled people to act. (Earlier she consoled herself that it's possible to be both Unveiled and ignorant of magic, but all those situations are rare enough that you wouldn't expect three different such people to even know each other, let alone be in the same place at the same time.) If this isn't her world, maybe there are no gods here, which means no one's around to glamour her. (…But then why does she speak the language? Maybe there are different gods here, with different agreements? That sounds both fascinating and terrifying. She sure hopes she doesn't accidentally do something they hate!)
"…I'm not saying you're definitely wrong. Maybe you're right, maybe this isn't my world. And if it's true then it's really important, so I'm glad you said it, because I didn't think of it. But me being the first real mermaid you've ever heard of doesn't really prove it."
"Really? And everything here is just like the world you knew, nothing being strange or unfamiliar at all?"
What?
"I wouldn't know. I haven't seen my whole world. Especially the land parts. This could be another world, the opposite end of my world, or a few days' travel from my last location, and I wouldn't know the difference. Even in my world I already see 'strange' and 'unfamiliar' things all the time, just by travelling, because the world is different wherever you go. Maybe it would be different for a human. They're the ones who make buildings. So maybe a human from my world would know this isn't their world just by looking at a few buildings, or even just this one building. I wouldn't.
"The one thing that seems really different is you being Unveiled but not knowing about magic. That's not impossible in my world, but it's very strange. That's the main reason that I think you could be right."
"Well... that makes it pretty clear you're not from my world, we can be utterly certain that magic is not real and I have no idea of what it could possibly even mean to be unveiled the way you use that word."
"…How did you go from not even being sure what I mean by 'magic', to being 'utterly certain that magic is not real'?"
"Because there isn't anywhere left for the magic to be! We've chased every possible source of magic for centuries, and hundreds of times, we've shown that something that seemed like magic was a trick or a mistake. Now there just isn't anything we know of or even know to be possible that could be magic. Especially the kind of magic that sounds like it's affecting lots of people, if being both unveiled and ignorant of magic like us is the exception."
How would they know if there was anywhere left for the magic to be? If there was, by definition they would not have found it yet.
She's not going to say that. It's not a completely valid argument, and even if it was there was more to what the human was saying than that first sentence.
She suppresses another sigh, and she suppresses her cirri from twitching more. It hasn't exactly occurred to her that if she rescued somebody and offered them shelter and succour, she might not appreciate them arguing with her vehemently about how her world works; but it is starting to occur to her that she might not appreciate them being visibly frustrated with absolutely everything she says, no matter how sincerely and deeply felt the frustration was.
"The magic wouldn't be affecting lots of people even if it was my world. Most humans in my world don't know about magic. People who know about magic do their best to hide it from people who don't, and they're pretty good at it; and when they fail the gods pick up the slack, and they're really good at it. So it's to be expected that everything humans have 'chased down' turned out to not be magic; the fact that humans could notice it to chase it down in the first place means it wasn't magic. That's why I've been thinking you're Unveiled, because you can see me as a mermaid. 'Unveiled' just means you're allowed to know about magic. If you were Veiled, which means you're not allowed to know, some god would be making me look and feel and sound like something that isn't magic, like a normal animal or another human. And the fact that being Unveiled and ignorant of magic at the same time is so rare is the main reason I think you could be right that this is a different world, but that still doesn't prove there's no magic in it. The gods here could just have different rules about it. The concept of 'Veiled' versus 'Unveiled' might not even apply. They might decide on completely personal whims who gets to see it and when. Maybe they just randomly decided to let you three see it as of today. Actually, if you're right that this isn't my world, me arriving here from another world could be the whole reason they suddenly made an exception."
"Do you know what recording is?" She brings out her phone again, and moves it around Twintails, making a quick video. Then she shows the recording to the mermaid. "Are the gods supposed to do something here, or what?"
Twintails has to take several moments to process what she's seeing.
Her initial gut reaction is mostly alarm and confusion. It's not like she's never seen an image of herself — water is reflective, that shiny stuff humans use is also reflective, somehow that not-eel's face was reflective — but the image has never been this clear, and it's never been anything other than a reflection, which this clearly isn't.
Beyond that, the fact that it moves startles her pretty badly.
But once she gets past that adrenaline spike, she doesn't take long to understand that this is… sort of like the… phone…? …was looking at her, and now she's looking at its memory of looking at her? …Wait, is the ?phone? alive? Can it think?
Pondering this makes her thinks of something else that gives her another adrenaline spike.
She points at the video. "Is that a copy of me?"
They claim they don't have magic, but they keep implying that their not-magic is really really powerful, so she doesn't know for sure that they can't copy people.
"No it's not, it's just... like a note describing what you look like! You're still out here, and nobody's been able to make all of you, just what you look like right now seen from certain angles!"
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."