"If you think I won't drown."

"Just a bit, enough so you start floating. You can hold on to me if you like."

"If I need to. Don't drag me down." She takes a few more steps into the ocean.

"Tell me when you start treading water."

She does.

"Now go under."

She does.

Michael follows her. 

She does have to breathe eventually.

"Do you have powers?" It seems like a reasonable question to Michael. Most people who hang around Zaneta's island do.

"Why would you think that?" she doesn't answer. "And I'm not gonna learn how to swim just by putting my head underwater."

"Most humans who come here do. And how do humans learn to swim?"

"Aren't they all Zaneta's children? And I dunno how humans learn to swim, I think people show them how to move their arms and legs and they try to imitate it."

"Sometimes she has visitors. She told me once that she used to have a husband."

"People who have biological children are normally part of a couple at some point."

"What do you mean?"

"That people usually have biological children as part of being a couple."

"What do you mean by couple?

"Two people who live together and have children together and raise them together and stuff."

"Humans are weird."

"Do mer do it differently?"

"Kinda, I guess. We just mate with whoever and take care of the babies together. Most of us don't even know who our dads are. Also means nobody's an orphan."

"Doesn't that make lots and lots of babies born? What if you don't want a new baby?"

"People don't have a baby every time they mate. And people can't have babies all the time. Or do humans work different?"

"Humans have babies sometimes if they have sex and don't use protection."