the little grey boy wanders over and sits down beside her.

"Still think I'm a spy?"

"What?"

"What kind of spy plans on getting randomly summoned? It's impossible to do it deliberately, probably, and there are way easier and less flashy ways to get here, probably. Why are you grey?"

"Wait. English. Right. I'm not good at it."

"What was that first part?"

"Talking about how I'm not a spy."

"All of it?"

"I also asked... Color? Is that the word?"

"Are you talking about my skin?"

"Yes. Sorry, I know like two hundred words in English. I'm trying not to use German ones in place."

"It's okay. What about my skin?"

"It is a color I only see on sick people, but I do not think you are sick, why?"

He grins. "My mother's a mermaid!"

"...Meerfrau? People who look a little like humans but live in the ocean?"

(Not! Darwinists!)

"Yeah. I have legs because my dad is a human."

"Okay, that's actually pretty cool... If I ignore how it makes me think of scary stories from home."

He scowls. "What do they say about mer?"

"The stories aren't about mer really... They're about humans making lots of scary creatures, and something kind of like mer called kappas are one of the things they made."

"What are kappas?'

"They look a little like really short humans with green skin, but they're strong and have claws and I don't really want to keep talking about this sorry."

"So, you don't have mer where you're from?"

"No, just some things that are kinda-not-really like mer. Like, um, monkeys are to humans."

"Wow. That sucks."

"Mm." Cakenibble.

"No proper mermaids at all?"