Cymbeline does not much care for sailing but it's by far the fastest way to get around. He's clinging to the railing, occasionally putting seasickness from himself or one of the other passengers into one of the glass globes he brought aboard as magic receptacles, and gazing out at the waves.

Okay.  Okay, Cyllene has practiced this, though admittedly with rocks and not a moving human creation.  She takes several deep breaths, and - oh, there are conveniently graspable things on the side of this ship.  Perfect; she hauls herself up.  Just enough to get her torso out of the water.

"...Kerem?"

"Your highness?"

"What kind of creature is that?"

"...well, mostly a shark, but someone's been doing something mighty odd with it."

- Oh, wow, they can talk - not that she can understand them, but that's clearly some sort of proper language going on, there.  She had vaugely guessed that this would probably be true, but it's a different thing to hear it.

"So you think it was made? Why would anyone want a... shark with a human face and hair."

"That, I have no idea."

Sheeee's above the surface and touching a ship and her whole body is being vertical like a human's and - she needs to breathe.  Back under she goes.

"Wonder why it was poking up like that."

"Could've just been curious."

"Sure, but... which of the original donors did the curiosity come from."

Maybe if Cyllene tries the other side of the ship she will be able to see humans in more detail than silhouette?

There don't happen to be any humans on that side near the railing.

Hm.  Well...

The main question is whether she thinks they're going to net her, or attempt to do something with a similarly-bad outcome that she doesn't know about.

......She can probably just drop back down into the ocean if she catches a hint of something scary impending.  She sings, quietly - it's beyond her power to make a body that functions on air instead of water; she doesn't know enough about how they work and even if she did it would be an intensive process.  But she can make the resources her body has available last longer.

Sing, sing, deep breaths - and back up.  She tries to haul more of herself out of the water and - wow, that really doesn't work.  She's pretty strong but she's even more heavy.

"Maybe something's trying to chase it and it's trying to get out of the water?"

"Can't rule it out but I don't see a bigger shark or anything."

They're ✧talking✧.  Maybe someday she can learn their language...

"I think it's looking at us." Cymbeline waves on a whim.

Is that....

Yes!  She thinks so!  Wave wave wave wave!

"...hi, shark-being!" he calls down.

She would maybe try repeating that except for how she can't really talk overwater.  Wave.

"I'm tempted to throw it a fish. Do we have a fish?"

"I can go ask if you'd like, your highness?"

"Sure, go for it."

Off goes Kerem.

Okay yes breathing time for her, too.

...She could - she doesn't want to let any merfolk know she's here, she can't let them, but - as long as she starts quietly and works her way up a crescendo, she can as part of that magic direct the sound up.  She'll aim for the remaining human, specifically, and - she doesn't want to seem as though she's making a threat; she'll keep the audible part to a few bars and switch to a set song, one for fry, one that anyone who knows how magic music works should be able to tell isn't magic, even if they've never heard the song specifically.

This human has never actually heard of magic music! But that means he doesn't find music especially threatening.

Shark-being has a voice. He was sort of not expecting that. Sharks don't make noises even when whales do.

(It's a very nice voice.)

Back up!

...he will sing the first verse of Blithe Lake and see if the shark-being does anything.

- She waits a few seconds after he finishes and then dives back down to (after the prerequisite quiet magic) serenade him with a full verse.  And then back up!

Having heard the tune of her song twice he can croon it back, more or less, though the words are hard to pronounce and he doesn't try.

Coming here is the best decision Cyllene has ever made.  How does she convey this.  Wave wave wave.

- One wave (of the oceanic variety) is a bit choppier than the rest and engulfs her; she takes the chance to breathe and lets it carry her higher on the line of graspable things; she's better at holding her weight up than at hoisting herself.

Kerem comes back with a fish and hands it to Cymbeline, who tosses it down to her.

- She doesn't catch it but she does give up her high spot on the side of the ship to dive after it.

These people probably don't know she's a princess, and that means she doesn't know why they're giving her a fish.  Maybe it's just like trading plain music back and forth... but she doesn't have a way to give them anything, right now.  She could do some magic for them if she knew what sort of things they wanted.

She doesn't eat the fish, and times her next approach with another large wave so it's easier to establish a cling one-and-a-half-handed.

"Well, she's not eating it. Maybe that's not the kind of fish she eats, or maybe she only eats seaweed."

"She?"

"Judging by the singing voice."

Okay, it's not as though they gave her a living fish, and no nets are yet making themselves evident, so it might not have been a warning...

She chomps the fish, and swallows it mostly whole.

"There she goes. Shark teeth."

"Shark teeth!" Kerem agrees in a higher pitch.

...That other human sounds maybe upset?  She'll fall back underwater and sing another fry song, this time to both of them.  One about sharing.  Cyllene finds it pretty condescending, and did when she was a fry herself, but she's nearly certain that they won't be able to understand it anyways so what does it matter.

This at least does not cause the darker colored human to make more upset sounds.

There are starting to be enough clouds blocking the sun that Cyllene can see the humans a little bit better, but it's still not enough that she can really make out any individual traits they might have.  One of them has more hair than the other, she thinks, but it's still pretty short for a merfolk.

Do they do anything else?

The lighter colored one will sing her another verse of his song!

Oh, that's just what she wanted!  She waits for him to finish, again, and then disappears to sing it back to them.  She does most of it in a neutral syllable, but one of the lines was the same in both verses and she has a go at replicating some of the sounds, there.  And then she's back on the side.

"I wonder if she could learn Loegrian."

"...you might have to find out later, looks like the sailors want us inside, weather's turning."

Ooh, a convenient really-high wave.  If she lets it carry her up the side and then holds on with her whole body out of the water, maybe she'll be able to see them, properly?  Finally?

She can see the backs of them, though this one looks over his shoulder as he's hustled into a cabin.

Ughhhh.  Well, back to the other side, to see if anyone's there now?

Sailors, messing with ropes!

It occurs to Cyllene that weather like this could maybe be related to the sunken ships and their accompanying scores of skeletons.  She lets the sailors be.

(But still sticks around.  She's supposed to be off practicing her music for the next few hours; no one will miss her until after that.)

The weather continues to get more like this. The sailors are very busy and yell at each other a lot.

If it were merfolk (or, royal merfolk specifically), there would be an obvious person to magic the weather away, and they would do that.  But Cyllene doesn't have a way to communicate with them; she doesn't know what they're doing up there - she hums to try and find out, and it's clear they're doing something, and it's not something she recognizes, and it would be very stupid for her to try and mess with that.

So she continues to wait at the ship's belly, going back and forth, checking it on each side, again and again...

Is she sure? The ship is heaving around quite a lot and might smack into her.

Ow.

But yes.  She'll just give it a wider berth.

Those two from before are back out on the deck, doing something with glass globes. This one is sitting down and clinging to the railing while he does it.

Oh, they're the ones doing the magic.

She considers for several long minutes, whether to do anything that might interfere with this; she hums, trying to figure out exactly what they're doing -

She decides to try and say something to them, but what's something they'll understand - if she tries to sound frantic they might think she's the one that needs help; if she tries to sound imposing and authoritative then there are a lot of ways that could go wrong...

The storm keeps getting worse.

Whatever they're doing doesn't seem to be working very well.

Okay, she's going to - try and hold the ship still.

That's worse! Everything on the ship that isn't part of it - the humans, but also their glass spheres - goes flying. Many of them hit the railing; many go over entirely.

- That's really not what she wanted to happen!!  And humans are really not supposed to be in the water - she drops the ship-holding song (slowly, she doesn't need to cause more problems with a sudden jerk) and starts swimming for the overboarded humans.  It seems like the most important thing is to get them to the surface; she'll collect them there and close to each other before figuring out a longer-term solution.  - Or, breathing is important, and she'll make sure that they each get at least a couple breaths before she moves on.

They don't seem to die instantly on hitting the water and some of them can sort of kick to the surface under sufficiently supportive conditions but those conditions are pretty hard to come by in the storm.

The grippable parts of the ship are not remotely stable enough for Cyllene to want to try and attach humans to it.

She cycles, a few times, giving them each a turn kept above the water, trying to figure out what to do next - she sings, checking each one, making sure they're alive and keeping them alive, when it looks like they might stop -

There are things coming off the floor part of the ship, which is probably not good, but some of them do float.  She directs the humans to grip onto those.  (Mostly in a physical sense; almost all of them are too panicked and flailing for her to communicate with, and that would probably still be true if she spoke their language.)

what yes okay grab the wood thing sure

Cyllene suspects that humans need more light than merfolk to see well; she's seen lights shining out from where they live even at the long distances she's previously kept.  So she's not, initially, that worried about the orange light coming off the other side of the ship.

But when a few more humans seemingly on purpose go into the water to get away from it, she updates her assessment.

Yeah, whatever that thing is seems to be... eating the boat?

That seems super bad.  Well, the thing to do is still to bring humans to floating things - oh no, if you put too many humans on one floating thing it will stop floating - yes come on human, she's prying you off this thing but she'll get you to a new one.  (She's stronger than most of them but this would still be so much easier if they'd stop fighting her - she would do something about this, but she can't make them calm only about her and it seems really counter to what she wants to make them chill out in full generality; that seems like a great way to get humans relaxing with their faces in the water.)

- Oh, oh, there's a small ship?  It may have many of the same problems as the large ship, but at least it's not being eaten by light, and there are already some humans in it so clearly they think it's a good idea to be in there; come on, humans, get in.

Yes, great idea, thank you singing sharkthing!

She has really not gotten everyone there is to get, yet, but is anyone here lucid enough to attempt to communicate with her?  Any hint that there's something else more important she should be doing?  She'll take a songline-span to see if anyone tries.

This guy is peering urgently into the darkness in between hacking up seawater, but he doesn't see anything he likes.

Okay, cool.  Human: small ship; human: small ship; human - 

- the big ship gets eaten enough that its spines fall, thankfully away from the small ship but not thankfully pretty close to somewhere her mental map thinks there's probably a human.  She can't see from this side of the big ship whether he gets hit.

Well, nothing for it.  She can only be in one place at once.  (....Yet.  Maybe that's something to work on, later.)  She finishes pulling this human to the small ship, and then goes to find that one - is he at the surface, still?

No.

How far can he have gone??  - Farther, she supposes, than if the most recent human had cooperated with her helping him - alright, that's enough trying to look with her eyes; this is what magic is for.  Where is he.

Over there, descending underwater.

That's so - it's nothing she can't deal with, as long as she acts fast.  She can move very quickly, near-instantaneously, on this scale, when she sustains the right note - the thing to be careful of here is that she doesn't run into him, and also doesn't hit him with the force of the water she's pushing against; that slows her down...

It's much slower going on the way up.  She's pretty sure he's not supposed to bend in all those places (her own arm certainly doesn't, and those seem pretty fundamentally similar otherwise), and if swimming into him would be a problem then dragging him too quickly will also be.  So she keeps to her best guess at a safe pace.

But it can't be truly safe, because now he's had to have been down here for several times as long as she was ever clinging to the side of the boat.  So, ♫ heeyyy this human, aaaaare you like, aliiiiiiive?? ♫

Maaaaaybe?

♫ Be more alive than that!! ♫

Wow being more alive than that sucks actually? These creatures definitely can't breathe water.

- Okay she's going to make this one calm.  She can pep him back up when they get to the surface.

No she fucking isn't.

...What.

Okay, well, if he wants to struggle himself back into unconsciousness she will let him do that.

He doesn't seem thrilled about it, but he stops trying to breathe so much! And clings to her cooperatively!

Okay, good.  Good human.  Her skin is rough and not great for touching, but she hopes that the way humans come wrapped up is protecting them from the worst of it.  She hasn't smelled blood yet, in any case, which is kind of a miracle.  And it's not really the biggest issue, here.  Not worth worrying about.

The thing is that Cyllene could have seen this piece of big ship debris coming from farther away, if she'd been paying attention to looking out for that sort of thing instead of paying attention to not knocking this human around.  And what a foolish mistake, when she can sing herself more attention - she'll start on that in a moment.  For now, she needs to get them out of the way while still not knocking this human around - it would be easy enough if it were just her, but -

She jukes that way, toward the big ship, which is a bad idea because there's more debris that way, and the whole ship is going down - where's the little ship - on the other side?? - okay, she's going to dive lower, and go under the big ship; she'll have to avoid it but hopefully the belly will stay in mostly one piece, and they'll be protected in its shadow from the more erratic debris.

He can't go on not-breathing-too-much forever.

Ugh, okay.  She adjusts her grip back to account for the lack of cooperative clinging, and sings up her concentration, and - okay, time to come out from under the ship and back into the debris - there's a lot of it and now that she has more concentration, concentration has stopped being the limiting factor.  She dodges some even though it means being more rough with him than she really would like, and in one case she has to just curl around him and let herself take the hit.  She has to spend a full song-length to heal herself from that, especially since she takes it in the ribs, and - okay, is he just dead now?

Yeah.

Okay.  Okay, she can fix that, but it will take a while and be really tiring and who knows how many new problems will happen while she does.

So she takes him to the small ship, and pushes his body up over the side, and flips back down to collect the other straggling floaters.  If they show any signs of resistance she's not going to hesitate on trying to sing them calm; she needs this to be fast.

"Your highness?" croaks the other one. "Your highness!"

(The small ship won't be able to hold everybody.)

Why can't ONE thing go right for her right now!  (Okay, the calm working on everyone else even though it didn't work on the dead one is, she supposes, one thing going right.)

But ugh.  FINE.  She finds other floating things to put NEXT to the small ship, and drapes the last few humans on those as she sings them alert, and - if she revives the dead one now there are still just going to keep being new storm problems.  She attempts to gesture to the small-ship humans that she wants to get them that way; are they able to communicate any ideas about how to make that easier?

She wants them to - what, row in that direction? It's pretty hard to make any progress in these waves but they can sort of try??

Oh, cool, some seaweed that's ship-stuff.  If she snatches one end of it can she get them to keep holding onto the other end?

They can tie this end of the rope to the rowboat?

Oh, that's even better, actually.  That's much better.

She thinks that probably humans in a ship are more durable than ones by themselves, so she lets herself go faster than she did in ferrying any of the individuals, though she's still careful about the speeding-up and slowing-down parts.

Out!  Of the!  Storm!

This human resumes trying to squeeze water out of "your highness".

Okay, okay, singing her energy back up and then - which first.  Probably it's worth it to take the time to decide...  She sings to figure out the location of the humans she left in the storm, and there are that many living ones in that direction, which is at the surface, and that's how many there are supposed to be, so they aren't in that much trouble.  She'll be unhappy if she has to revive another one but as long as none of them are dead now it's probably basically fine to keep her focus here.  Even though the other ones probably think she's abandoned them and are scared by that...

Nothing for it.  Hm, she could start right away, but she thinks it'll go faster overall if - she pats the edge of the small ship near the dead one several times, then dips back under the water to say, "Your highness?", and pat-pat-pats the edge again.

...sure.

"Sir, what are you doing with the prince -"

"She brought him here in the first place and he doesn't have a pulse, I'm seeing if she can do anything else for him."

Oh, good.  She positions him where she wants him, which is draped over the side so that she can see him and so any water that falls out of him will not be in the ship, but where hopefully no more water will get into him.

And she sings, for - really quite a while.  At least it feels like it.  It's probably only three or four song-lengths.

(She'll come back to fix his bones after she's fetched the others; for now he just needs to stop being dead -)

"- hruk," he says, sort of, and then he's coughing and moaning.

Okay!!!  Now she would like the other end of the rope, please.

Okay??

Yes good.  Energy up, up, up, and then - back for the rest of the humans.  Most of the way she isn't even really swimming; she's forcing herself in that direction with magic directly, holding her arms straight against herself to reduce drag.  She aims low and then swims up, to avoid hitting them with anything.  How are they doing??  Are there any new problems for her, here?

Most of them are managing to cling to life, more or less, and also the floatable things they have on hand, but they are various amounts and kinds of injured and waterlogged.

Could be worse.  She brings the rope around to each of them and makes sure that they're holding on to it while she tries to come up with better ideas for how to transport them.

It is apparently not trivial for injured waterlogged humans to cling to a rope while also clinging to a flotation device but they do their best.

...Fine, now that they're all connected to each other, she'll spend a verse or three looking for better float stuff?  Especially if there's one big float thing she can put all or most of them on.

The big part's on fire! Everything else is pretty little chunks.

FINE she will just go REALLY SLOWLY so as to not DRAG THEM ALL UNDERWATER.  Ughhhhhhhh this is boring and they keep falling off the rope and bumping into each other and then she has to re-attach them, and, well it's not as if she's using her voice for speed, so she might as well use it to fix their injuries as she basically drifts along.

A bit of a ragged cheer strikes up when it's clear she's doing that.

Awww, okay, they're really cute actually and things are basically fine.  Even if she has to go really slowly.  She'll take them to the little ship and then she'll heal the ex-dead guy and everyone else, and then take them all to shore - she'll be able to bring the small ship back to get these humans, once she has somewhere else to put those ones, and - really she did very well here.

She runs out of injuries before she runs out of distance, but, yeah, she's getting really exhausted, so there's still something to sing about.

Once she runs out of injuries "your highness" is very interested in the proceedings.

Actually she does get kind of bored after a while, and takes a break from pulling to give the humans a chance to demonstrate some sort of gratefulness or relief or whatever other communication.  For her morale.

Does this facial expression count?

Oh!  She has teeth too.  She was trying to hide them earlier because sometimes it made the humans get wrigglier when she didn't, but maybe in this context it's fine?

Wow shark teeth. But she had lots of chances to eat someone and didn't.

She wants to see if he'd touch his hand to hers if she raised it, but her skin is so much rougher than any of theirs, so - she doesn't.

"Are we going the right way?"

"I don't know. Maybe she at least knows we want land to be on."

Okay, that was at least - maybe a lateral shift in morale, overall; she'll continue.

She takes the trip as sort of a relay with herself, dragging the boat a distance and then going back for the individuals.

Eventually she can see land, and a ways after that it seems like the humans can too, based on their reactions.  And a while after that, she hears - the voices of other merfolk.  Her family.

She gathers all the humans together and... waves.  Points to herself and back in the direction they came from and to herself and back in the direction they came from.

"You have to go to the other shark people? Okay. Thank you so much - I wish you could understand me -"

Oh, now that she sees and hears him speaking at the same time she makes the connection that he was the one who sang to her, before.  Pity it's too late to do anything with this information.  .....Though, if they're saying things to each other, now, she'll - "Meeting all of you is the best thing I have ever done.  I hope that changes before I die."

He waves, when she goes.

The official story, in the aftermath of her mother and three of her sisters (and an entourage) coming to the site of the wreck to see what could possibly be the cause of that much battle-tier music, and finding a lot of debris but no corpses, is that Princess Cyllene is so powerful that when presented with such an enticing challenge as rescuing a shipful of humans, she couldn't resist.

This is sufficiently an official story, and not the actual sense of how her family treats her, that Cyllene is not very surprised when it leads to her grotto being found, and everything in it being destroyed, and to her family harmonizing against her.  It's to keep her staying put.  She -

She will want to die if this keeps up for very long.  But it was worth it, and it will have been worth it even if....

She has one lever for making sure this doesn't keep up for very long.

"...No."

"I will die if they keep me like this."

"You will not."

"I will.  I have that much freedom left."

"...Mm," he acknowledges, fake-casual.  "But I don't have everything you would need.  To do this."

"How long would it take you to get it?"

"A while."

"But you can get it?"

"...Yes."

"If you're lying about this, I'll never forgive you."

"Llene, we've gone over this; I don't lie to you."

"If you say so."

She does make him keep her updated on his progress, but she's well enough satisfied that he's trying that she doesn't turn to any drastic measures.

He has, he informs her, a way to make someone able to understand any language they hear, at the cost of their entire voice, absolutely no communicative noise out of the throat, none, which would be bad enough for someone who does magic like he does, but for her -

She wants it.  How's she supposed to fit in with humans if she can't understand them?

....Is she sure she wants to fit in with humans?  Is it not enough for her to find some uncolonized bit of sea; he'll give her a makeover, make her into a manta ray or something, whatever she wants -

LEGS.

"Fine, legs.  Fine.  Only the best for my favorite niece, 'whatever you want,' I say - it'll take longer to get those; I don't even know where I'd start."  (He does have some idea of where he'd start, now that he thinks about it, but better to pad his timelines, here, with someone as capricious and... desperate, as she is.)

"Thank you."

Cyllene has a lot of time to think in, these days.  She wonders how humans think about time.  She knows, from her past visits, that the surface has patterns of light and dark (not like the storm, more drastic than that), and that humans seem to be active in the light and go in their straight caves when it's dark.  Do humans sleep?  Merfolk sleep less often, if so, though maybe for longer.  About two of these light cycles for every sleep, maybe more.

There are a lot of sleeps, after the incident with the ship.  She loses count in the 30s, though she keeps on tracking it as 34-or-35, and 35-or-36, and 42-through-45...

Before her uncle finds her any legs, he gets his tentacles on something he's pretty confident will get them to the shore unnoticed, and figures out how to implement Cyllene's idea of having there be two of him, for alibi reasons, and finds a way to track the location of the human she wants.

He has not found a way to break her family's spell, by the time he comes up with a way to turn her entire body entirely human.

"Eeeeeeeee!!  Thank you, Uncle - I'll miss you!"  She doesn't hug him because she doesn't hug people.  (But maybe she WILL when her skin is SMOOTH.)

"...Llene, can you wait; I - I can probably find a way to crack it -"  He would say that there's more work to be done on the transformation, before it's ready.  If she were one of the people he lies to.

"...No.  I have to leave.  I can leave -"

"...Yeah, fine.  Okay.  I know you're dying here, or whatever.  - But I do think it'll be a lot worse on land; you'll be far away all the time -"

"I'll live."

"Very funny.  I suppose... shall we go, then?"

"Yes."

She drinks a potion and sings until she has two favorite uncles, and one of them hides in the back of the cave and the other squishes a pod until it bursts and envelops them both in a cloud of ink.

"Can you see us?" asks the pod-bursting one, after the ink dissipates.  The other doesn't respond.  The first swims over and claps in front of the second's face, with no flinch in response, and fixes his hair, still to no reaction, and then retreats and pelts a shell from the floor at him.

"Ow - no, I can't see you," the second whines.  So the first wraps a tentacle around Cyllene's arm and starts dragging her toward land.

He's quiet, as they pass through the merfolk settlement, but once they're clear of it he doesn't really shut up.  It turns out that he knows lots of things about humans, much more than he ever told her before.  He describes writing, how humans talk with ink and not-seaweed and make something that lasts, instead of something that's only as good as memory.  He tells her what he knows of their magic, which as far as he knows there's only one kind of.  And - he hesitates, here, but he does say that he's heard strange music, with no voice, coming from human objects.  He doesn't have a clue whether they might work for magic, that's really not his purview - there's still time, she knows, right?  If she wants to skip that one.

She just laughs.

Fine.  That's about what he expected.

It takes a long time, but not, actually, forever, for them to arrive at the shallows Cyllene's new necklace has been pointing them at.  Jupiter hits the point where he has to squish down to stay completely underwater and sets her on the sand.  She accepts the trinket.  He - incants.

She accompanies.

And she becomes - human.  Her fingers lose their webbing; her skin turns from gray to orange and rough to smooth; her lower half splits - she becomes much smaller, and her chest gets some fat on it, and her teeth get rounder, and she's HUMAN!

...And she needs to breathe.  Can she stand up on her own, yes kind of, although it helps to use her uncle like a rock to push off of.  And then she hugs him, finally.

"Aw, kid."  Hug, hug.  "You still wanna give up your voice?"

"Yes.  I'll figure out how to get it back, or if you do you can signal me."

"Yeah.  Yeah...  Let's get to it, then."

She sings until she doesn't, and she tolerates her uncle's drawn-out goodbye until she sits down underwater again, and then he pulls her closer to the shore until he can't really, anymore.

And then she crawls.

It hurts, a lot, more than getting hit by the ship debris did, but it's not damage; she knows to expect it and she can clench her (flat) teeth and - just - keep - going -

Though once she's properly out of the water she wants a break.  Flop.  One final wave in the direction of where her uncle might be.  Re-flop.

They did not choose a particularly busy beach. She might have a wait.

The good news about this curse is that it's meant to motivate her, so the pain stops pretty quickly once she quits trying to move.

So after a song-length she continues.

"Who are you?" calls a voice.

- Cyllene can understand her!!  (Ow.  Ow.)  Wave wave wave wave wave??

"...are you okay?"

Eeee.  They're so good.  Hand reach out?

(She wonders how hard it'll be to get someone to bring her to 'your highness', and in the course of that she thinks those words, and ~she knows what they mean!~  She was right!  About it being a name, ish, or at least more a name than something you say to a hurt person you want to fix.  ....Hm -)

Highness? she mouths.  (She knows enough language!  To be able to tell that a 'your' would be calling this land maid!  Royalty!)

"Yes, I'm Princess Zoyah. Did you swallow too much water to talk?"

Blink.  ...Huh, well, yeah, it would make sense that they would all live together, too.  How does Cyllene... she puts a hand over her throat.

"Aaand what happened to your clothes."

...Cyllene takes out the piece of seaweed tying her hair back and offers it to Zoyah.

"No, like, clothes." She rustles her own skirts illustratively.

Cyllene re-ponytails.

"I can't take you anywhere stark naked!"

Gesture at her body, and out, looking around, looking for something, not finding it.  Shrug.

"Uuuugh. Okay can you like stand up."

Well.  Walking is definitely going to hurt, but standing up is something she's done before, and it didn't.  Admittedly she had a helpful uncle last time, but, she can try?

...It will maybe take her a few tries.

Zoyah can give her a hand?

Oh, okay!  Cling.

"Whoa there you can grab my arm in particular, okay? You steady? I'm gonna need my arm back to give you my overskirt."

Oh, no.  How does Cyllene... she mouths you arm, and points at it with her free hand.  In picular.  She doesn't have 'sorry'.

She gets as stable as she can, and ends up taking a few steps in place as she does, but - that's not her trying to go anywhere, so they don't hurt.  Cyllene wishes she knew how kind to think of the gesture of giving 'clothes' as.  Probably a fair bit; they look way more complicated than seaweed hair ties or even like, sails, if she assumes this floppy flat stuff just grows somewhere.  But that probably also means she's not meant to keep it for very long.

Once she's mostly stable Zoyah reclaims her arm and unbuttons her overskirt and secures it around Cyllene's underarms, where it doesn't cover her knees or elbows but at least gets the absolute essentials handled. Then she can offer her elbow again and try to lead her up off the beach.

Ow.  Ow.  OW.  Ow.

She within a few steps ends up gripping Zoyah's arm quite tightly, although she stops as soon as she notices.

"YOWCH. Did you break your ankle or what?"

.................Break.

"Okay, well, try not to rip off my sleeve or snap my wrist and I'll get you up to where my brother or his friend can fix that."

Oh good.

Unfortunately it's really hard not to hold onto Zoyah increasingly hard.  What if Cyllene just crawls??  At least then she's only hurting herself.

"Hey, don't get sand in my skirt!"

Cyllene gets a weird and unpleasant feeling in her face in response to this, but it goes away after a second.  If she... holds the skirt up in front of her knees with one hand... and tries to crawl on three limbs... does that get objected to.

Not out loud.

It's obviously really slow going compared to what Zoyah's capable of, so Cyllene doesn't want to make things worse by taking breaks, and she keeps getting that feeling in her face and then everything gets blurry and then WATER starts coming out of her EYES??  Which at least does clear up the blurriness, but it seems like a sort of thing that's really not supposed to happen to humans.  So probably she's broken in some way.  (This thought makes there be more water.)

"The magicians can fix your ankle probably," Zoyah assures her.

Well if Zoyah's not concerned about the wet, Cyllene will.  Keep.  Going.

There's stone steps cut into the cliff. When they get up to the top there's a path through the gardens to the castle.

This takes SO LONG and it hurts SO MUCH but she can feel herself getting closer to him, through her necklace - this would be so much easier if she could REST, and maybe even faster overall, but she wants to have the best relationship possible with the first human helping her, especially since she's probably his sister, and someone Cyllene is going to keep interacting with...

And it's still better than another day at home.

"Cymbeliiiiine! Kereeeeeem!" Zoyah calls into the castle.

"I'll fetch them for you, your highness," says a servant who then runs off.

Can Cyllene STOP MOVING now???

Sure, sure.

True to form, she stops hurting almost immediately.  She still feels kind of - harrowed - but.  Hopefully things will be better in a minute even if they can't do anything for her curse (and she kind of expects they can't).

Here is: this guy!

- Wave!  Wave wave wave wave wave!

...wave wave? "Zoyah says you're injured?"

....She doesn't have a way to communicate a 'no', let alone any of the complexity of the situation.

"She also can't talk."

"Maybe I should fix that first." He pulls out a little glass ball, and approaches, and holds out his hand to her.

Hand!!  (The exciting part here is not that she thinks this will work.  It's just: hand!)

".......huh."

"What?"

"I don't think she's actually injured, she's - I don't know exactly. Miss, can you write?"

Blink.

"...you can nod for yes," he demonstrates, "or shake your head for no."

Oh, nod nod!  - Shake shake shake shake.

"...so, can you write?"

Shake.

"Hm. - Zoyah, can you get Hermione to get her into a real outfit, I might be able to do something or Kerem may but I don't think I can do it right here on the spot, might as well get her decent first -"

"Yeah, sure. Thisaway, mysteriously not injured woman."

....She tries to beg with her eyes and shakes her head, slowly.

"...you can't change clothes here in the entry hall."

"Maybe someone could carry you, would that be better?"

Nod nod nodnod nod!!!

"...okay." To the nearest servant: "Bring her a blanket and then fetch - three - maids to carry her to a guest room and help get her dressed."

Cyllene feels INTENSE RELIEF about this.

....Hm.  Maybe she should - she points to the guy, and mouths your highness while nodding, and then the same to Zoyah, and then to herself.  And then to a servant while shaking her head.

"...I haven't learned to read lips, sorry."

Bleh.  Fine.  She'll just wait.

Servants appear and carry out the prince's instructions! They would like to put her in this here outfit.

She will do her very best to cooperate with this!  Her very best is not good and also she's covered in sand.

Yeah they'll brush the sand off in the process. They do get kind of frustrated with how she acts like she's never worn clothes before in her life.

Well, her best is all she can do, here.

Eventually she is clothed. Does she want to see Prince Cymbeline?

.........She nods for this, and braces for the pain to come in once they start carrying her that way, but no, that doesn't seem to be what's happening.  Phew.

Instead they show him in! He's got a pen and paper. "Even if you can't write, can you draw?" he wonders.

Well, she accepts whichever of these objects he hands her?  But does not seem to then know what to do with them.

He takes the pen back and makes a line.

!

She can do that!  Or try.

"Yeah, there you go. - you'll need to dip it again every now and then."

Ohhhh.  It's like ink!  Line dip line line dip line linelinelineline.

She can probably use this to convey information, but the lines keep not doing what she expects, so maybe she should get down the basics before she tries anything complicated.

He is patient with that for the time being.

Oooookay.  She tries - hm, no, she scratches that out.  What about.... no, not that either.

Hmmmmm.

She sets down the pen and uses her finger to draw a curved triangle shape going off her forearm.

"Is something wrong with your arm?"

Headshake.

She splays one hand and draws a curved line of webbing, between each of her fingers.  Flicks a sharp line coming off of each of her fingernails.

He watches but does not seem to know what she's getting at.

Big teethy smile.  Zigzag.

...

"So I already kind of thought somebody cursed you but maybe I was wrong about exactly how?"

Nod nod?

"The magic on you feels weird, so I can't tell precisely what's been done, and the effects that are obvious are that you can't talk and that you - really don't like? moving around? Except drawing seems mostly fine? - but are you saying you - used to be - not a human at all?"

Nod nod nod nod nod!

"...were you one of those shark people?"

Nod!!!  She - touching arms is fine, Zoyah said; Cyllene taps him there and there, on his left arm where breaks were.  And she won't touch his leg but she can point there and there and there.

"...you've lost me again."

He was maybe not super with it when he had those injuries and it was months ago.

...Okay she's going to try drawing again.

She scratches out a very simple human silhouette and points back and forth between it and him.  He understands this yes?

"Human," he agrees.

...Headshake.  Nod, headshake - she presses a finger into his arm and nods, and then points to herself and shakes her head decisively, points to a servant and does the same, points vaguely out of the room in several directions and shakes her head.  Hand back on his arm and nods.

"Me, Cymbeline, in particular?"

Nod nod nod!  (Cymbeline.  She's going to remember that, now.)

She folds a corner of the paper over the drawing of him, and starts adding curvy lines on top, denser and denser until it's almost all black.

On the original layer, next to the corner, she draws a second figure with fins and a tail.  Points between it and herself several times.

And then unflips the corner.

"...you're saying you're the shark person who helped after the shipwreck a few months back?"

Vigorous nodding!!

"- well, welcome! Thank you very much! I was pretty sure at the time you couldn't understand us, is that new -"

Nod!  She puts a hand over her throat.

"...same time as you picked up the curses? Or the transformation was incomplete and you just can't make sound in air?"

Shrug.

"Not sure how it happened?"

"I'd like to figure out how to uncurse you but I don't think I'll get far on information this thin, alas."

Nod.

If she goes to take his hand and wrap it around her arm, will he leave it there a moment?

...sure?

She pushes off the chair to standing, and is fine, and shifts her weight, and is fine, and takes a step and winces into herself.

"So it's - is it specifically walking?"

...Head waggle.

"Zoyah said you crawled most of the way, is that better?"

Shake shake shake shake.

"...same curse-wise but easier because you don't have practice balancing?"

Nod.

"Balancing's hard, I'm not good at it myself. Was it okay being carried?"

- Nod.

"You don't look sure about that."

Shrug??

"Is this about something you don't know," he holds out a hand, "or something that you can't communicate right now because you can't talk?" Other hand.

Other hand!

"Okay. How do you feel about learning to read and write?"

Nod nod nod.

"...I'll go get some books, then, since you're cursed in the walking somehow and I don't think I can carry you."

Off he goes.

She will practice her line control while she waits.

He comes back with books! He writes out the alphabet and goes over the sounds that the letters make by default. "Though there are loads of exceptions to most of these."

Cyllene is attentive!  Once they've gone through the alphabet she makes some attempts at copying out letters.  (Specifically, she's trying out ways to spell her name.)  Her handwriting is shakey and very large, probably in part because she grips the pen in her left fist.

"Are you sure you're left-handed?"

Headtilt?

"My handwriting is worse if I write with my left hand than with my right hand. Also the pen's easier to control if I hold it like this," demo.

She tries the new grip with both hands.  There's not an appreciable difference in the writing quality; she sticks with the left.

Sailin
Siline
Cail
Cilleen
Sylleen
Cyllene
Cylene

"Cyllene?"

- Nod!

"Alrighty. Most of these spellings could work, really, but I think if I pronounced it right then this one makes the pronunciation the most obvious."

Nod nod nod.

"My name's like this," he writes it, "and Zoyah's is spelled like -" That one too.

Nod.

What's up with the books?  What are those?

He opens one for her! It has a woodcut on the title page and then regularly printed words after that.

!
!!

She scans through the first few pages very quickly and then flips back and forth between a few of them to laboriously copy out:

I  do  not  have  to  learn  read .

"Huh. Is this to do with how you can understand us talking now and couldn't before?"

Nod!

"Well, I got easy books to have you practice with so I don't know if they're also the most interesting books you could be flipping through."

I  do  have  to  learn     to   ryt rite rait?

"Yes, let me get you a slate for that, actually." Off he goes and then he's back with chalk and slate to practice on.

Sure, she'll try it.

Why  better ?

"We've got a limited supply of paper but you can wipe the chalk off the slate and use it again, so it's good for practice you aren't going to want to look at again anyway. Ink's dearer than chalk too."

Oh, nod.

Cyllene will pretty happily do at least an hour of self-directed practice, if no one seems to want her to do anything else.

Cymbeline drifts in and out while she's doing that. The servant who's bustling around making the guest room guest-ready stops her when she tries to lick the slate clean and supplies a rag to do this instead. She is later brought a lunch.

...Is anyone else going to join her so she can learn how humans eat by copying?

Not by default, no! She can't go to the dining room!

She's a little worried she might choke or something if she tries to eat like this.  - Hey you servant, have a food?

"- servants have our own rooms where we eat, miss."

I  don't  know  how. to  eat.  as a  human.   I want  to watch.

"- oh." The servant considers this for a moment, then takes Cyllene's fork and knife, cuts off a bit of meat, and eats it, and then repeats equivalent processes with bread and the vegetable soup.

Okay, small bites, and it looks like there's a lot of chewing happening with the even-flatter back teeth.  She.... will try this??

The prince said to get her the nice food so it's a rare venison steak.

YUM.

She exerts willpower to eat it like a human.  Slowly.  With the little trident.

The servant watches for a bit to make sure she is not going to make some incredibly amateur mistake and then resumes her other activities.

Cyllene is being really careful!  Once the meat is gone she remembers to figure out how to write 'thank you' on her slate and shows it to the servant.  Also wowwwww the meat was really good but the other two things are like nothing she's ever known and that's incredible.  Why do humans eat tiny oceans....  It's very cute.

In her practice she occasionally switches back to paper.  Using a pen is nearly a separate skill from chalk, and she needs to work at it too, and also there are some things she now has the capacity to tell Cymbeline.  (Writing is SO COOL, she can say a thing IN ADVANCE and it will STILL BE THERE, LATER.)

Cymbeline shows up after lunch. "How's it going?"

"I had to show her how to eat."

"- oh, that stands to reason, thank you Jane."

Cyllene waves and shows him her slate, which is full of swoops and curlicues of attempted grace.  And then passes him a paper.

My  name  is  Princess Cyllene  of  An Under-water Kingdom.

My Father the King  is so  very  bad.  He  hates humans.  I love  humans.   When  I saved  the  people in  your  boat,  he said , "Cyllene  must be  punished.  She  must not  do  that  again."  Many of  my family  sang  together  at me  so  that  any time  I  move  too away  from  his home  I will  feel bad pain.  By  swim, walk,  go on  knees, or  tell someone  to  take me  and  that person  does.  If  I do not  tell  or ask  a person,  and  I am  took,  I do not  hurt.

I  am so  joyful to  be here.  It is  very good,  of   many  things.

She also has a sheet that's just a list of words, containing many of those in her letter and a fair few besides.

"...gosh. Your singing is magic? We weren't sure - Jane, put her chamber pot ocean-ward of the bed and the desk both - or do I misunderstand, does that not help -"

She nods at the singing question, and then - if she rises and gestures him over, will he help her try and walk oceanward?

He'll actually gesture Jane over to do it. "I'm not very good at balancing myself, let alone another person."

Sure.

She doesn't bother to avoid putting her hand on Jane's arm, because hands are really useful for holding onto things and she's pretty sure she won't be inclined to tense up and hurt anyone, this time.

Walk.  Walk walk.  Walk.

"Okay going in that direction?"

Nod!

"Oh good. I'll have someone find a little cart or something for you, that should help for non-oceanward movement."

"...you might not know what a cart is. You might not know what wheels are. I'll show you when something appropriate is scared up."

Nod.

Off he goes to scare up some kind of cart.

Nice.  Probably.

Although now she is a little bit stuck on this side of the room until someone helps her?

As long as she's here Jane is going to explain the functions of the chamber pot, actually.

Ohhhh.  Nod nod.

Cymbeline is back with a wheelbarrow after not too long. He has filled it with clean straw so it's less awkward to sit in. "Probably the ideal would be to just put wheels on a chair but I don't know if they'll have that finished today."

Huh...... sit?  Sit.

Jane rolls her back to the desk.

"There you go then. Jane can probably guess when you want to be at the desk or in bed and roll you there."

She does still get ouched a little in the course of getting back into the desk chair, but maybe she'll get better at that in time.

- Oh, she wants to show Cymbeline something else, will he come over here?

Sure, what's up.

She takes off her necklace and moves to put it on him.

...

"What does that do?"

She scans over her list of words.  She points to 'know,' 'find,' 'you.'  And 'Cymbeline;' she has that, too.