He closes his eyes and tries not to think about pink elephants.

For a few moments there is silence. Then there is a ripping noise, followed by a low warbled tone, and then the air does something incomprehensible, but he is too busy thinking about pink elephants to really notice, and then everything quiets again.

There is a odd, yet vaguely pleasant smell of kelp, and he can hear a dripping sound. There is also what sounds like wet barefoot feet stepping lightly on the pod floor.

"Can I open my eyes now?"

There is a choked and gurgling sound similar to "..eshh". If he doesn't respond then, there is two light taps on his shoulder.

He opens his eyes at the first tap.

"Knock knock. Who's there?"

To his side he sees a blobby humanoid monstrosity! Wait, it's... deflating? Slowly it returns to the shape of the Tender.

Even adjusted, they are really quite disconcerting to a human eye, with the pod lights and without the idealization of the mind space. While they have returned to roughly human proportions, the glistening dark scales, too wide webbed feet, and noticably bioluminescent red eyes makes them look more like a deep sea creature than a human, and not particularly a friendly one.

They open their mouth, points to his face, and makes an opening motion with their hand.

(If he peers into their mouth he can see what looks like baleen lining the roof of their mouth.)

Well, yes, he was not expecting them to be human. But still. It was way easier to forget that in the mindspace.

Baleen. Ok. Sure. Wait, does that mean they're mammals? He tries to check surreptitiously.

While the rest of the face is quite human, now that he takes a moment to inspect them, he can see that there are some distinctly non-human features. While the upper body is fairly close to an androgynous human, the legs are... wrong. He has to think about it for a moment, counting the bends, and it's not the same. Where the thighs would be on a human, the first bit of the leg goes backward rather than bending forward.

There are also various auxiliary fins on the sides and back that seem great for swimming. As to mammalhood, hard to tell. If there was gentialia in the normal location, it would be as if squished by a scaly body suit.

Since they seem to be looking at his face, they catch him looking down, but doesn't seem to be bothered by it, other than that it indicates that their communication attempt is not getting across.