Sorry I mysteriously vanished
I’ll try and make up for it by telling you about mermaids.
I wonder if I’ve told you all about mermaids before? Probably not. Like ghosts, there are MANY kinds of mermaids. Some are outright malicious, but mermaids are more akin to humans than most creatures. Like they have the same moral color wheel as humans do and shit.
Anyway there are lotsa kinds of mermaids. There are tropical mermaids, who will fucking PANIC if they get sent to Earth cuz 9 times outta 10 they get sent somewhere too cold and they feel like they’re dying. They’re all very flowy. Flowy hair, lotsa unnecessary details on their tails that look like plants or giant underwater flower petals. They like to braid plants into their hair and collect things that glitter.
There are shore mermaids, who hang out, unsurprisingly, near the shore. They tend to be thick skinned and sorta grey when you look at them from the front, not particularly fast or strong. They have shorter hair, usually, to keep it from getting tangled up in rocks.
There are arctic mermaids, who, like their tropical counterparts, will freak out if they get sent to Earth because they’re too hot and DYIN’. They come in two types. First, I want you to imagine a baby sea lion. All fluffy and white and shit. Now make that into a mermaid. Now, I want you to imagine a fully grown sea lion. Same thing. The fuzzy ones are usually pretty witty, and fucking HILARIOUS to talk to, and the rubbery ones tend to like playful fighting. Er.. not so playful fighting? Like, if they were humans, most of them would be boxers and monster truck drivers and wrestlers and football players and stuff. Violent, but not malicious.
There are high sea mermaids. They’re what humes usually think of when we think of mermaids. Fish tails, usually very scaley and pretty, nice hair, they sing at each other. They do well in most temperatures and can sustain a lot of pressure, but they do have breaking points. When they show up on Earth they mostly get pissed off because they were in the middle of something, or are 100% chill with it because hey, they live in the middle of the fucking ocean anyway. Only a few of them live anywhere near reefs.
Then there are deep sea mermaids. Lemme tell y’all about THESE motherfuckers. I don’t know MUCH about deep sea mermaids, because they live where no human can travel, cuz, ya know, water pressure would crush me into the size of a bead and whatnot. But I do know that for a long ass time now, the deep sea mers have been in an ongoing civil war. Like, generations long. They can’t escape easily because if they go too far up, the lack of pressure and overabundance of oxygen in the water will make them dizzy and they sink back down while their headspace is woozy, but a lot of them are sick and tired of the fighting. So when they show up on Earth, it’s like a fucking paradise. As far as I can tell, the mers that show up that DO wanna fight get executed and eaten- which is kinda disturbing, but hey it keeps the peace. We can’t send these mers back to their homeland, tho. Most Arasivs can’t get anywhere near them, since they live in the BOTTOM OF THE FUCKING OCEAN, and the Arasivs that can get to a meeting level, where the mers aren’t dizzy and the Arasivs aren’t dying, are very small in number. Most of them don’t wanna go back, either, so they refuse to go to that neutral point, and it’s not like the Arasivs can follow them down any further.
Anyway, mermaid one oh one for y’all. Oh! I guess I should mention that they’re all agender, female presenting? Like, they reproduce asexually, although I think sex is a thing they can still do anyway? So gender isn’t really a thing for them? I’m kinda iffy on the details. None of them have boobs, though. They’re not mammals, they don’t lactate, and blobs of fat aren’t exactly helpful for swimming. No nipples, either, so you artists can stop worrying about your drawings being unsafe for little ones. Heaven forbid the fish tiddies.
Anyway, last Saturday a tropical mermaid ended up in the (sewage) river in town. It was way too cold for her (and way too fucking gross I mean seriously), so she sniffed out a warmer water source (yeah mers can smell water it’s really weird tbh) and ended up crawling across grass and concrete to the local YMCA, where there is a heated pool and also summer swimming classes.
The YMCA volunteers absolutely ADORED her, since she was very patient and friendly and helped out with the swimming lessons. Hard to feel unsafe when there is literally a mermaid swimming around with you making sure y’all are okay. The chlorine bugged the shit outta her but she likes small children and she liked being the center of attention.
Exavier and I found out because a friend of a friend of a friend made a facebook status and the friend friend friend told us because even though she wasn’t hurting anyone, it IS our job to send her home. We got there at like 9, after all the events of the day, and she was glad we were there because while she had had fun, the chlorine was REALLY starting to bug her and also she needed to hear about one of her friends doing something or another with a different member of her friend group? She was halfway underwater for some of the stuff she told us, but I am mostly sure it was just gossipy stuff and nothing critical.
Unfortunately, she’d dropped something important while she was in the river. But she was so cold and gross, she didn’t even notice until she was helping the kids learn to swim and wanted to show them whatever it was she’d lost. So Exavier and I offered to go look, even though EW GROSS, and she said that it was underwater in muck and since humans- even Arasivs- can’t breathe underwater she’d have to go look for it herself.
In order to keep her from scraping herself raw on the ground again, we had to carry her. And by we I mean Exavier. He could heat up their immediate space bubble so she didn’t get too cold and also he’s the one that lifts weights for fun. What is fun about lifting weights?! Nothing. Nothing is fun about upper body strength. It is all pain and necessity.
Anyway. We got to the river and Exavier had to head the water around her based on where her bubbles and splashes were coming up at and she spent a LONG ASS TIME looking for her thing. I didn’t even get to see it once she found it an honestly I didn’t WANT TO because I was ready to be DONE WITH THAT JOB. It was, like, 11:30 when she finally found the damn thing and I was ready to be home! It was dark! I was done!
We didn’t bother taking her back to the apartment- I’d brought my clipboard with me and we would just use oral runes. Harder, and more energy consuming, but taking her out of water (even gross water) was the worse option.
Sunday I binge watched Ore Monogatari. Like that’s it. That’s all I did, all day. I don’t know what I did with my time Sunday before and after Ore Monogatari because it wasn’t anything important!
Today I was hired by one of my friends’ moms to clean their gutters. Estelle didn’t wanna do it and I like getting paid so whatever.
Oh! Wow how was gutter cleaning the first thing that came to mind! I met an Ent today! Ents come in two varieties: vaguely humanoid, with distinct “legs” and “arms” or legit trees. Like, trees, the exact same as you see when you go outside, but they can move their branches at will and their roots can be pried out and they can move.
Most Ents don’t move tho. Like, even Golem Ents- the kind with “arms and legs” don’t like to move. Treant Ents will almost NEVER uproot. The older ones can’t, and the younger ones will only do it if there’s a forest fire or too much blood in the soil or something. They mostly just sit there and photosynthesize and listen to the wind and memorize EVERYTHING. Their memories are flawless, supercomputers forget more than they do.
I met a Treant Ent today. The Old One was hanging out in the park, near the playground. The Old One’s branches were casting shade on the kids as they played, and the Old One’s roots were on top of the surface, sprawling for what seemed like a literal mile. Ents don’t have genders, btw, or pronouns. They either get called Ents or Old Ones. I said hello to the Old One, and we had a nice chat. I was told that I felt like I attracted a lot of trouble, and I replied that that was fair. I mean, I do after all. The Old One warned me to be careful, and to make sure that I always had someone or something to keep me grounded, and then I was politely asked to send the Old One home.
The Old One’s true name was Krrgiktik’Hsh-Trrtk. Human mouths can’t pronounce it.
So yeah, good day. Ents are basically always wonderful to talk to, don’t let anyone tell you differently.
