@gemmawalker
“Gemma! Gemma, hi!” Stella hadn’t exactly gotten the hang of keeping objects in a bag or purse just yet. She understood that humans often carried these bags to store their personal effects while in motion, but she also liked having them close. Right now, as she jogged up to her acquaintance, Stella had three different books, her cell phone, a water bottle decorated with stickers, and a roll of masking tape. At least the masking tape roll was around her wrist like an extra-chunky bracelet, but the rest was just in her hands.
“Have you seen an orange cell phone case anywhere? I took my phone out of it because I accidentally spilled some juice on it and needed to make sure that nothing went wrong, but I don’t remember exactly what happened after that because I kept changing seats to catch the light perfectly. Have you ever tried reading while the sun’s in your eyes? It just doesn’t work well at all. I didn’t account for the sun changing position so frequently in the evening, but that’s my mistake. I’ve got the times down for tomorrow so this doesn’t happen again… Did I ask you about the phone case yet? How are you going?”
Gemma looked up at the sound of her name, unsurprised to see Stella making her way over with quite the assortment of objects. The princess had been on the beach for a while now, but she had decided against engaging unless she was approached first - there had been others around after all, and she was getting rather tired of needing to carry on fully ‘human’ conversations with the princess of the South Pacific. It had been helpful at first, establishing herself as a friendly acquaintance when they were in the company of humans - but the longer this had gone on, the more she worried it might be seen as a kind of betrayal when they were finally alone in the same place and she informed Stella of who she really was.
She waited for the rambling to end, then answered in the order she felt made the most sense. “I am well, thank you for asking. I have not seen an orange phone case - I can help you look, if you would like.” She ignored the question about reading with the sun in her eyes, glancing around instead. An orange phone case shouldn’t be that hard to find, unless Stella had somehow buried it in sand or lost it to the ocean - more importantly though, she was scanning the area yet again for humans. There was still someone not too far away, but that someone seemed to be packing up as if to get up and leave the beach. With any luck they actually would do that, and she would be free to say what she wanted. In the meantime though - “is that it?” she asked, pointing to a place a little ways away where a bit of orange was poking out from the sand. She got up and made her way over, picking the object up and observing that yes, it was indeed a phone case.