“Well, lucky you,” Ridley pouted with a miserable sniffle, her arms tight across her body as she braved the weather with as much dramatic effect as possible. At his totally privileged realization that he’d never been sick, a privilege she, too, had boasted of until recently, her eyes rolled in annoyance but her lips stayed quirked in an amused smile. It was impossible to ever truly be annoyed by him, even if he was oblivious to his fortune. “Um, okay, well, it totally sucks, obviously. You have this scratchy feeling in your lungs, like swallowing super sandy water, and your tummy feels like it does when you first try to walk on land, and- oh, the headaches, it’s awful, Ronan,” She was only scratching the surface, but her tone grew more and more pathetic until she was all but pouting at him, lip extended and all.
Maybe she was milking it, a little bit. Why? Well, Ridley wasn’t sure yet, but it was always nice to have the pity ready to pull, if need be - though she suspected it wouldn’t work too well on Ronan.
Either way, a thought came to mind to distract her from the illness she was making a fuss over. “Wait- wait, wait, so you don’t play video games and stuff? Wow, like, I totally thought you’d be a gamer dude, or whatever,” She chuckled, but she understood. As much as she thought some video games seemed fun, even Ridley doubted if she could ever figure out how they worked well enough to sit and enjoy playing them. “What sort of human are you?” Ridley asked, curiously, in a whisper- she’d learned that humans had subgroups, and that somehow, as the Assyrian’s came to land, they tended to mold their disguise after certain types of humans they saw.
Who did Ronan want to be? It was hard to imagine him as anything but Ronan, even without his true form to boast about. Ridley smirked.
“There is nothing interesting to tell about me, nothing that would top your stories, probably,” Ridley snorted, a bit self-depreciatively. In her mind, nothing were as mythical and intriguing as the hippocampi; those who existed before time itself. But she smiled at his decision to choose truth, and she considered the question for a moment before finally selecting what she wanted to know. “Alright, fine. You have to be honest. Which do you prefer - sirens or mermaids?”
As Ridley explained how it was to feel sick, Ronan decided that maybe that wasn’t a new thing he wanted to try. Or, well, maybe he still did want to try just a little bit. It was so hard to find stuff he hadn’t tried before, he would always get curious, even if it sounded terrible. That did also make it very hard for him to feel very sympathetic towards the siren’s situation, unfortunately. “Well, you’re still alive, so it can’t be that bad, can it?” he said, patting her on the head.
Just to prove his point of it not being that bad, she soon enough perched up again on the topic of human forms of media. “Nah. Some games sound cool and all, but they take way too much time” he said, shaking his head slightly. He has tried a few during the 90s and he definitely didn’t have enough focus to finish most games, especially not when they seemed to be getting more and more complex with time. “I do enjoy watching some cartoons from time to time, though.”
“What do you mean ‘what type of human’? I just act like I always did” Ronan shrugged at her next question. “That’s the best way to do things than try to fix in one of their defined boxes, trust me. Most times, humans themselves will come up with the explanations to any weird behavior we might have. That’s the biggest lesson I’ve learned visiting land over the years.” He got closer to her before whispering the next sentence. “Just don’t tell the others. It’s fun to watch Assyrians struggling way too much at trying to fit in.”
“I don’t believe that” he said when Ridley said she didn’t have good stories. “Didn’t you travel around before coming here too? There must be something crazy that happened somewhere.”
Her truth question made him laugh. It was probably something that he should be expecting, the way the two species seemed to always be under some sort of indirect conflict, but still. “That’s the big secret you think I hide?” he asked before answering. He wasn’t stalling, but she had promised him interesting questions. “Okay, so. While I’ll admit you sirens can be very fun, with all your fierceness and battle ready attitude in most cases, Little Starfish is a mermaid, so I’ll have to say mermaids just for her.”
