( Closed starter for @tiagonussbaum )
Gemma wasn’t sure what to make of what she’d just experienced. She had, of course, hurried over to the mystery woman at the mention of the Coral Sea, eager to get her to stop talking so loudly about things that were secret from the humans of Port Vale. Once she was at the woman’s side, she’d asked as many questions as she could think to ask - who and what this person was, where she was from, what she was doing here, what she knew of her sea, and more - all in hushed tones, of course. For all the questions she’d asked, she had gotten frustratingly few answers. The woman - Scylla - apparently, claimed to be considered a ‘sea witch’, whatever that was. She didn’t have much else to say, but pretty much all of it was extremely suspicious. Gemma helped her get to the water anyway though. On the off chance that Scylla was what she claimed to be, it could be useful for the woman to owe her a favor - and that would certainly be preferable to potentially making a powerful enemy.
Still, she had more or less expected Scylla to either remain in her current form upon contact with the water, or transform into a mermaid - so when the woman instead seemed to disappear into the water entirely, Gemma was more than a little startled about it. Eyes wide, she frantically looked around the water’s surface, as if expecting the woman to pop back up somewhere. But no, she was just gone. Was it time to add ‘sea witches’ to the list of beings that lived in Assyria? She didn’t have long to consider before movement in her peripheral vision alerted her to the fact that she was not alone, fear flooding her at the realization. She had done her best to guide Scylla to a stretch of shoreline that was generally empty and did not offer clear lines of sight. There was only so much she’d been able to do, though - it wasn’t as if she had a private stretch of shoreline she could use to help sea dwellers come and go. Maybe the person hadn’t seen what had just happened? It felt foolishly optimistic to assume something like that - but by the same token, operating under the assumption they had seen would create unnecessary chaos if the onlooker hadn’t seen a thing. What to do...?
The first step was clear - continuing to look bewildered was a must. The panic she felt was probably helpful too, judging by the way Renzie had looked after having allegedly seen a selkie. Expression set, she looked around, but pretended not to spot the person even after she determined who it was - Tiago. Just great. She supposed that Tiago was better than Steph, but not by much. She did her best to continue looking shell-shocked (not difficult, since she actually was), and slowly made her way away from the shoreline, towards her cottage. If he hadn’t seen her, it would be a bad idea to engage him in conversation now.