#Glory and Gore || IC

[royalreef]

"I do not like how many of landfolk emotions are secretion based." So says the person with the natural slime coat.

[royalreef]

GET IN THE WATER. GET IN THE WATER. GET IN THE WATER. GET IN THE WATER. GET IN THE WATER. GET IN THE WATER. GET IN THE WATER. GET IN THE WATER.

[royalreef]

@paleobird || Starter Call.

The first thing that comes is a heavy snort, a deep rolling of the breath, jaws opening for a sliver as the scent wafts in. It is a familiar one. A known one. It is one that sets the body tensing regardless, fills the air with a silence that could swallow ships whole.

Miranda jolts a little, but does not respond so directly to her sister. There's a touching of the end of her head against her sister's temple, a softer chirrup that cannot be translated into the languages of those who do not know it by heart. As ever, when she pricks her head up, fins framing her face, the sunshine of late summer dappling over her scales and warming the sand around them, she already knows it is the harpy. Any greeting is moot by this point, politeness extended in a certain crucial direction, one where whether or not Ava herself introduces her intrusion onto the private beach or not hardly matters. Other things swing into crucial motion now, and they are determined by the blue merfolk laying in the sun, her legs kicked back and her heels buried in the sand.

"Ava," Miranda introduces her first, her hand snaking up a few precious inches to grab onto Bellanda's wrist, hooking gently over the extension of her arms that billows out into fins. "Bellanda- Ava, you were not called for. Why are you here?"

Why today, she doesn't say. She glances back down to her sister, finds Bellanda looking back at her, her fins loose around the back of her head. Another nudge of Miranda's head against her sister's temple, and her second chirrup gets a more quizzical chirrup in reply. She wants to talk, wants to speak, wants to use the words that were laid beside her as a pup as her first gift, but Miranda keeps flicking the ends of her fins, keeps blinking and turning her sight back to Ava out of the corner of her vision, keeps feeling it bud along her spine.

Bellanda takes her turn first, speaking while her younger sister stalls, twisting her head up so as to get a better look at the mess of blue and feathers and penguin-posture. There is not a point at which a smile crosses her face, not a point at which she does anything more than stare plainly down at the harpy, so much larger than her younger sibling, so much more well-muscled, so much more the gesture of violence incarnate that her position promised.

"Ava...? You are the harpy, correct?"

[royalreef]

@captainseamech replied to your post:

I mean… If there's food involved…

"There is not! We are speaking of drinks. Likewise, is your anatomy even capable of fine appreciation of tastes? I would not presume so."

[royalreef]

"[I don't like having to eat in here. There's no covered outdoor section?]"

Bellanda tilted her head up at the ceiling, squinting her eye in the harsh fluorescent glow. It was all white up there, just a repeating pattern of mass-produced tiles flecked with tiny speckles of black. She didn't know why it had to be white. It felt like an odd color for a ceiling, distressing in some strange and subdued way, like somehow the landfolk were trying to trick her into thinking it wasn't there at all, like they were trying to get her to bump into it. Not that she could, of course, gravity holding her firmly down to the floor and pressing on her hips, but still the thought was there.

Miranda, pressed to Bellanda's bad side as usual, paused with her older sister, waiting for her to step forward again to keep pace, rather than risk falling out of tune. "[It is too cold out there, remember? There are tables there, but they are not... It is better to eat in here. I do not like it either.]"

Bellanda huffed, and moved ahead again, pressing tighter to Miranda, so that she could feel her younger sister breathe in and out. The entire thing left her feeling vulnerable, exposed. It might've been how Miranda had been living for years already, where she had spent most of her time, and, really, this wasn't too different from the mess halls of her soldiers or the banquets of her fellow royals, but it was just...

The people. They still set her on edge, still felt like they had something to hide from her, still felt like they were watching her specifically in a way that settled poorly under her gastralia. Bellanda was used to being the center of attention in a bad way, used to being marked out as the least favorite of her sisters and a black mark against the rest of the courts, but at least she had settled into some kind of routine with other royals. Here, she had all the same feelings of being talked about behind her back, like having someone plan all their moves in advance on how to hurt her and torment her, and none of the familiarity to know their moves ahead of time, to guess at what was being plotted. Worse yet, Miranda was here, factoring in, and whatever attention they gave Miranda felt worse for it, as Bellanda knew too well what lurked behind those gazes leveled at the Crown Princess.

Too much on the line. These weren't her people, weren't anyone who she could have called a companion, and even if some hopeful part of her thought she could have used this to her advantage, she didn't want to be so open around them.

The table was set off to the side, which brought the moderate comfort of having something that Bellanda could press her back against and keeping her head turned outwards. It also meant she could keep Miranda in full view of her good eye, which served as another minor mark of confidence, something that she could draw back upon if needed.

Miranda, settling into the chairs that had already been brought for them, nudged her head forward, and pushed the squirming, fuzzy bundle up to Bellanda's hands and claws.

"[It doesn't feel right,]" Bellanda complained again, lowering her head and sinking her head down into its side, speaking with her throat and not her mouth. She punctured her teeth down into the stomach of the otter and pulled back up, the abdominal cavity hanging low beneath her mouth for a moment, like a bag filled with stuffing, before a slight toss of her jaws tore it open and spilled the hot, steaming viscera out into the plate. "[I feel like they're all looking too closely at me. You know we can't trust them, right?]"

"[Well, yes, I know—]" Miranda was protesting, just a little, her voice warbling with a childish overtone. "[But it is not all bad! You just have to give them a chance, that is all! You would like some of them!]"

"[I don't think so.]" Bellanda shook her jaws, slinging off a few stringy pieces of gristle that clung onto the mass she picked out. She lifted it up, gleaming hot and slick in the strange light, and dipped her head forward, to gently press it against the tip of Miranda's mouth. "[Here, can you eat this? For me? I just don't think any of them know what they're dealing with, and ignorance is more dangerous than malice, you know that.]"

Miranda pulled her head back, gently shook it. The meat had dyed the front of her jaw red with blood regardless, sticky and dripping off of her scales with a dark sheen in the high light. When Bellanda saw Miranda's tongue flick out, darting along the blood and lapping it up, even that alone felt like a victory.

"[Well, yes, but... You just need to talk to them more. That is it.]"

[royalreef]

@littlebadger replied to your post:

"19 FEET LONG, YOU GREW???"

" ...... I have been this long for years??"

[royalreef]

@miratenebrarum replied to your post:

P vc you can shoot me I guess. If you want to see things explode. Not much blood but lots of blue.

"Maybe..." Her fins are swept back, her eyes pinched up with frustration, but her words are startlingly genuine. Nearly comforted, even, cooled over with the light fondness of someone experiencing the kindness of a stranger.

Considering the topic, it's a tad strange. But, even if she's shooting the idea down, she does seem to genuinely appreciate the gesture all the same. "I do rather like blue... It is easier to see than the red, which is always rather nice. I suppose I will have to keep you in mind."

A pause. And then, quieter, smaller, she asks, "Does the blue glow-?"

[royalreef]

@baiika replied to your post:

Vicky; I can upgrade your limbs if you like <3

"NO—!!!"

The word tumbles out as a shout, louder than Miranda wanted, sharper than she wanted, too deep and too heavy like the thudding of a drum as her voice comes before she can think about it. The noise has made her move, a realization that occurs to Miranda only after the sound has already ceased to startle her, realizing that she's risen up onto her arms, back legs still tucked beneath her body. She glances down at herself, the pale of her fins flushing a dark pink, and then she has to glance up at Vicky again, stumble over herself to make that seem natural, intended.

"No, no, no, nope!!! No thank you!! I do not need your limbs, now or ever!! It is not even in my limbs tonight!! And I don't want to anyhow!!"

[royalreef]

And there it goes—

[royalreef]

@starfaite inquired: " The ocean really is beautiful , it's a shame humans use it as a dump . Why won't they appreciate what they have ? "

"What they have?"

The words slide out so easily, so innocently. An afterthought, really, like a pair of misplaced sunglasses after a party, only asked for long after the day had passed and, honestly, don't worry about rushing or anything. Something so simple, so underwhelming, so why-even-bother?

But there's a weight behind them, stated so easily, slipped in under Miranda's breath, even as it comes unruffled, unhurried. They sit there, cold, hard, structure where there shouldn't be, an inhale, a gasp, a keen and abrupt intrusion into the body, more where there should be less, catch when there should be give. The ripping of the skin wouldn't even be felt, so sharp the edges, so professionally they were delivered by the curl of Miranda's tongue that, just maybe, the conversation could've used a new shard of glass for a rib.

Her hand curls — just enough to provide surface to rest her chin upon, delicate and fine. Her claws sit just beyond, fingers tilted outwards at a coquettish angle, yet tipped with meat hooks that crook downwards with dizzying certainty, their edges silvered.

Miranda does not blink. She is all gleaming, glittering light, a coy lounge against her seat, blushing-pink and eyes possessing the same unavoidable gravitational pull of an event horizon. Everything, except for her, turns sour. Everything else, beyond Miranda, turns the cloying sweet of rotten fruit, sticking to the roof of the mouth, to the tongue, dripping thick down the back of the throat, interrupted by floating sheets of sickening meat, turning, jostling, altering the flow as they lodge in place, spreading their tendrils out against the esophagus.

The crown, damascus gold and pearls like tumors, watches. Hungry. Cold. So, so very cold. The cold of being forgotten. The cold of being left behind. The cold of an antarctic winter dropping into heat-death. The cold of flesh that breaks off in chunks as black as the ice. The cold of tears frozen inside the jellied membrane of the eye. The cold of now. The cold of forever.

She waits. Oh, she can wait. She wants to hear what Layla can come up with.

[royalreef]

"But they..... are not skeletons...?"

[royalreef]

you're the top of a mountain, the bottom of a well, the deepest darkest pit in the ocean. sublime and dangerous, terrifying and distant, many want you, many need you, many die because of you, of you, for you.

you're the blood they spill, their last breath, their final moment, and that fills you with pride, and fear, and guilt, and hate, and love, so so so so much love you can't keep much more.

are you keeping those gifts or are you those gifts to begin with? was that last moment yours? it should've been yours.

you want it to be yours

Is it love? Love is such a strong word. She's fairly certain she would know if it was love, theoretically, at least.

She's not the most experienced in love, not really. When she was younger, she didn't really experience even the puppy love crushes that others might speak about. Not many candidates for that in the first place, after all. It was just her and Bellanda for so many years, the two left together because it was just easier to treat them as one entity which offerings of basic necessities were made to, to be tossed to the nanny staff to ensure they didn't manage to get themselves killed in the interim.

Neither of them were allowed around other children, children which would've come from other families, other lineages, and thus would be expected to be loyal to them. That would pose a risk, could muddy things as they got older, either distracting from their duties or creating another avenue from which their positions could be exploited. It was just her and Bellanda, and Bellanda didn't like anyone else enough to get close to them, so Miranda followed suit and kept her nervous distance.

When they got older, even Miranda's entrance into romantic fancies could never be called one of love. Education, maybe, if she was being kind. Once Miranda had settled into her new lessons, was permitted around those who began to show an interest in her, then still yet, could she call that love?

They came in two varieties. The suitors were the first to make their gestures towards her, curtailed at first as her suitors' court opened. They were gentler then, but firmer in a certain way that's hard to name. They spoke and moved with experience, expertise, did not leave Miranda room to question nor doubt them. She thought she had loved a few of them, eager and ready to guide her and to provide structure into the new pains of settling into her title and her duties for what they were.

And if she had entertained them for longer than they really deserved, then, well, that was just to be expected as well. Nothing new was being written at that point, and there had been plenty of other Crown Princesses who had come before who had first enjoyed flights of fancy and impulse with the first suitors to swim beside them, so when Miranda's mistakes came, they were brushed away with ease and forgotten.

Miranda learned quick, as such lessons tend to do. Bellanda learned quicker, and it was Bellanda's education that drew the tentative early period to a close quickly, that taught Miranda to respond first with her jaws and not to entertain sweeter bait. Romance was for physical benefit, after all, and that was why they came.

The second were those who came to her not bearing romantic intents, and the second were those where she learned the swiftest. Like all others of her station, it was best not to spend too much of her time among her fellow royals, all ulterior motives and their own lineages to tend. To keep commonfolk around her was to find someone who couldn't pose such a risk to her, who she didn't have to worry about overstepping or watching what she said around them, and that was a great benefit to any royal needing someone else to occupy their time.

They would come, as staff or as notable individuals that she invited in, offering her time or treats with which to sate their appetite, and they would be thrilled at the attention she lavished onto them. A Crown Princess like her doesn't just pay attention to anyone, after all. To capture her eye was to have something special, something that had to suggest that they were special too. Crown Princess Miranda, Cees'rril'ta Yhtun-Tswe Slz'Exkii, was right at their fingertips, and they could taste the decadence that dripped off her, could have her at their beck and call, were so close to her that they could dip their fingers in and drink it up from the tap. She was a drug, exhilarating, thrilling, the cusp of danger cradled in the hand and burning hot against the thigh, greater and grander than they would ever again touch, and she got them high.

They would come to her, debase themselves for her, beg her for more of her time, more of her attention, more of what she could give. They would think they could keep her, could hold something like her tight in a little box, keep her tucked to their chests and never let her go. They thought they could take her home, that she was something that ever could exist in a home, and if she even so much as vaguely alluded to the idea, they took it as confirmation.

They were cute. Miranda could pick her favorites from among them, select which ones she thought looked the prettiest, or complimented against her scales the best, or said the nicest things about her, or entertained her the most. She wouldn't even pretend that they provided her the same deep need that she fostered in them, but not for lack of trying.

She did try. She had to try, that time was filled with the pangs of loneliness, the deep and desperate urge to find connection, to find a place in the world. Maturity had done something to her that it did to all merfolk pups when they came of age, and it had filled her with a new and sudden interest in people, and that was when she really began to notice the lack of it elsewhere. She depended on Bellanda still, yes, but she was a void, a massive sucking pit of need, and she was starving, hopeless, lost, clinging to Bellanda tighter and tighter as neither of them found they could survive without the other.

But it never worked. Miranda couldn't have explained why it didn't work, only that it didn't. Maybe they didn't, couldn't, understand her? Maybe there was something that was lacking in them, something that made them speak and talk as though speaking to someone else in Miranda's place, someone other than Miranda herself. Maybe there was something in Miranda, still hiding behind the projection of someone so much larger than herself.

Or maybe it was that they had fallen in love with that image of Miranda, the Crown Princess that lavished them with everything they could ever want, the same image that made her enemies quiver and made the courts look upon her when she spoke.

She didn't know. They ended poorly, irregardless. At first Miranda attempted kindness, but something like her is never capable of full kindness, not really. Then she gave up, and stopped trying, and focused solely on the dual needs of keeping them away from anything they might ruin and entertaining herself. It was entertaining, really. Pretty things remained just as pretty when they broke, and Miranda enjoyed the long tease, the leading up, the betrayal, the sharp cut of emotional high as adoration spilled over into the deepest fear. If they loved her for her danger, then they should expect to eventually face it. It was only common sense.

No... She found the ideals of love to be more enticing. After all, just because that need couldn't be met in her suitors' court or in toys, didn't mean the need for connection went away. It just grew and grew, stubborn and furious in her chest, a deepening want that swallowed up the ocean around her as she imagined all the theoretical people who would be able to meet it for her. Someone who would listen to her, hear her, see her first and foremost for what she was and not get lost in what she pretended to be. Someone who could comfort her, and hold her, and knew exactly what to say. Someone who would keep her safe, make her feel secure, could vanquish the yearning from her heart and leave her whole enough to become her own person again.

That was what love was supposed to be, wasn't it? Someone that she could rely on. Love wasn't worth anything if it wasn't someone meeting her in kind. Everything else would be so much easier, so much simpler, if she could find someone to love, someone to confront the world with her.

Maybe she had done something wrong? That could be one reason why love hadn't come to her yet, wouldn't come to her. That she had made a poor nest for it inside her heart, so that it couldn't nestle inside, couldn't make it a home. Or, maybe she had driven her love away? It could've been in any of the people who had come before, people who Miranda had tried to love, who she had thought she had loved, but now wasn't sure. If she had loved them, then surely it would be more potent than that, and so maybe she just hadn't gone far enough, pushed along longer and deeper and simply tried harder to love them.

This was around when her training for her ambassadorship had begun, and the fairytales her tutors had given her to help her learn English only furthered this point of inquiry. Maybe there were only a few people in the world who she could love, select and special people, and she just hadn't found them yet? That made sense to Miranda. That maybe love was something she was destined for, but it just hadn't happened yet, so it floated around unfulfilled until Miranda managed to luck up and find them.

Or maybe find her? She liked the thought of them finding her. That maybe this need for love in them was felt too, great and massive and despairing, and so they needed her too. And maybe they needed her so much and so badly that they'd do anything for her, risk anything, run blindly into danger if it meant simply looking upon her face for once, for just the potential of knowing, oh! That's who I love!

And she had felt the want again on land! Which was not to say it had ever really gone away, no. If anything, it had gotten worse in the span of time she spent away from Bellanda for the first time in her life, a rampant loneliness that threatened to kill her with no one else in the world who would check up on her.

But, after a year, the want did come, and it came directed and purposeful this time, pointed in the direction of other people, other people who she could say she wanted! She could not say if this want was love, but wanting had to be the first step to love, right?

Well. Except that her love, the love that she wanted, the love that she was speaking of, was the wrong love. The thought would've been preposterous earlier in her life, that there could ever be a thinking, feeling person who did not have such a love, such a need for others there in their life, but Miranda had learned better quickly.

She had learned that landfolk do not, could not, love that way. They did not arrange themselves in groups, did not become one with their loves, focused on unimportant things like kissing or sex, things which only ever existed to serve the love, by all of Miranda's accounts. The love that she did have, the love that she had for Bellanda, was something different to the landfolk, and she couldn't explain it to them, because they never would feel that way for anyone else and never could.

So it was want. Miranda would not allow herself to be tricked into thinking it was love again, even if she wanted it to be, and even if the way the landfolk touched her and talked to her made them act very much like the love was supposed to act. And love did require a mutual aspect, Miranda had learned that already, from all the times she had tried to make herself love but failed when someone else said they did.

Times which were rapidly repeating, Miranda was learning. Sure, they might not know love and might not be capable of it, but they were just as capable of everything that had come before. Plenty of landfolk wished to own her, and they were just as willing to try everything that had come before to do it. It didn't really matter if they wanted to shine her and put her on a shelf or if they wanted something more substantial out of her, it was all just a different form of ownership.

They would talk about possessing her, wanting her. They would discuss the ways that they would do it, ways that they could capture her attention and her time, and sometimes Miranda would humor them. Most of her usual company was back in the Merkingdom, after all, and they were harder to call up and insist that they come keep her company now that she was on land. She still had her other needs, other forms of enjoyment, and landfolk were just as capable of providing, even if she never grew any more interested in them.

She really didn't know what to do at this point. The love had to be coming, there had to be someone out there who would love her, who she could love, that she could sink into and close her eyes and be able to relax for a moment. But if her love was coming, then it had to be a terrible tower they were traversing up to her. It had been so long now, and Miranda was getting so cold.

[royalreef]

SAWYER.

[royalreef]

She's stopped where she stands. It's hard to tell when this happened — she's been off to the side for a while, not in the middle of the party as it bustles and moves about, shuffling from the drinks to the music to the seating and continuing onwards in a cycle, but in a place where it's easy enough to step around her, her tail, the largest offender, easily pressed to the wall where no one will trip over it. It's been a few minutes, maybe? It feels longer than that. She's been there a while, standing there on her back legs, not moving. Seemingly she was just watching the crowd, those unlucky souls who try their hand at dancing, or those bedecked in costumes which prohibit such activities. She didn't say anything when anyone joined her, seemingly just taking it in.

Maybe someone with an eye for detail would've noticed how her legs have locked up, stiff and rigid beneath her body, fastened tightly where they connect to her hips. Or maybe they might've noticed her fins, starting to pull back more and more, fronds tightening back to the quill, narrowing gradually more and more.

Someone else might've noticed the way she was breathing: hard, heavy, mouth opened slightly, her tongue clustered up against the back of the bed of her jaw, throat bobbing with each rapid inhale. They might have seen the way her eyes had gone wide, the pupils narrow, not looking at anyone as they passed, not observing the decorations, but staring off into absent space without a focus.

Most people wouldn't have noticed much of Miranda. She was there, and that was all they needed, especially if they already knew of her, had seen her before, had occupied her minds the same as all of the other "most charismatic classmates". She wasn't doing anything, merely passively existing, and thus was as much a feature of the environment as everything else, an expected landmark from which they could orient herself.

It's not even until she reaches up and grabs the hand closest to her that any true indication comes that this might not be the truth — that something has strayed from the expected path, and Miranda might not be wholly standing here of her own volition.

Her grip is tight. Tight enough to start to hurt, defaulting back to merfolk standards, not those of exposed skin and a lighter, slimmer build not intended to cut through open ocean. Her claws curl down unintentionally, tips digging in where she overexerts herself. Even this, a mere lapse in intention and thought, provides a demonstration of the true strength behind her grip, as bones creak beneath her digits, the pads of her palm as snug as a vice grip and just as assuredly intended to dash escape.

She has still not stopped staring at nothing, her eyes hard, her breath quick and pained. She speaks low, soft, scarcely heard even this close above the music, the tinny and cheap speakers that hurt Miranda's earfins even now. She doesn't talk like this. Either her declarations of agony are so boisterous and dramatic as to provide hints that she's intentionally making this all up, or she is silent and slinking away, where no one else can see her. Never like this. "I do not feel-... I do not feel good."

[royalreef]

"Oh! I did not realize that you had become a sire and have children of your own. I shall have to recall this, for later."

[royalreef]

@littlebadger inquired: “ I don’t think you’re truly mean. You have sad eyes. ”

"And I think that if you believe myself to have 'sad eyes'," the two words came back in a perfect mimicry of his voice, turned back a few seconds to replay what had already been spoken, "then you clearly do not know enough about me to make any assessments whatsoever."

She exhaled hard, whuffing as her nostrils flared open wide enough to see a sliver of pale yellow skin. Her eyes, bespoken as they were, did not turn upwards, did not look back. The muscles beneath her iris flickered, drawing shut the two sides of her slit pupils to thin them further, a singular crevasse splitting open a shallow sea. Dark and deep and unspeaking of whatever lay beneath it, dwelling and thriving so long beneath the surface that they might never be seen by anyone who did not already live there all the same — and contrasted so sharply by the brilliant turquoise all around it, a sharp and vivid teal undercut only by the faintest rivulets of true blue, something that should have been warm, inviting, beckoning, but always looked faintly off. No whites to her eyes, no relief until her eyelids pinched shut, until her salt organ trailed off from the corner and slipped down towards the end of her snout.

Most people couldn't read her eyes, Miranda knew that. Virtually all landfolk, really, because they didn't know what they were looking at. She was smart enough to realize when they found her uncanny, as reading people was a part of her job, a necessity for her day-to-day. It wasn't a feeling she shared or understood with much depth, but she did still know that.

It was just... not what they were used to. Eyes were like that, really, because they were unique as to each animal which used them. They had to be. They spoke innately of navigation, being a direct means of contact, interaction, comprehension with the world itself, and what they were looking for and how they were looking for it mattered. Pupil shape spoke of light, whether it was uniform or dappled, whether it needed to be stretched across a horizon line, whether the structure sought colors or not. The color and the way the equipment parsed color suggested what they were looking for or fine-tuned for, when they sought what they did, how they understood it to be what they needed. It even told of when eyes were not the first line of understanding, when they were mere articles worn after the fact, utilized but not depended upon, or when they were vital, essential, weight-bearing upon which the rest of thought depended.

Thus, minor differences were hard to miss, and especially when someone was looking for familiarity in another. Even if something was slightly wrong or misplaced, then that changed things, altered the rest of their structure in a way that could not be tolerated, could not be understood.

Landfolk had whites to their eyes, because they used those for communication, eye-contact and eye-direction important to them. Landfolk eyes were all soft material, without an orbital ring to keep their shape. They tended towards roundness, because landfolk were tall and did not stay down low, where they had to judge distance despite themselves being in shadow and their target being in light. They were better with color, and Miranda was better with light. Miranda had more of an eyebrow ridge to shield and protect her eyes, complete with her nictitating membrane and her salt organ, and landfolk examples were paltry against her own.

All of these made it hard for landfolk to look at her and recognize her for what she was. Her thoughts did not map to theirs, written in a different language, impressed upon a different material, possessing different subjects as landmarks. They looked at her and could not comprehend her, in the same way they might look at a frog, or a turtle, or a bird, and be lost even trying to guess at what their emotional state, their given reactions, might mean. They would look and see a vast and uncertain expanse, a great and terrible void, perceive mystery as darkness. Already they struggled to see her as little more than an animal, at least when she was more merfolk, less princess, wearing her influences a little more blatantly. It just became harder when they sought details for refuge, thinking that they could find console in the map of her body, expecting her to have some latent traits that were theirs, instead of her own.

Miranda struggled with it less, or she thought so, at least. It helped, certainly, when she barely cared about eyes to begin with. Merfolk weren't very visual, and what was the point with staring into someone's eyes? If you were that close, there were better things to do, and most of the time she was far enough away that it didn't matter what she was looking at.

But it also helped that she had been around landfolk for years, and they had only ever seen the one merfolk in all their lives, defined entirely by however long Miranda wished to talk to them. That was what irritated her, she supposed. Landfolk could change. It wasn't like it was hard, they could certainly be taught how to read a merfolk, how to read her. Miranda had been taught herself, and she had settled in fine to it, without many hiccups after the first year or so. If they had just tried, if they had realized for a moment that she was her own, that she possessed her own rules, her own mannerisms, that she could not and would not move nor look like them...

It was all besides the point. It didn't help either that most merfolk also struggled to read her, but Miranda knew exactly why that was, and that was because she didn't want them to. She had been taught that too, how to obscure herself, hide her hand before she played it. It was useful, in the way most practical knowledge she possessed was, in that it left her untouchable and thus free to enact her will as she pleased.

Her fins pulled back, carded themselves into a straight line so that all three laid on top of each other as one, pressed the fuzz near her cheek into her scales and against the fronds.

"Truly, I do not know what you are hoping to get out of this. Do you have a point in trying to insist you know who I am, or are you merely going to continue standing there and wasting my time?"