Meredith has never been interested enough in amusement parks (beyond some curiosity about the advancements of engineering) to bother looking for one that’s open at night, so she actually didn’t know that.

Honestly, she’s kind of temporarily forgotten that it should be her turn now. Explaining things is also a bit fun, it’s not her fault!

“It doesn’t kill me if that’s what you wanted to know. It isn’t fun to be out in it either though. It’s sort of itchy, sort of painful, not at all pleasant.”

"…Okay." This is great news for Sanna if it's true, but she's a bit skeptical, and she doesn't know how she'd go about testing it. "Oh, I forgot that I meant for it to be your turn."

(She could flash a UV light at Meredith the next time they meet but it’s up to her whether that’s worth the possible trouble! Especially since Meredith doesn’t seem aggressive now that they’re talking.)

“Oh, yes.” She grins, keeping her fangs human-like, and nods. “I would like to see your original form.” That’s probably going to be a never or at least not soon at all but what if it isn’t and she avoids it needlessly.

(Sanna isn't imagining that anything other than actual sunlight would work. Besides, anyone can fake being in discomfort or distress. She'd have to do it without Meredith knowing, and she doesn't feel like being that malicious. Meredith hasn't hurt her yet.)

Sanna grins back. "Nope."

Meredith sighs and shrugs, "It was worth a try." Yeah, she didn't have high hopes about it. Anyway, she can now wait for Sanna's replying question. 

"…You can ask another question, since I didn't answer that one."

Yay! "How does your kind of mermaids organise itself? Socially, I mean. Do you live in groups or pods?" 

Oh good, another anthropological gorgonological WHO CARES question! She's so unqualified to talk about this! And also kind of hates thinking about it! But it's SO MUCH BETTER than answering personal questions!

"We're organized on three levels. The smallest level is the pod, which is basically a family, organized matrilineally. Imagine a mother, her kids, the daughters' kids, the granddaughters' kids, and so on. The pod elders — the leaders — are usually the oldest mothers in the pod. Only mothers can be pod elders. There can be more than one pod elder, it depends on the size of the pod; but I'm not sure how high it can go, or what the upper end of 'normal' is."

"The next level is the clan, which is like a bunch of pods led by a chief, who sets rules and allocates assignments and routes and so on.

"As far as I know, the different pods in a clan don't really know each other or identify with each other, they mostly choose their clans based on what the rules are, or what kinds of assignments or routes they expect to get. So it's like, if you look at a city, it has a bunch of families in it, and they all live in the same city but that doesn't mean they know each other or feel a strong bond with each other. They just happen to all live in the same jurisdiction. Or if you look at a country, it has a bunch of provinces or states, and they all have to follow the overarching rules of the country, but aside from that they're all just kind of doing their own thing.

"To me, clans sort of feel like the most artificial level of organization. I think they exist mostly because the queen couldn't possibly oversee that many pods on her own. I don't know how the clans decide on a chief, I imagine that's one of those things that varies from clan to clan."

"And then the highest level is the tribe. …I should mention this terminology is kind of arbitrary. These things could be called anything, this is just what I call them in English. Anyway, our leader is a queen. It's a hereditary monarchy, but I imagine in theory someone could overthrow it and install someone else, just like humans do with their monarchies. And it's not by primogeniture, the queen chooses her successor. The queen has to be a mother though, like the pod elders.

"Uh, I should mention that I left at a pretty young age, so there's actually a lot I don't know about how my people do things. Like, I mentioned assignments and travel routes earlier, but I basically only know that they exist, I don't know any examples."

"There's also the colony, which is the social unit I know the most about. It's kind of like the central hub of the tribe.

"The vast majority of mermaids in the tribe spend almost all their time travelling with their pod. Even if they don't have any assignments, they can't all stay at the colony all the time, they would starve or devastate the local ecosystem or both. And we can't all travel together, for the same reason. And because it would be horrible chaos. So in order for everyone to eat, almost everyone has to be away from the colony almost all of the time.

"So you could imagine all of us just being a bunch of completely unaffiliated pods, travelling all the time, without having a central hub. In fact, I suspect that's how we used to be; I bet the tribe is a somewhat recent phenomenon in the history of the species. But the colony is useful, especially for childrearing. Every few years, the queen calls all the pods back — I don't know how she does it, I assume it's some magic thing I wasn't told about — and they all come back and mate and lay their eggs. And then they leave, and the eggs hatch eventually, and the pups are raised at the colony until the next assembly. The pods come back again, lay eggs again, and leave with whatever children they have from last time. Lather, rinse, repeat.

"Um… Usually at least some of the adults who are living at the colony at any given time will leave with their pods after the next assembly. Aside from the queen and her family, almost nobody stays at the colony for more than one or two assemblies. It's a rotation. Like, usually the nurses re-join their pods at the same time their charges join theirs, and some of the ones who've been travelling will then stay behind to be nurses for the next brood. I don't know how they decide who comes and goes when."

"So, anyway, you can imagine how that arrangement is way safer and more convenient for literally everyone than if every pod was out for itself. We're more precocial than humans, we're roughly equivalent to human toddlers when we hatch, but still, imagine trying to survive and constantly travel in the open ocean with a toddler in tow. Or a bevy of toddlers. Or imagine carrying an egg around for months. Or leaving it behind and then having to go back and get it later, and hope it wasn't eaten in the meantime. Plus, mermaids can only breed after spending some time around unfamiliar mermaids, so that's another way the assemblies are useful, is giving lots of different pods that opportunity to mix so they can mate. I genuinely don't know how that part would have happened before the colony existed, which is one hole in my theory that we didn't always have it. I have theories, like maybe pods didn't travel as far, so they could've had overlapping ranges like orcas do. But I don't know, and we don't really keep histories, so I might never know."

It's a good thing that Meredith has a pretty accurate memory for this kind of things because she doesn't have anything on her to take notes and it's fascinating. Sanna will see her nod, grinning, as she listens closely. She's being told so many things and she's building theories and hopefully this means that Sanna is willing to answer more questions related to her species. She also enjoys hearing Sanna's theories!

"It's a shame that you don't keep stories. Your theory makes sense though, even if you don't have any explicit evidence for it. And I can see the advantages of the current social structure. It keeps the freedom of separate pods while having the ability to raise children more safely."

Neither of them is speaking about it but it's pretty clear that Sanna either doesn't have a way to communicate with the other mermaids or is extremely reluctant to do so. That might be related to her flair and Meredith is wondering about the nature of this relation. Especially since she doubts there could be a species with enough individuals to have that kind of societal organisation without her having heard anything about them until she saw Sanna earlier this evening. 

"Yeah, we tell stories but we don't really record histories. I'm sure some of the stories are based on real things that happened, but there aren't enough details, or means of verifying them, to tease out any actual history. It is indeed a shame.

"Anyway, that was kind of a lot, so if you have follow-up questions you can go ahead. Although I can't promise I can or will answer them, that depends on what they are.

"Actually, maybe we can…" She picks up a twig from the ground. "The back-and-forth is kind of frustrating, because it means we can't ask follow-up questions right away, and then the conversation moves onto a new subject with yet more follow-up questions. Let's use this as a 'talking stick'. Whoever's holding it gets to ask questions. We can hand it back when we're ready to let the other person ask some questions. And also, either of us can ask for it back when we're done answering more questions for the moment. Does that sound fine?" She holds out the twig for Meredith to take.

Meredith nods and grabs the stick, "Yes, that makes sense. Anyway, I don't have any questions that are immediate follow-ups." She shrugs and offers Sanna the stick back (a bit reluctantly because she might not have questions that are strongly related to her last one but she does have questions).

Sanna doesn't take the stick back yet. "They don't have to be follow-up questions, you can ask unrelated questions if you want. I'll just ask for the stick back if I want a turn." She waits to see if Meredith decides to keep the stick for now.

This is probably a test. She is not interested in this kind of psychological analysis! Can’t she just get straightforward preferences from Sanna?

She’s going to take the words at face value. Yep, that’s her choice. If Sanna wants the stick back, she can ask for it, just like she’s said. And she’ll hold it loosely and still somewhat extended towards Sanna, so she can easily take it from her.

“Well, then can I get some more details on mermaid reproduction?”

"Let's see… I'm not sure what level of detail you want… The actual mating is kind of like how birds do it. We have cloaca, and we just rub them together. It doesn't take very long, and there isn't much to it. As far as I know, most mermaids will mate several times during the… Wait, I should back up and give more context. When the mermaids all come to the colony for the assembly, once most or all of the adults are ready to mate they all swim around in a designated area, and they just go for whoever catches their eye. And then they move onto someone else, and then someone else, and so on, until they feel like leaving. The females only lay one egg each though, so it's the luck of the draw which male actually fertilized each egg."

As long as Sanna isn’t looking at her in an obviously weird or upset manner, Meredith will keep asking questions! For example: “What are the emotional relationships like, then? Do you have romantic partners outside of mating? And what are familial relationships like, if you have anything resembling them?”

Nope, Sanna hasn't made any weird or upset faces! In fact, she seemed completely at ease talking about reproduction, in a way that humans usually aren't.

"Mating doesn't have an emotional component. We don't form long-term pair bonds. Once you're done mating with someone, it might as well be like you've never met. Because you basically haven't. And we don't have romantic relationships outside of mating, either. We don't have the concept, and I'm not sure we even have the capacity to feel that way.

"Familial relationships are… kind of the only relationships that matter. It would be reductive to say we don't have friends — most pups make friends with some of their broodmates, and I think most of them think of their nurses as their friends — but in a way they're the exception that proves the rule, because arguably those relationships also have a familial aspect. You grow up with your broodmates for the first few years of your life, so they feel like your siblings; and your nurse is basically your mother, before you even meet your actual mother. Once you leave the colony with your pod, they're almost the only people you'll spend time with for the rest of your life. When you return during assemblies, your broodmates and your nurse and your relatives' nurses are going to be just about the only people you'll talk to aside from your own pod. The other people at the assembly are of no interest. So, family is really all that matters to anybody. Your siblings, your mother, your aunts and uncles, your grandparents, they're your family and your friends at the same time. You do what your elders tell you; they teach you and give you a lot of attention and care. You play and have fun with your siblings. Eventually some of you have kids of your own, and then it's your turn to give them attention and care. And that's your life."

(She's starting to look a bit upset, but in a way that a socially inept vampire might miss. And she doesn't ask for the stick back.)

If Meredith were human, she might think that that's sad, or a shame. However, she's a vampire and it's solely fascinating! Plus, it's not like vampires are any better at having emotional connections, in fact, they could be considered worse, since they typically don't have much beyond hunter-prey and, at most, rivalries (there's obviously exceptions, vampires have different central points to their obsessions but it holds as a general rule).

(She's also specifically looking for expressions that might nonverbally communicate 'give me the stick back and stop asking stuff' but it's true that she's pretty bad at reading them despite having heightened senses, so she's probably not going to do anything about Sanna looking upset.)

"That's so interesting! So, your life is really centred around the family? Does this extend to having strong breeding instincts?"

Sanna blinks. "Um… I'm not quite sure what you mean. We only have breeding instincts when we're capable of breeding, and we're only capable of breeding under the circumstances I mentioned. Maybe I misunderstood the question."

"No, I think your answer fits what I asked. You don't feel driven to obtain the right circumstances for breeding, then, right? You only feel like doing it when the circumstances are already suited to it."

"Oh! Yes, that's correct, we don't feel a drive to seek it out. I think some people start feeling an urge to have a kid during their early adulthood, like humans do, but I think that takes the form of 'I'll make sure to mate with somebody at the next assembly', rather than 'I wish I could go mate with somebody right now', or 'I have an urge to try and create that opportunity on my own hook.'"

She looks thoughtful for a moment. "But maybe that's just because we have regular opportunities arranged for us. In my imagined scenario where we used to be unconnected pods, maybe we do innately have instincts to go and look for other pods to mate with, but those instincts don't emerge if we know that the next opportunity is always just around the corner." She shrugs.

That reply gets an excited nod from Meredith. “That would make sense! It’s a shame that we can’t really test it at the moment, though.” She sighs.

And finally, she will -very reluctantly- give Sanna the asking-questions stick.