Upon the city’s rooftops stands Meredith. She can survive well enough on animal blood but it gets… boring, so she makes the occasional trip for a snack and some books (one of the less boring parts of humankind). It is during one of these trips that she senses an unusual presence. Humans and supernatural species both have distinctive ‘flairs’ (to vampire senses, she’d describe it as halfway between a smell and an aura, not that either of those terms is right), and the one she is perceiving now is new to her.

That’s unusual. The entertaining kind of unusual. Meredith thought she’d met all magical species but she can’t recognise this flair like she should. So, she moves closer to it, jumping lithely from rooftop to rooftop, hair like a banner trailing after her. Curiosity still gets the best of her after this many years. Maybe even more so now that it’s rarer for it to have a cause. 

Sanna does not have many any unusual senses, and she doesn't have her nose in her phone but she isn't looking up either, so she certainly isn't going to notice some weirdo jumping from rooftop to rooftop like a ninja turtle.

(Some passersby could, though. This isn't far from Savoy's largest mall, so the sidewalks are moderately well-travelled even at this time of the evening; and some of these buildings are tall, but some are very much not; and the wide streets make it easy to see the tops of the shorter buildings on the opposite side without trying very hard. And it's not anywhere near pitch dark out yet. Hopefully Meredith is being careful!)

Anyway, Sanna's just going to keep on sitting here until the bus comes. Who knows when that will be. Well, Sanna knows. But for all Meredith knows, it could be 30 minutes from now or it could be one minute from now, or anywhere in between. Unless Meredith's familiarized herself with the bus schedules around here.

Meredith has plenty of practice at going unnoticed and it is very unlikely for anyone to notice her presence unless she either wants it to happen or the person noticing is not just attentive but also somewhat resistant to magic. (She can blend well enough into the shadows with just a little magic that it feels absurd to go fully invisible when that might get her prey’s attention if she can sense it.)  

She doesn't know the bus schedules but she's more than patient enough and she wants to know where this being comes from. As long as the sun doesn't rise first, she'll have no trouble waiting. Nor following a bus. Well, most likely jumping and holding onto its roof and not running after it, but it'll do the job anyway. And in the meantime she'll watch this person carefully and try to decipher the feeling she gets from her. 

This is one of those times that Sanna is glad the bus is running a few minutes late. If it had been on time she would have missed it, and would've had to wait another… yeesh, 20 minutes! More time than the actual bus ride! As it is, the projected wait is less than five minutes.

…It ends up being a little bit later than that (what else is new, Kalette Transit sucks), but only by a couple more minutes. And since this isn't the busy part of the route and rush hour is winding down, she can not only find a seat, she can even find a seat that doesn't leave her squashed between two other people. That almost makes up for the depressing feeling of getting home after dark!

If Meredith can't already tell by the livery which city this bus belongs to, it'll soon be clear in any case that it's leaving Savoy and going to the next city over. Is Meredith by any chance familiar with Kalette?

Meredith is very unfamiliar with the local bus system and Kalette! However, being on top of one makes it pretty easy to see where it is heading, so she soon knows that they're going towards Kalette. She thinks she's been there before but doesn't remember much except it being small. That's why she usually sticks to Savoy, it's easier to blend in as necessary. Smaller towns mean that people notice strangers faster and it's not like she's going to pretend to be a human who's moved in. 

Apart from thinking about the bus' destination and clinging to it, Meredith also uses the ride to examine the flair she's following a bit more closely. She has seen by now whom it is attached to,  and she'll approach said person once the bus stops, but now she's focused on trying to identify any recognisable elements to her flair. (She's likely not very successful at it, flairs aren't good for figuring out specific details or really anything other than species and, at most, magic type if it's a separate thing.)

The flair feels like… something that lives in the water. Like a selkie or a mermaid or something. Mermaid feels closest, but Meredith's encountered enough mermaids to know this is definitely not the same. Maybe it's a different species of mermaid, but Meredith's travelled a lot, surely if there was more than one species she'd already know? And even if there is another species she just didn't know about, why would this be her first time seeing one after living here for years? And why here? Why posing as a human?

Plus there's something wrong about the flair, something beyond just 'this is new and unfamiliar'. She can't put her finger on it. It's like if you saw a dog with six fully functioning legs. Or if you bit into an apple and it tasted like bubblegum. The individual elements are fine, but they aren't supposed to go together in quite that way.

The vibes she's getting about magic type are somehow even muddier than usual. Something outward-facing and 'hard', something inward-facing and 'soft'?

She appreciates her flair-sense but it is often annoyingly vague! It's pretty useful to recognise species she's met before but it's not all that good for figuring out new ones. Meredith is still going to do her best with the information she's got though. It'll help her form some expectations. Now, what is she getting... a water based creature, not quite a mermaid but similar... that's an extra serving of weird and unexpected. So far, most aquatic species Meredith has encountered were very reluctant to leave the water (except for Kelpies but they don't count, they're malicious spirits and shapeshifters) and all of them would have more tells than just their flair. 

Of course, there's also the wrongness. She doesn't focus on it for long. It's unsettles her. She can't put what's wrong into words but something clearly is.

And then there's the magic. It's good that it's separate enough from the other information she's getting. Magic is already hard to figure out in general, it just gets more muddled if it's too close to other species traits. Regardless, it's not a power she's seen before, although she's got some guesses. It could be some sort of defensive magic, the 'hard' part could be some sort of shielding. And maybe the softer part is some sort of emotion-tied ability? She'll have to learn more about them!

As they get further into Kalette, the bus starts to fill up more. Sanna doesn't get to enjoy having a pair of seats to herself for very long. Oh well, it was fun while it lasted. Sometimes she doesn't get to sit at all.

After about 15 minutes of riding, she disembarks.

This is one of the few areas in Kalette that has a healthy mix of homes and businesses, and where the businesses are right off the sidewalk instead of set back from the road by massive parking lots. (None of this will seem unusual to Meredith, since it's no different from most of Savoy; but Sanna knows that in most of Kalette, pedestrians might as well be second-class citizens.) From her vantage point, Meredith can see a spa, a sushi bar, a pharmacy, an auto repair shop, a small school, and much more. (How many of these she can actually identify will depend on how good her night vision is.)

It may stand out that the buildings here are pretty short compared to the parts of Savoy she's used to. The sign they passed on the way in said 'City of Kalette' (population whatever, Meredith wasn't paying attention), but so far it feels more like a town than a city. It's also… cleaner. There's a distinct lack of pigeons.

Sanna starts walking. Her direction of travel rules out some of these homes and businesses as her destination. But not that many, because there's an intersection with a crosswalk just up ahead. Will she cross this way? Will she cross that way? Will she do neither, and instead go around the corner?

Does Meredith wait to find out, or does she approach immediately?

(She should bear in mind that although there's no other foot traffic nearby, there is quite a lot of vehicular traffic; and it's still light enough for a hypothetical ship to navigate; and the street lights have come on by now.)

 Meredith gets down from the bus' roof with ease, letting her magic's disguise fade a bit once on the ground, so it looks like she could have just stepped out of the bus too. She keeps it active enough to make her presence inconspicuous and hide that off-putting sensation that vampires can give off for looking so human but not acting quite like one. Luckily, magic (or evolution, or both, she isn't an expert on the way magic species become such) gives her the right tools to keep her prey -whether she's hunting for blood or for answers- unsuspecting. Although she wouldn't mind being able to turn into a bat. Bats are much smaller than humans. (She can turn into mist but it's a very... intrinsically foreign form. Mist isn't usually a living creature, much less a thinking one, and it doesn't move like one either.)

She's getting distracted again but fortunately she hasn't lost sight of the stranger amidst her internal monologue. She always has thoughts to overthink but it's not every day that she finds a new species!

Meredith steps slightly closer, although still maintaining enough distance that if Sanna glances back her first thought probably won't be that she's being followed. Unless she can feel that Meredith isn't human. Well, there's nothing that she can do about that so it doesn't make sense to worry yet. 

Kalette is a very safe city. (And not just by comparison with the notoriously crime-ridden Savoy.) But Sanna is paranoid and used to live in Toronto. (These two facts are not as related as you might think.) She was paying enough attention to be pretty sure that whoever is walking behind her now didn't get off the bus behind her. And yet, she wasn't anywhere in sight when Sanna got off the bus either. Where the hell did she come from?

…Well, Sanna got off at the front door, maybe this person got off at the back a couple seconds later?

…No. What's the point of being paranoid if you're going to dismiss your instincts anyway.

This is what she used to call Settling For Hunches. Telling yourself that the Weird Thing is Probably Fine, and moving on with your day. It's easier and more comfortable to do that, so she was always doing it, until she eventually noticed what she was doing and how often it worked out really poorly for her.

She's gotten used to being safe. She's mostly unlearned what Miles called her Survival Protocol, because it just hasn't been warranted anymore. She's mostly unlearned the notion that Weird Things should be presumed dangerous until proven otherwise. On the one hand, it feels silly to suddenly fall back on that for no legible reason. On the other hand, she hasn't referenced her Survival Protocol in ages, even just in her own head, so the fact that it's suddenly coming to mind seems like it probably means something.

Besides… Something else her Survival Protocol said is that sometimes you have to Settle For Hunches, because you don't actually have the resources to do anything else, so trying to investigate or take precautions will actually just leave you worse off. But that's not her life anymore. She doesn't have to Settle. She literally has no reason not to follow her instincts here. Except for not wanting to feel silly, which is a terrible reason.

Without picking up her pace (that might look suspicious), she crosses the street in the same direction she's already walking, and darts into the Tim Hortons sitting there on the street corner. Does Meredith interrupt her in doing this?

It probably says nothing good of Meredith’s remaining ‘humanity’ that she smiles, thrilled, at Sanna’s attempt to either get away or confirm that she’s being followed, but she’ll take entertainment however it comes. Again, it is a shame that shapeshifting isn’t part of her arsenal. She might be able to stretch her normal stealth magic into making her look a bit different but she’s not going to test that now. 
Instead, she continues walking and turns a corner into a side alley, then jumps (possibly bouncing against the opposite wall, depending on how high it is) to the top of a nearby building, planning on watching the coffee shop’s entrance from the rooftop. The way she so perches on buildings like that, one might think she’s part gargoyle! (Gargoyles don’t reproduce that way, it’d be a silly thought.)

Meredith doesn’t expect her prey to take long to come out. If she’s correct, Sanna doesn’t know for sure that she’s being followed and will likely think Meredith gone. But she’s patient regardless and in the meantime she can continue to analyse Sanna’s flair and behaviour, coming up with more questions to ask.

There isn't really anything nearby that can be described as an alleyway. Will she settle for jumping onto the last building Sanna passed before she crossed the street? It's basically the only one that affords a decent view of the doors leading into and out of the Tim Hortons. But she'll have to rely entirely on her stealth magic to make sure Sanna won't see her jumping onto it if she happens to turn around at the wrong moment. Unless she wants to double back to the far side of the building first, which might look suspicious in and of itself if Sanna happens to see her. (It might look marginally less suspicious if she goes around the back of the building, since it might look like she has business there, or is heading for one of the parked cars there.)

Alternatively, if she just keeps walking until she's past the Tim Hortons, that'll look much less suspicious, and then she can go around the back of the Tim Hortons and then jump on top of that. She won't have a direct view of the doors, but there's no way she'll fail to see someone leaving.

Oh well. Alleys are very useful for following people but Meredith will make do with what there is. So, once she notices that there are none nearby, she’ll continue until she’s out of Sanna’s possible sight range and then proceed to get around the (Tim Hortons) building and onto it. She would trust her magic to hide her from a human even when doing something as unusual as jumping to a rooftop but then again, she wouldn’t be following Sanna so intently if she were a human.

Regardless, once she’s on the roof she’ll simply wait for Sanna to leave the building. Meredith is going to continue following her, this time again from farther away, until there are no people around who will notice their confrontation. She can’t know how Sanna will react! And witnesses are often more trouble than avoiding them to begin with.

Once Sanna's inside, the first thing she does is turn and look back through the glass door to see if the stalker is also heading this way.

Okay, so it's a woman, and… Huh, she's just continuing down the sidewalk.

Sanna goes to the far window to keep watching. …Yep, she's still walking. And still on the sidewalk, not veering into the Tim Hortons parking lot or anything.

She keeps watching until the woman is out of sight.

…Was Sanna totally off-base? Sure, the woman could just be doing that to throw off suspicion, planning to follow her again after she comes out, but… That seems like a bit of a stretch, doesn't it? She doesn't even know which way Sanna will go when she comes out, she could miss her entirely.

Sanna still has a bad feeling, though.

She's aware that a lot of this bad feeling is something she's built up in her head over the past minute. She didn't feel this scared when she first noticed the Weird Thing, or even when she first decided that the Weird Thing was worth treating as a potential threat.

But thinking of it as a Weird Thing in the first place happened almost right away. And that fact, in itself, is also a Weird Thing.

If this happened all the time, if she regularly became convinced something was Wrong and she almost always turned out to be mistaken, she would probably now be thinking that she's mistaken this time too and should ignore that feeling. But that's not the world she lives in. She's been here for two years, and in that time she has never spontaneously labelled something a Weird Thing. Not just a 'weird thing' — those are a dime a dozen — but a Weird Thing, with capital letters, the closest English gets to conveying the special gravitas that Survival Protocol jargon possesses in her own mind. Maybe it'll turn out this was just her brain misfiring, but she's not going to make that assumption the literal first time it happens, just because the Weird Thing didn't immediately blow up in her face. (Guess what, Survival Protocol has something to say about that too.) Because she doesn't know that she can afford to wrongly ignore that feeling; she does know that she can afford to wrongly assume she's being stalked, and take precautions that later turn out to be unnecessary, at least this one time. That's the whole reason she went into this Tim Hortons at all, instead of just brushing off her misgivings and going home.

So, now that she's decided to continue assuming she's Under Threat, the question is: Now what?

Well, she's certainly not going back outside right this minute, so she might as well get something while she's here.

She buys a green tea.

She sits and thinks.

Some time later — ten minutes? fifteen? — she walks out, carrying her half-finished tea. She's on the phone now, and as she walks away from the building she's looking around pretty much constantly, as if she's expecting someone to sneak up on her at any moment.

"…Yeah, well, I still say it was beginner's luck, but I wouldn't mind playing again sometime. It was fun."

As she walks, she heads in the same direction as a couple that walked out maybe five seconds before she did. (This happens to be the same direction she was walking when she first got off the bus.) She's trailing behind them as close as she thinks she can get away with.

Despite the distance between herself and Sanna, she can still catch her comment and a quiet chuckle escapes her. Sanna might not be talking to her but it still fits the situation. It certainly hasn't been beginner's luck on her part though! She'll admit to having used plenty of magic, but that's not the same as luck. She isn't done playing either, as evidenced by the fact that she's currently still trailing Sanna, just with even more stealth involved this time.

She hopes Sanna will split away from the couple soon. (Unless said couple is her prey? Vampires aren't the only creatures that find humans a nice meal. It would give Meredith a chance to learn more about her species without having approached her yet! Not that it's likely.) She could approach despite them but will at least wait a bit before deciding to do so. How high are the chances that they're going to the same building? It's a small city but it's still got more than four houses. Even in any given direction. So, despite it being relatively obvious that Sanna is following them to feel 'safer', she'll eventually have to take a different street and then there'll be even less people around. And Meredith will stop playing rooftop ninja. 

The bad news is, the buildings around here are mostly spaced too far apart for roof-hopping to be a very feasible method of travel. (Maybe this is why Meredith didn't stay in Kalette long enough to remember almost anything about it!)

The good news is, after the Tim Hortons she only has to go past one small building (presumably going around the back) before coming upon a large construction site, with a conveniently person-high barricade separating it from the sidewalk. She can easily slip behind this and still follow Sanna for some distance. (How convenient that she's making herself so easy to follow by talking on the phone. Did she not think of that? Well, she's talking in a pretty low voice, maybe she thinks that's good enough. Maybe it would be, if Meredith could only hear as well as a human.)

After a few minutes, the couple ahead of Sanna crosses to the other side of the street. Sanna doesn't follow them, so now it's just her on this sidewalk again. However, she's still on the phone.

After another minute, the barricade ends. If Meredith wants to keep following without being potentially-visible, she'll have to go behind this strip mall. (She could jump on the roof, but the strip mall is far enough from the sidewalk that when Sanna glances over — she's still looking around constantly like a paranoid owl, so it's not 'if', but 'when' — she could very well see her.)

"I'm honestly not sure if I could handle college or not. I can be studious, but I'm used to being studious at my own pace. And I'm pretty bad at time management, at least on that kind of time scale. And like, I could say I can't afford to try it and fail, but I could apply for scholarships if I really wanted to; and I could say I don't want to put in the time and effort and have it amount to nothing, but that wouldn't really be the end of the world. Those aren't really reasons to not even try, if I really wanted to try. I'm just kind of… not interested."

After the strip mall, Sanna is coming up on what looks to be an apartment building. Maybe that's her destination? Maybe she's just going home?

From this vantage point — whether she's behind the strip mall, or on the strip mall's roof — Meredith can't tell where the residential entrance is. For all she knows, Sanna could head inside at any moment.

She's still on the phone.

This city has annoying architecture. Really, who designs such unpractical rooftops? (She knows that people don't usually use them this way but she's allowed some internal complaining.) And yes, it's no wonder she didn't stay here for long the last time. Few people and streets that don't get along with her favourite travelling method are both good reasons on their own already, even more so when combined. This time she has a goal though, so she'll make do with the available hiding options and continue following Sanna as discretely as possible. At least the barricade is useful. Sanna being on a phone call is annoying because she'd rather not approach her while she's on it, even when she's no longer following the couple, but it also gives Meredith and extra way to track her. She pays little attention to the actual contents of said call, since they seem completely unrelated to what makes Sanna interesting.

She doesn't like the situation. Sanna is getting pretty close to the building, a building that Meredith won't be able to enter, and there's still a 'witness' (if you can call somebody one the other side of a call such). She'll approach Sanna anyway if nothing new shows up within the next minute or two, but she won't be happy about it. And her magic doesn't always work through technology, so she might soon be facing some police officers and that will get in the way of figuring out what Sanna is. 

She probably doesn't have a minute. Within the next five or ten seconds Sanna will be passing in front of the building, which Meredith can't see from her vantage point. Once she's out of sight, there's no telling how long Meredith has before she's out of reach, since she doesn't know where the entrance is. And even in the best case scenario where it's on the far end of the building, Sanna will get there before another minute passes.

Then she's jumping on top of the strip mall and down the other side to reach her before she gets to the door, phone witness be damned. She'll deal with the consequences as they come. She's good at evading those anyway and she's not patient enough to wait till tomorrow night. 

She lands quietly and lets her stealth magic fade as she approaches Sanna. Unless she's also supernaturally fast, she won't be able to outrun Meredith if she decides to try to do so.

Sanna freezes.

Something smells wrong. Not bad, not rotten or foul, just wrong.

The woman behind her doesn't smell alive. Which is not to say that she smells dead; it's to say that she smells like an inanimate object. Like a piece of driftwood, or the inside of a money jar, or the cement sidewalk they're standing on right now.

She does not smell how a person smells. Something that smells like this should not be something that can walk.

If Sanna had hackles, they would most certainly be raised right now.

(Some part of Sanna notes: She thought she was overreacting, but it turns out she was massively underreacting. Even capital letters can't do justice to whatever this is. What's more serious than capital letters? Fraktur? 𝖂𝐞𝐢𝐫𝐝 𝕿𝐡𝐢𝐧𝐠?)

To whoever's on the phone she says, "Just a minute." She doesn't hang up, but she lowers the phone from her ear.

She turns around and faces her stalker.

Meredith just barely manages to contain a smirk. She isn't trying to intentionally irritate Sanna but her hunting instincts are very satisfied that her prey knows she's there and knows that she's trouble. And, nicely enough, Sanna has temporarily taken care of the witness for her!

Keeping her expression carefully neutral (and probably not succeeding as much as she thinks, she's out of practice), she closes the distance between the two of them. She'll give Sanna a moment to start the conversation if she so wishes. 

The woman stops far enough away that Sanna doesn't feel the need to very loudly tell her to back off. She's relieved, and somewhat surprised.

A moment or two passes.

For Sanna, who was half-expecting to be attacked by an eldritch horror supernatural being the moment she turned around, it feels like an eternity.

When no attack or explanation seems immediately forthcoming, she considers her options for a few moments.

Without taking her eyes off the woman, she puts the phone back up to her ear and says, "Hello? … Yeah. Sorry, I have to go. Remember what we talked about." She hangs up, taps and swipes at the screen a few times, and puts her phone in her pocket.

She crosses her arms. "Well?"

She looks extremely tense, like if this woman makes one wrong move she will go completely apeshit.

Good things: the last witness is gone and Sanna seems willing to listen. Bad things: Meredith didn’t think through what to say when she got to this point and she’s bad at diplomacy to begin with (as likely evidenced by her choices so far).

In a different version of this encounter, Sanna would have acted like she thought this woman was either crazy or trolling her. (Smiling wryly: "Oh yeah? Brought your reptilian detector with you today, did you? Did you buy it on Amazon with your Penta Water?")

But that smell. And how she seemed to appear out of nowhere at the bus stop. This woman isn't human either. Or, she's a human who has magic.

She's still not going to confirm it, but she'll not-confirm it in a less conversation-stopping way.

She raises an eyebrow. "Oh really? And how did you come to that conclusion?"

They both know. It’s obvious by now that they both know. But if she isn’t willing to be the first to admit to magic, Meredith will do it.

“You could say that I’ve got a sense for it. And I know quite well that there’s more than humans in this world”, she adds, light reflecting off her sharp fangs as she grins, there one moment and gone the next. Same as a change in colour to her irises, too brief to identify. If they weren’t both on the lookout for more signs of supernatural-ness, Sanna might have missed it. 

Oh boy. A vampire? Maybe? She never met any back home, and fiction depicts them every which way, but Neil said the real ones do at least have sharp fangs. And even if he hadn't said that, given the circumstances it's the obvious guess. (Then again, the moon's only half full, so maybe werewolf?)

She now feels less confident in her inference that if this woman hasn't killed her already then she isn't going to. Maybe she just wants to pump her for information about what she is or where she came from, and once her curiosity is satisfied then she'll kill her. And maybe Sanna can take her, but then again maybe she can't. So, delay giving her any information.

"Okay. Where exactly is this going? What are you hoping to get out of this conversation?" She decides to leave out 'And what happens when you've got it?'

Is Sanna reluctant? She sounds reluctant. That’s not good but hopefully will change because Meredith would like some answers soon. 

“I’d like to learn more about what you are. You feel different from everything else I’ve met and I’m curious. So this is going towards me asking many questions and you preferable answering? I guess you can also ask some questions back if you’d like. I’m obviously more interested in you than in myself though, I already know what I am.”

I guess you can also ask some questions back if you'd like, she says. I guess, she says. Wow.

"Right. First of all: Can you see why I might find it hard to believe that you're just here for a friendly conversation and nothing else? Given that you just spent the past half-hour stalking me like a fucking serial killer?"

Meredith just blinks at her. Of course she wants to talk to her! And it’s not a just, it’s a must. That’s why she followed her even into a different city. She wouldn’t be that invested if Sanna was just a tasty-smelling human but getting answers requires more cooperation than getting blood. 

It doesn’t even occur to her that Sanna might not understand how intensely curious she is because that’s an obvious fact to her. More fundamental than gravity. It’s what makes her act. It’s why she’d been languishing in boredom until Sanna’s flair showed up to her senses. How else could she have acted?

A moment or two ticks by.

"Cat got your tongue?" Okay maybe dial the impatience back a bit, do remember that you're dealing with an eldritch horror supernatural being who may or may not be able to kill you at any moment. Also remember that you value your life more than you value being snarky at people who annoy you. Maybe. Probably.

"Is there some part of my question that you didn't understand?"

“Probably? Yes? Or maybe the answer to the previous one is no?”, that’s… not a very good reply. You want to convince her to talk to you, Meredith! (Although she doesn’t seem to want to talk! And it’s not even because she’s busy asking Meredith about her magic. She’d understand that.)

Okay, either this is Obfuscating Stupidity to make her appear harmless, or she has ✨inhuman psychology✨. (Or she's just actually kind of dim-witted in a completely ordinary way Sanna rejects this hypothesis for being really boring and disappointing. …Okay not really, she knows better than that, but she doesn't think it's likely.)

Sanna… doesn't knead her forehead with her fists, because that might involve taking her eyes off the Very Dangerous vampire lady. God, Maximum Hypervigilance is exhausting, can she go back to merely Extreme Hypervigilance.

For now, she'll mostly behave as if she thinks this lady is sincere about not understanding the question.

"Alright. I'll try again. You claim you just want to ask me some questions. I find this difficult to believe. The reason I find it difficult to believe is because the way you went about getting my attention was to stalk me for half an hour, which is a very terrible and scary thing to do to someone, instead of doing something a hundred times less threatening, like calling out 'Hi, can I ask you something' back at the bus stop. To me, the only obvious reason to go about this the way you went about it, instead of just asking me for a moment of my time without stalking me first, is if you're actually planning to maim or kill me once I've answered your questions."

(Carefully not mentioning more benign alternative hypotheses, carefully not mentioning what would reassure her on this score. That's the 'mostly'.)

Meredith isn’t actually dim. She does have a vampiric psychology though and those can drift pretty far from that of a typical human. She’s usually more reasonable but that’s because she’s generally uninterested. Which isn’t the case right now. She’s very curious and that curiosity isn’t getting answered! 

She could pay attention to what Sanna is saying but that’s hard to do when she has so much else she’d rather know (it’s about as appealing as licking a rock while you have a cake right in front of you). It’s clearly important to Sanna though and she won’t tell her what she wants until she is convinced about this… so she’ll try.

“I’m not interested on killing you. I won’t have any reasons for it even after we talk unless you’re attacking me first. And killing you would only cause me trouble. People will be tense and the police will be searching for me, that gets annoying pretty fast. Especially since you’re in a small city.

“And the stalking… it felt like the best option at the time. I didn’t want to approach you with others around.”

Sanna suppresses a sigh. "I appreciate the effort. That second one doesn't make sense, though." (Neither does the first one, but maybe it genuinely hasn't occurred to her that she could kill Sanna without the public or the police being any the wiser, and in that case Sanna's not in any hurry to correct her about that.) "There already weren't any people around when I got off the bus."

Despite how fishy these explanations sound, Sanna's sort of inclined to believe her. Her model of someone who wants to ask her some questions and then kill her once she has the answers, but chooses to spend half an hour freaking her out first — thus making the questioning more difficult (given that apparently she can't just dominate her into doing what she wants) — is someone who very much enjoys toying with her prey. And she's not really acting how you'd expect someone to act in that scenario. In the version of this where the stalking was done for the pleasure of scaring her, this is a really anticlimactic follow-up. She's just… standing here, like a normal woman, having a pretty ordinary conversation given the circumstances. Maybe she's just trying to lull Sanna into a false sense of security, maybe that's the end goal here, but she's not doing a very good job of that, either.

Still, Sanna couldn't forgive herself if she didn't exercise any due diligence about these answers not adding up.

Meredith gestures at the remaining nearby traffic. “There’s still people around. We couldn’t have talked once you were inside the building though, so I couldn’t wait more.”

Sanna will want to know why they couldn’t do that… it might help her feel safer once she knows? But she might also just decide to try to run away, since Meredith wouldn’t be able to follow her inside. Either way, she’s not going to volunteer the information unprompted. It’s not a good habit to go around telling others your weaknesses, even if they appear in literature already, especially when you don’t know theirs.

First, Sanna has to stop herself from reflexively glancing at the building, since that would mean taking her eyes off Vampire Lady.

Then, once she puts two and two together, she has to stop herself from letting out a small laugh, since mocking Vampire Lady seems ill-advised (and not in a way where the payoff is worth it).

Then, she has to stop herself from pointing out why her going into the building from this side wouldn't actually have been that big a deal. If Vampire Lady hasn't already noticed, this seems like a bad time to point it out.

(At this point, it may come to Meredith's attention that while this is indeed an apartment building, the first floor seems to be almost entirely a small library, judging from the rows of bookshelves visible through the front windows. And this side of the building does not in fact have any entrances, it's all windows. Perhaps she did not have to ambush Sanna at such an inopportune moment. …But then again, for all she knows there might be a way into the residential part of the building through the library, so perhaps she did have to ambush Sanna at such an inopportune moment. Who knows!)

…And then she has to suppress an eyebrow raise. Why couldn't Vampire Lady have followed her in?

Are locked doors as much of an obstacle to her as they are to a normal human? That's such a reassuring thought! Especially since it would mean she's been seriously overestimating how powerful Vampire Lady is! Still, it seems a bit too good to be true…

…Wait, is she the kind of vampire that can't go in a building if they haven't been invited?

Holy shit that would be such a fucking relief. Like, obviously there are ways around that, especially when it comes to public buildings, but STILL.

Let's not get ahead of ourselves though, it could just be that she is weak to doors doesn't want to draw unwanted attention by breaking into a residential building. Or is concerned about showing up on security cameras. …Or is concerned about not showing up on security cameras, according to some depictions. Or just wants Sanna to think she has a weakness that she doesn't actually have.

Anyway, if she assumes Vampire Lady's being honest about why she initially chose to stalk her instead of approaching right away, then this actually makes perfect sense of why and when she suddenly changed tack. (Even if Vampire Lady is faking ignorance of this building and its deceptive layout, she couldn't have known Sanna would come here in particular before she started stalking her; so she can't imagine how this specific sequence of events could be All According to Plan, unless she assumes such a ridiculous level of social engineering and/or mind control that Sanna's basically already lost no, brain, defeatism is the mind-killer. Like, it could be Xanatos Speed Chess, but in that case Sanna really can't hope to out-maneuver her DEFEATISM IS THE MIND-KILLER.) Other than signalling a fake weakness, any ploy she can think of that hinges on this explanation would have been better served by simply not stalking her in the first place. So… the stated motive for stalking her instead of approaching immediately does seem to hold up, which means… it might be true that the stalking wasn't meant to signal a threat to her life? Which doesn't make it fine, but having good neutral intentions instead of horrible intentions counts for something.

(She's tempted to explain why Vampire Lady was mistaken in assuming that an immediate approach was nonviable, and why that probably would have gone over a lot better; but on second thought maybe Sanna shouldn't give the Very Dangerous Vampire Lady pointers on how to avoid tipping off potential victims. Christ. Maybe she can try to explain that later — for a very flexible value of 'later' — if she ever feels like she won't regret it.)

Can she get away with asking to conduct the rest of this conversation from the other side of the library's glass door?

(Hell, can she even get away with letting on that she thinks this might protect her?)

…She wouldn't get as much information as she likes from Vampire Lady's reaction. If she refuses or freaks out, it probably means that the weakness isn't fake and she didn't mean to reveal it. If she agrees, it could mean it's a fake weakness, but it could also mean it's a genuine weakness that she's fine with Sanna knowing about. The only scenario where Sanna gets clear information is the one where Vampire Lady reacts badly. Not worth it.

And yet, can she afford to say what she's about to say without some measure of protection, even if it turns out to only be the ordinary protection of a glass door…?

Maximum Hypervigilance is SO EXHAUSTING, how the fuck did she manage to be like this for THREE-PLUS YEARS when she was a LITERAL CHILD, like seriously holy shit

no brain you may not have an emotional flashback right now, maybe when you get home you can have just a little one, as a treat

Focus focus focus, holy shit focus, you can focus on anything forever if you couldn't you would be dead

that isn't actually true anymore though

it was never true, idiot

FOCUS

She takes a deep breath.

She lets it out.

With great difficulty, she uncrosses her arms, as a deliberate signal of openness, of having passed a threshold between 'zero trust' and 'one tiny iota of trust'.

"Okay. Let's say I believe you that you have no plans to kill me. I don't fully believe that, but let's pretend I do. Clearing that up does not automatically mean I'm going to answer a bunch of personal questions for you. I wouldn't trust any creepy stranger with my secrets, even if they didn't stalk me first. I might trust them to not hurt or kill me, because I'd have some idea how they think and what they're capable of. I still probably wouldn't tell them anything. You're not a human and I have no idea how you think or what you're capable of, so I trust you even less than that.

"That doesn't mean I'm outright refusing to tell you anything. But aside from maybe a very small handful of things, it isn't going to happen literally right now. And when it does happen, it's going to be on my terms, which among other things means it's not going to happen under conditions where I feel threatened or intimidated or unsafe.

"I happen to feel unsafe right now. Therefore, before we continue this conversation, I would like to briefly go inside the library, by myself," – mustn't let on that she's assuming she can't follow – "and let the staff know that I'm here; and then I'd like us to sit on the bench just outside the entrance. You can't see it from inside the entrance, and there are no windows looking onto it either, so it still offers some seclusion. I promise I won't try to give you the slip while I'm in there, and given the circumstances it would be pretty rich if you protested that you don't know if you can trust me. But if that's not enough, then you can hold something of mine as collateral." Pause. "I'd really rather you not come in. This isn't just about talking to the staff, I also need at least a 60-second break from being around you."

Meredith doesn’t visibly react to Sanna uncrossing her arms, although her instincts do comment that, if Sanna was planning on attacking her, she could do so more easily now. Humans have different body language, right? Sanna probably didn’t mean to signal that.

She does react to the ‘I’m not telling you my secrets’ part, an expression halfway between a pout and a frown lasting less than a second on her face before she schools it back into looking calm. That's not an encouraging announcement. She really really wants to know more about Sanna and what her species is and what her magic is like and why her flair feels so weird and and and. But she doesn't know how to get her to trust her if that's a prerequisite!

She can do what she's asking? She's not happy about it but sure. Libraries usually count as public enough to enter without an invitation, at least during opening hours, so it's won't be a problem even if Sanna tries to run away unless she gets to the private parts of the building faster than Meredith gets to her. So, she'll wait outside and keep her focus on Sanna and try not spontaneously combust from the impatience and curiosity (that's probably impossible but who knows what self-destruction protocols vampire instincts hide?). And if Sanna gets to her apartment anyway... Meredith can knock on her window, asking questions like that probably won't get any answers either but she'll try if that's the option she's left with.

She nods slowly, "Alright, I'll wait by the library door and we can talk after you've gone in for a bit. I can offer some information first...? I don't know if you're interested or if it'll make you likelier to share any in return but I'd very much like to know more about you." She's an adult vampire, she can resist making puppy eyes and begging, for now at least.

…Okay, that's a much more favourable response than she was expecting.

She doesn't visibly relax — she doesn't want to reveal how much this means to her, or give Vampire Lady pointers on how to put her at ease — but internally she is releasing a metric ton of tension. (And she probably can't help looking at least briefly surprised. Skill issue.)

"Okay. I think I'll take you up on that." That was actually going to be another one of her terms, but she wasn't going to try and bring it up until she gave herself some insurance by talking to the library staff. Vampire Lady suggesting it on her own shows enough goodwill that Sanna can probably afford to be a bit more polite about presenting her terms. (Seeing as a lot of the speech forming in her head was going to be setting her straight about who should get to ask questions first in this situation.)

Anyway, if Vampire Lady isn't going to demand any collateral, Sanna's not going to remind her of the offer.

"So, let's go." She turns slightly and gestures towards the library to indicate that Vampire Lady should go ahead of her.

Meredith guesses that Sanna wants her to go first so she can’t attack her from behind. That's an understandable reason and she doesn’t mind walking in front of Sanna as long as it’s fairly obvious where the library’s entrance is. She doesn’t know this area but can guess that it’s on the other side of the building and so she should walk around it in the direction Sanna gestured at. Hopefully the architecture here isn't intentionally confusing (in a city with no good roof travel, can you trust their streets?).

Once they reach the entrance, Meredith will stop near it and stand waiting as Sanna walks in. She'll focus her senses on her, mainly on her flair, since it's Sanna's most identifiable characteristic.

Yep, if Meredith just keeps walking she'll find the entrance at the side of the building, tucked under an archway. There's a bench there, like Sanna mentioned.

Sanna strolls into the library like someone who has no reason at all to be rattled.

She collapses into a squashy chair. She takes several deep breaths.

She relaxes a little. Not enough to crumble into a weeping mess, that would be counterproductive and mortifying; but enough to be a huge relief from all that tension.

When was the last time she genuinely feared for her life? When was the last time it seemed like every visible path forward might spell her doom?

She'd forgotten how it felt.

She fucking hates it.

She really, really hates this woman for showing up out of nowhere and doing this to her. And Sanna could patiently explain exactly what she's done and how awful it is, but she probably wouldn't care at all.

She might try to explain anyway.

In the meantime, even if Sanna were willing to risk her life on putting her foot down and saying 'Fuck you, I'm not telling you anything', she isn't willing to risk losing her first and possibly only chance at piercing this world's version of the Veil. If she plays her cards right, she might be able to turn the third-worst thing that's ever happened to her into the best thing that's happened in the past four years.

But there's no guarantee of that, and until it happens she expects to continue hating everything about this.

SIIIIIIGH.

She gets up and goes to the water fountain and takes a long drink.

Objectively, things are going pretty well. Way better than she dared to expect when she first turned around to face her stalker. And it bodes well that Vampire Lady was okay with separating for a bit. By all accounts, Sanna has less reason to be afraid than she started out with, more reason to trust that Vampire Lady doesn't mean her any harm.

So why is some part of her even more freaked out than when she didn't trust Vampire Lady at all?

…Because trusting that things will be okay is scary.

If she acts on that trust, and turns out to be wrong — as she's been wrong so many times in her life — she could die.

She doesn't want to trust, she wants to know.

It's been so long since making the right call was Literally Life or Death. She's not used to powering through that fear. How did she use to do it?

(How did she live like this?)

She speaks to a librarian. By the time she's done explaining, the librarian is left with the impression that Sanna knows this woman and definitely does need to talk to her, but they aren't friends and they don't get along and things could get dicey. Sort of kind of accurate, if you squint.

(The librarian is confused and a bit alarmed, and asks the predictable questions: Is she okay, should they call the police, should they come out to check on her every couple minutes instead of waiting for ten, is she sure they don't want to have their discussion inside where it's warm and there are witnesses.)

She gives Rey a quick call. (Rey is definitely going to bombard her with questions tomorrow. UUUUGH.)

She curls up in the squashy chair for one minute two minutes three minutes, until she doesn't feel like she's being piloted by adrenaline anymore.

She gets up, and walks back out. Presumably Vampire Lady is still there, waiting for her?

Vampire Lady is indeed waiting for her! While Sanna was inside the library she had her eyes closed and didn't do much, just loosely keeping track of Sanna while letting her thoughts flow. Hopefully some of that thinking will have helped with the conversation they're about to have. She's not going to start said conversation though, just in case Sanna finds that too agressive or anything. Now that Sanna is walking out, Meredith reopens her eyes and turns slightly towards her, she hasn't sat down in this time. Staying still for long periods of time comes easily to vampires. (One time that she was bored enough that she managed to collect a visible layer of dust although that hadn't been her goal. In fact, she might have been subconsciously aiming for self-starvation, vampires are somewhat susceptible to death by boredom. Fortunately, that didn't work and now she's here and can learn about this new species and being -debatedly- alive is worth the hassle and she's excited and it'd been too long since the last time!)

She's not going to show any of that excitement. Sanna would probably think her crazy; she might be, vampire minds are bizarre. That won't help with getting her to trust her and then she won't be able to learn and that will not be good. So she'll just wait, staring placidly (or doing her best attempt at said expression) and waiting for Sanna to say something. 

Right. Okay then. Apparently she's doing this. Damn the torpedoes, or whatever.

Vampire Lady seems to be letting Sanna take the lead here, which suits her just fine. She'd feel genuinely grateful if she thought Vampire Lady wasn't just doing it to make Sanna more tractable.

She sits down on the bench, waits for Vampire Lady to do the same, and then says:

"Okay. You first. Your name, what you are, plus one or two other things that you think are interesting or relevant or whatever. And then I'll tell you my name, what I am, and one or two other things of my choice. After that, if you want this to proceed any further you'll have to agree to some conditions."

Meredith stays standing until Sanna gestures for her to sit down, it's not like it makes much difference to her, comfort-wise, and her social habits are obviously rusty. Sanna seems to act very much like a human? Not that Meredith understands them anymore. 

But now they can begin talking! The 'conditions' are a bit of a mood killer but hopefully they won't be unreasonable, and Sanna will most likely only tell her one thing first. She'll still offer two though, just in case she's deciding based on that. 

"Meredith Baines. I'm a vampire-", she grins, shows off the fangs, her eyes change; then she looks human again, "- as you can see. As for the two facts...", what are interesting things that it's a good time to share-, "is there anything you would like to ask? I'm not sure what you'd find interesting."

This time, the eye change lasts long enough for Sanna to figure out what she's seeing: Cat-like slit pupils, not unlike her own. Irises like… like tiny mirrors reflecting giant pearls. Funky.

"…Alright, sure." She kind of wanted to get some insight into what Meredith considers interesting/relevant (or what she represents herself as considering interesting/relevant), but this is also fine. "But just so we're clear, I'm still going to choose which one or two things I tell you in return.

"Um… Are vampires former humans, or are they a completely separate species from humans? And… how old are you? You don't have to answer both of those. Actually, you don't have to answer either of them, you can tell me to ask something else." Being able to veto questions is going to be one of her conditions after this, so she might as well offer Meredith the same courtesy right from the jump.

She wouldn't have expected Sanna to be interested in either of those things! They're easy questions though, so she'll answer both. (She also isn't expecting Sanna to let her ask in return but is alright with it, any new knowledge will be better than none).

"Vampires are transformed humans, yes. Although we change in multiple ways, not just physically, and that, combined with time, makes us pretty different from humans. I'm around 260. I've been a vampire for all but the first twenty-some years of it." 

Wow. She got turned really young, in human terms. (And she was born in the 1700s? How much does she remember from that time? …Possibly not much, if she doesn't even remember her exact age when she got turned.)

"Thanks. I… guess it's my turn." She takes a breath that may or may not be a sigh. "My name is Sanna. I'm a mermaid. I was born… not exactly in the Caribbean Sea, but very close to it. And…"

She perfectly imitates Meredith's voice: "I can do this. I have a similar vocal organ to birds."

A mermaid? It's not that she couldn't be one, based only on her flair, but Meredith has met others before and flairs are consistent within species. Plus, Sanna's flair feels weird (wrong, almost) in a very distinct way, she'd recognise it if she'd seen it before. She'll have to ask about it. If Sanna lets her ask.

(Meredith registers Sanna's name but continues to think of her mainly by her flair, as she's been doing so far.)

The voice-imitation is interesting too! She wonders how many sounds she can mimic. It partially fits with the typical mermaid tales, Sanna probably has a great singing voice. 

Externally, Meredith keeps her expression neutral (she's so excited to be learning! But if Sanna knows, she'll might be able to use it to her advantage), and simply nods.

(In any other situation, Sanna would feel kind of put out by Meredith's non-reaction to the vocal mimicry. But given the circumstances, she's kind of assuming that Meredith's doing the same thing as her and deliberately concealing exploitable weaknesses, such as excitement or dismay. Super valid of her. …Okay, fine, Sanna still feels a little put out. She wanted to at least see Meredith look wrong-footed for a split second, for her own amusement/revenge if nothing else. But she can deal.)

"Okay. So, that's that. As I mentioned, if we're going to continue then I have some conditions.

"First: There might be questions that I'll only answer vaguely, or that I simply won't be willing to answer at all. If that happens, don't push it. Just move on, ask another question. I'll extend you the same courtesy when I ask questions. With me so far?"

Meredith nods. She has to repeat to herself that any new knowledge is better than no new knowledge, it’s going to have to be her mantra throughout this interaction. She doesn’t want her questions to go unanswered but she has two options: she can agree to Sanna’s terms and not get some of the answers; or she can not, and get no answers. And hopefully, Sanna will eventually trust her enough to tell her everything. 

Sanna is outwardly calm, but internally she's freaking out. Meredith's poker face is nerve-wracking; Sanna doesn't know if she's actually calm, or if she's this close to snapping from sheer impatience. If Sanna dies because she asserted too many boundaries… The very thought makes her question if this is worth it.

But, much as her younger self hates her for it, Sanna refuses to pretend she has no spine whenever it looks like having one might get her killed. Doing that would show that she never really had one in the first place, and if that goes then most of her self-worth goes with it. What's the point of surviving if she can't respect herself afterwards.

(She can hear her younger self shooting back "What's the point of self-respect if you're dead?!", but she can litigate that later, she is busy right now.)

"Second: As I mentioned before, there might not be a lot I'm willing to tell you tonight, given how little I trust you. I won't rule out the possibility of you earning more trust, but that would take time, and I genuinely don't have a single clue how you could even do it. You've spooked me enough that I'm not completely sure it's even possible. I might just decide I never want to see you again after tonight, and I will expect you to honour that, so the things I tell you tonight might be all you ever learn. Got it?"

Meredith still tries to keep her emotions off her face but this gets a reaction from her. Her lips curl up and her brows furrow, her instincts angrily screeching. It’s not until her fangs are digging into her lips that she realises Sanna can see it.

Vampires don’t need to breathe but she inhales slowly anyway, slowly smoothing her features as she squashes her instincts down, continuing to repeat to herself that only getting some answers will still be better than getting none. Although, having seen her react like this, Sanna will likely not want to tell her anything anymore, so, it’s not easy for her to calm down (at least she’s managed to make her expression even again).

“Understood”, she says after a long moment, nodding. 

Sanna leans back in alarm as soon as Meredith's expression changes.

…Jesus Christ.

For a minute there she was sure Meredith was about to attack her. She almost spiralled hard enough to attack pre-emptively out of sheer terror; she's glad she didn't.

If that was pushing the limits of Meredith's patience, she suddenly has serious doubts about this working out. Fuck.

And just when she thought it was starting to look promising! Just when she was starting to think that Meredith really isn't any danger to her and she really doesn't need to fear for her life!

Maybe they can still salvage this…

"…Can I ask which part of that you found unusually upsetting? I had one more thing to say, and I'd really like to avoid having teeth in my neck at the end of it."

“There’s some background knowledge in vampire psychology that you’d need for me to explain it properly but it’s the thought of being permanently locked out of learning something”, she admits, snarling slightly with the last part but managing to remain mostly calm. “It’s not the most logical thing but knowing that there’s something I can’t learn feels worse than not knowing that thing existed in the first place. I’ll keep a grip on that, apologies.”

"…I see. Okay. I kind of wish I'd known that, I might have tried to frame some of that differently so that it sounded less like you were being locked out of something. But I can see how it wouldn't be obvious that you should tell me that. …Actually, even now it's not obvious to me that it would've been better to know earlier, so, never mind.

"Anyway… The next condition isn't really about that, so I don't imagine it'll upset you even more, but if it does for some reason, do you think there's any risk that you'll attack me over it? If it somehow upsets you, say, twice as much? It looked like you were really struggling." ('But maybe my own panic was making it look worse than it was', she doesn't say.)

“I can’t think of anything else that could upset me as much,” she replies, shrugging. “And I doubt I’ll attack you either way. It wasn’t an aggressive kind of upset. Plus, killing you would make sure I couldn’t get any more answers, so I should be able to stop myself from doing so no matter how angry I am.”

…Sanna super does not believe her that it wasn't an aggressive kind of upset. If that wasn't the look of someone struggling to swallow a metric ton of bloodlust, she doesn't know what would be.

Should she call her out on it? Would there even be any point?

…Maybe not, but her only reason for not doing it anyway would be that she's scared. She's trying to limit how many things she's not doing just because she's scared.

…Ugh, and yet, she still can't make herself do it. She's mentally exhausted, she has nothing to spare on pushing past that for a probably-pointless question. Or, maybe she could, but she doesn't want to, dammit.

Okay. As long as she's clear with herself on why she's not asking this question, she can deal. The worst thing is when she lies to herself that she's doing something for a good reason when she's actually just doing it for a comfortable reason.

…Actually, this seems like a good time to mention the dead man's switches. It didn't feel like a straightforward decision before. There were pros and cons either way: Telling her might deter her from violence, but might also make it easier for her to do violence anyway and simply circumvent the switch or avoid its consequences; not telling her would flip the trade-offs around. Until now, Sanna mostly believed that the deterrent probably wasn't necessary, and she thought that Meredith's reactions would be more illuminating if she wasn't being threatened into behaving herself. (Not to mention, she might have already inferred a dead man's switch from hearing the end of Sanna's first phone call.)

But now, Sanna feels plenty illuminated by Meredith's reactions, and she doesn't trust Meredith's self-restraint anymore.

"Just in case you need some extra motivation, I'd like to mention that more than one person is expecting me to contact them within a certain period of time, and if I don't then they're going to assume I'm in mortal peril and will contact the police."

“That doesn’t really change anything. If I get to the point of killing you, I won’t care much about hurting some humans or compelling them into ignoring this. Oh, and don’t tell me if some of them are from your same species. That’ll make me more likely to hurt you, not less. It means that you aren’t my only source on this topic and I can try other approaches on them if I kill you.”

…she’s not being reassuring, is she? Meredith is beginning to wonder how she’s ever managed to learn about other species before. She doesn’t mean to threaten Sanna and she knows that it only makes things harder if Sanna feels like she is but she’s neither a good liar nor a good diplomat. Things would be so much easier if she was driven by something other than curiosity. Bloodlust is easy, obtaining other people’s trust isn’t.

Internal sigh. That was a miscalculation, apparently. (Or so Meredith claims. If the dead man's switches won't make a difference, it calls into question how honest she was being earlier when she said that she won't kill Sanna because it would create trouble for her. Apparently that only matters until it doesn't? Which means it might as well not matter at all.)

Anyway, that might have been a bust in terms of deterrence, but Sanna actually got some useful information out of it! Possibly, the most useful information she's gotten since they started talking.

Such as, it might actually be in her best interests to tell Meredith that as far as Sanna knows she's actually the only member of her species on this entire planet.

Sanna's been assuming it might be bad to tell her that. It might make Meredith even more excited to learn things about her, but that might not be a good thing. And it might also make her all the more disappointed when Sanna can't live up to the hype, or disappointed that she can't verify most of what Sanna tells her about her species.

She's still not going to say it yet, because Meredith could be lying to coax that kind of info out of her. And also, all those reasons not to tell her might still be true! But it's food for thought.

And if Meredith's being honest, then Sanna actually really appreciates that she's giving her advice on how to not get hurt or killed? Especially since telling her this isn't necessarily in Meredith's own best interests; presumably she wants to know if there are other members of Sanna's species, and how she can get to them.

Oh, and supposedly Meredith can compel people?! Could be a lie, but if it's true then it's really good to know! AAAAAAA what if she's being compelled right now

"Okay. Thanks for telling me that. I guess I'll have to rely on your self-restraint." Comforting!

Sanna takes a deep breath as she collects her thoughts.

"So, this one's mostly a rant-slash-lecture. There's a condition at the end, but it's kind of an afterthought. Mostly, I just want to be very clear about something."

Her expression darkens a little. She's not exactly glaring, but she's at most one or two steps short of glaring. It's an expression that says 'You'd better pay attention, or else.'

"On some level, I appreciate that you more or less asked me nicely to answer questions for you, instead of threatening me into it. I also appreciate that you've been listening to and agreeing to my conditions, even though some of them are upsetting for you. I realize that from your perspective, you didn't have to go the nice or cooperative route.

"But from my perspective, you've still done a pretty terrible thing to me. I was just going about my life, and you came along and put me in a position where I don't know if I'm safe anymore. You may not have deliberately threatened me, but a supernatural being with unknown powers and a dubious moral compass showing up and knowing something about me and wanting something from me is massively threatening in and of itself. I don't know what would happen to me if I simply refused. I don't know what happens to me if I reveal all I'm willing to reveal and you decide it isn't enough. I don't know when this ends or how this ends. I don't know what my life looks like from now on. Because I don't know what you're capable of or how far you're willing to go. For all I know, you might end up being the worst thing that's ever happened to me — and you're up against some stiff competition.

"I don't just feel unsafe right now, I literally don't know when I will feel safe ever again. And that isn't okay. It isn't even slightly okay that you did that. In any sane version of this scenario, you doing that would have immediately destroyed any possibility of me interacting with you or giving you anything, now or ever.

"So I want you to interpret my willingness to have any conversation at all as me being inexplicably lenient and forgiving towards someone who has done me a very serious wrong. I want you to interpret my willingness to go beyond that and answer even a single one of your questions as me being unreasonably generous. I don't acknowledge any obligation towards you. We're not going into this with the framing that you have a right to this information and I am being cagey. We're going into this with the framing that you have no right to this information whatsoever, but I am charitably letting you have some anyway. I expect that charity to be reciprocated, plus extra for the frankly awful time you're putting me through.

"Understood?"

Nope, not understood at all. Well, she understands how Sanna wants her to act, or is guessing so at least, but all the parts relating to morality are not coming across. It's most likely due to her vampirism but all Meredith has for a sense of ethics is 'probably don't kill people, that might be bad?' and the fact that scaring people might be doing them harm that she should consider is not taken into account there. She thinks she should be trying to imagine herself in Sanna's place but in Sanna's place she'd be so excited to have met someone from a different and new species and she wouldn't care that it had been by getting stalked as long as she got to ask questions (and had them answered). 

Is it okay that she doesn't understand the why is she can understand the what? Assuming that she's correctly interpreting said what. Sanna wants her to... not be pushy and answer more than ask, right? It's not her favourite conditions but she can work with them. So... she still doesn't know if that means she should answer yes or no. 

...And she'll go with nodding, yep, that easier. She wanted to let Sanna explain in which circumstances she'll be willing to share information but she's reaching the limits of her capability to pay attention to this matter and it's just so different from how she thinks.

"Understood."

Another internal sigh. Yeah, she doesn't care at all, does she.

"I get the feeling that approximately none of that got through to you, but whatever. As long as you agree to that last part."

(In actual fact, Meredith's agreement elides so much confusion and expedient guessing that it might as well be a lie; but Sanna isn't psychic, so she doesn't know that.)

"Let's get started. For now, let's just take turns. Me first. How well do you remember your earliest years as a vampire, or your years as a human?"

And now Meredith is happy again because this is interesting and she’ll get to ask questions. She just needs to answer some in return and hope that Sanna doesn’t refuse to answer to all of them.

“My human years are very foggy and hard to recall. It’s not only that they’re from so long ago, it’s also that they were lived by a very different mind. My first vampire years are much easier to remember than that. The first week is still a bit faded but the rest is almost as clear as yesterday. Clearer than yesterday, actually, on account of yesterday having been much more boring.”

Huh. Neat. It does make sense that it would be harder to remember things from when your mind worked completely differently, maybe even had a different brain architecture. Sanna sometimes wonders if that's why humans can't remember their earliest years.

She was kind of hoping Meredith would give her a highlight reel of her human life or her early years as a vampire, but Sanna didn't ask, so fair enough. She might ask later, especially about what made those first years so terribly interesting.

"Okay. Your turn."

Yes, yes, yes! But where to start asking? There’s so much she wants to know!

And she’ll go with the first question to come to her mind, “Why do you look” -and think and act- “like a human? I look like one because I used to be one, but what about you?”

In hindsight that feels like an obvious question, but she's so used to looking like this that it never occurred to her that Meredith would be wondering about it.

Sanna had already decided to mentally count to a number between three and ten before each of her answers, so that if she needs time to think (e.g. about whether she should glomarize) the delay won't stand out. It's an idea she got from Dolores Claiborne, though she didn't think she'd ever have a reason to use it. Thanks, Stephen King.

It doesn't bode well that this decision is already proving useful on the very first question, but so it goes.

"I have the ability to change my form to a human form. It can't be any arbitrary human form though, only this one. It looks like me."

This is carefully worded to be technically true while predictably giving Meredith the wrong impression. Sanna doesn't want to reward Meredith's cooperativeness with outright lies, but given the circumstances she has few qualms about mental reservation.

"Tell me about being turned. Things like: Who turned you? Did you know them? Why did they turn you? Were you upset at first? Did you keep interacting with the person who turned you?"

Only human form?Most shapeshifting creatures she’s met can take shapes from many species,, although some, such as selkies, are much more limited. Maybe that’s how Sanna’s ability works too and her other form is tied to an object. That’d make her reluctant to explain. She wants to ask, to make sure she isn’t working with half-truths (this reminds her of speaking with the fae). Sanna wouldn’t like it though… she’ll keep the question in mind but not ask it yet. She might even learn more about it without explicitly asking, although Sanna is being very careful with how she answers. (Also, ‘it looks like me’ is such a confusing statement! Does she really mean that her original body resembles this one or is it a more spiritual connection?)

Meredith refrains from commenting that’s she’s actually asking multiple questions and moves on to answering.

 “I was turned by an older vampire, obviously. Do you want their name?” It won’t be of much use to Sanna but she might be interested anyway. “From what I remember, I had noticed some unusual events in the months before I was turned and was trying to investigate them. That led me to meeting said vampire. I was curious. They were unwilling to explain things to me at first but eventually I managed to get the answers I wanted. And I realised there was more to discover about magic than I’d be able to as a human. So, I convinced them to turn me. As soon as I had become used to being a vampire and learnt as much as possible from them, I left to explore.”

“Oh, and they died a few decades after that. Although it was a few years before I heard of it,” she adds with a shrug.

She’ll then pause briefly to see if Sanna wants her to clarify anything before asking her own questions.

(If Meredith did comment that Sanna is asking multiple questions, Sanna would pointedly remind her of the agreement she just made scarcely a minute ago!)

"I didn't want their name, I more so meant what was their relationship to you. Like, were they a random stranger or someone known to you, if you knew them then who were they to you, things like that. The answer you gave covers that."

Sanna's surprised that Meredith was the one that asked the vampire to turn her. Both that the vampire needed to be convinced, and that human!Meredith wanted it. Do most vampires need to be convinced like that? It's certainly better than the alternative…

Huh, how did the older vampire die? That probably shouldn't be her next question, it might sound like fishing for weaknesses. (She does want to fish for weaknesses, but she's separately genuinely curious about how that particular vampire died.) Then again, it would be weird to bring it up later instead of as an immediate follow-up question. Screw it, that will be her next question.

"Your turn."

(She remembers the agreement and would have been mostly teasing!)

Meredith’s glad that her answer covered what Sanna wanted to know and also, much more importantly, that it’s now her turn to ask.

“Apart from the shapeshifting, which other abilities do you have?”, and she’ll check this answer against the information she gets from Sanna’s flair! She hopes Sanna doesn’t decide to evade it completely but won’t be surprised if she does. She’s agreed to let her do it and she’ll keep her word but won’t be able to stop being curious about it. 

Is Meredith just assuming Sanna has other abilities, or does she have a way of telling that she does? She could tell Sanna was a different species but not what species she was, maybe she can also see abilities but can't tell what they do…

This is important enough that she might be willing to break her policy of not lying, if she thought she could get away with it. But without knowing what Meredith has to go on, she doesn't know if she could get away with it. So she can't say 'None.'

Can she get away with replying 'What makes you think I have other abilities?' That's too transparent, right? It would not only be obvious that she does have other abilities and is hiding them, it would also be obvious that she's trying to find out what kind of answer she can get away with, which in turn would make it obvious that she's hiding her abilities for strategic reasons rather than privacy reasons. And in the meantime, Meredith would probably either refuse to answer, or lie.

Is this a good time to glomarize? 'I can neither confirm nor deny that I have other abilities'? That has basically all the same problems, but it might be less provocative than trying to probe at the same time.

Really, she should just make up an ability, or pretend one of her non-magic abilities is magic. If Meredith can tell how many abilities she has, that combined with the shapeshifting should satisfy her. And if she can somehow tell that these aren't her real native abilities, she can't call her out on it without revealing how she knows that. But Sanna can't think of anything convincing. Now she wishes she hadn't outright said that her vocal mimicry is non-magic, she could've used that… Fuck's sake…

…Oh!

She looks at a plastic water bottle lying empty and flat on the ground nearby.

It rises into the air and drifts towards her until she can reach out and grab it.

"That."

She didn't even want to reveal that much, but it might be better than tipping off Meredith that she has a vested interest in concealing her capabilities.

Meredith frowns at the answer. She can’t detect lies (which is a shame, it would be very useful) but she has some pieces of the puzzle of Sanna’s powers and this one doesn’t fit neatly with the others.

She isn’t sure how to remark on it because, although she doesn’t really mind telling Sanna about her flair-sense, that doesn’t mean she wants to volunteer that information either. In addition to that, just directly telling her not to lie to her isn’t necessarily a good way to do it. Not only might Sanna react badly to it, Meredith is unsure whether it’s worst to be lied to when she won’t notice it or to not get an answer at all… Either way, she doesn’t like being lied to now and, even if she ignores that, she still wants to learn more about the power that Sanna has shown.

She gives herself one more moment to think about it but doesn’t manage to find a perfect solution. 

“I know that that’s not all you can do. You can ask me if you want to know how I know that, but I’m certain of it.” There. Just a statement of the facts. She can’t misrepresent her opinion on the matter if she doesn’t express it.

Eyebrow raise.

"Okay, sure, tell me how you think you know that."

“Vampires have an extra sense. It allows us to perceive something similar to auras although it's more attuned to species than to individuals. It gives me some information on what kind of magic you have and what you just showed me doesn’t fit that.”

Sanna snorts a little. "Okay." Yeah, she doesn't really know anything, she's just trying to psych her out. Maybe she can see enough to suspect, but not enough to be as certain as she's claiming. Not justifiably, anyway.

"I wasn't counting that as one of my questions, so I'll ask another one. Can other species become vampires, or only humans? Like, could you turn a dog into a vampire? If you tried to turn me into one, do you think it would work?"

That’s an irritating reply but she can’t do much about it without the conversation turning into a fruitless argument so she’ll leave it for later.

It’s more irritating that Sanna ‘wasn’t counting it as one of her questions’ but, again, arguing about it isn’t worth it. It’ll be faster to just reply to her new question.

“Trying to turn animals doesn’t work. Vampirism tries to reshape them to be humanoid and with our kind of mind and that doesn’t end well. In most cases they just die in the process, their bodies unrecognisable as either the original species nor vampires. I haven’t had the chance to try turning all humanoid species but my guess is that it will work fine unless native traits oppose it. I don’t know how preexisting magic will interact with it.” There’s one human witch that was turned and her magic was pretty similar, although powered more directly by blood and arguably stronger, but one case is not enough to make predictions. Also, Meredith doesn’t want to tell Sanna anything specific about other species yet. 

(Yeah, it's almost like they literally just made an agreement about which of them gets to ask more questions!)

Well, that's gruesome! But fascinating!

And, apparent confirmation that there are supernatural beings aside from vampires? She might ask about that later. But even just knowing there's more out there is valuable.

This seems like a good segue to ask about the psychological changes Meredith mentioned earlier, but it's Meredith's turn.

(Sanna is realizing she made an error in tacking on another question. Not necessarily a tactical error, but rather a failure to provide appropriate incentives. Meredith had just offered her information, and Sanna rewarded her with open contempt. Asking more questions than she answers is allowed by their agreement, so she doesn't feel guilty, but it wasn't the right time to push on that; punishing Meredith for offering information discourages her from doing that in the future. Sanna did that because she was annoyed and felt like she was being messed with and wanted to change the subject anyway, so she got snarky without thinking. …To be fair, she assumed Meredith's information wasn't offered in good faith, so she didn't feel obligated to respond in good faith; but she shouldn't be making assumptions like that quite so liberally.)

Before Sanna can remind Meredith that it's her turn, the automatic door opens, and a librarian pokes her head out.

"Sorry to interrupt! Are you two sure you don't want to come inside? You must be freezing!"

…It did not occur to Sanna to tell the librarian to not invite Meredith in.

Stupid stupid STUPID

Does that count?

Sanna turns to Meredith with a questioning look. She doesn't want to verbally ask if she wants to go in, or even what she prefers, or even just say 'Your call', just in case any of that somehow counts where the librarian's question alone didn't. (Maybe neither would count alone but they'd count in combination? Sanna doesn't know these things!) Hopefully Meredith is still okay at reading human facial expressions.

(If Meredith is in fact able to enter now, Sanna hopes she says yes. The sun's been down for over an hour, and the temperature's threatening to drop to zero. Even with her jacket on, Sanna's feeling pretty cold.)

Meredith doesn’t feel cold (well, she does feel it but not in a way that bothers her in the slightest), and Sanna had said that they should talk outside so she doesn’t see any reason to actually go in. In fact, she has to contain a twinge of irritation at the librarian for interrupting then.

Still, Sanna might be cold? Will it count as her question if she asks her whether she wants to go in? Since Sanna is counting semi-arbitrarily and she isn’t allowed to complain about it, it might!

“I’m not cold”, she tells the librarian, which might confuse her since she’s not wearing a jacket but whatever, she doesn’t owe her any explanations. Meredith does however turn towards Sanna in case she wants to say anything. She isn’t good enough at human expressions to guess if she’d like to go in.

(And she could have already gone inside without the librarian saying anything but they haven’t discussed how exactly invitations (or the lack thereof) work for her, so it makes sense if Sanna has assumed otherwise.)

Internal sigh. Well, Sanna's not going to say she's cold, for all she knows that might count in this context. Perhaps she is being too paranoid about this

However…

"I'm gonna use the bathroom. I won't be long."

And, if Meredith doesn't stop her, she'll get up and go into the library and lock herself in the bathroom.

Well, she’s not going to restrain her and Sanna either needs to go there for typical bathroom needs, wants to go there because it’ll be warmer, or wants to run away from Meredith. Either way, following her won’t be helpful and will make her more tense. She can wait outside and keep a figurative eye on Sanna (mainly her flair, since it’s the easiest to track) and see if the librarian says anything else.

Nope, the librarian goes back inside when Sanna does. (She does look a little confused when Meredith claims she isn't cold, but she doesn't comment.)

Now that she has some privacy (why didn't she think of this earlier?!), Sanna lets herself cry a little.

She hates this.

She hates not knowing what to do, she hates feeling like every choice she makes is probably wrong, she hates feeling like every choice she could make is probably wrong, she hates feeling like it's all Literally Life or Death, she hates feeling like there's no way out –

That part of her life was supposed to be over, she was supposed to have left it behind –

She told Meredith she might never want to see her again after tonight, and Meredith seemingly agreed to abide by that, but why should Sanna trust that?

And besides, if she never sees Meredith again, she never gets to learn more about what's behind the Veil here.

She can't stand being in this situation, but she doesn't feel like she can afford to remove herself from it.

She hates this hates this hate hate hate hate –

She really sympathizes with what Meredith said earlier, about how it's worse to know something exists and be denied it than to not know it exists at all. She wishes she'd never met Meredith. She wouldn't have gotten this opportunity to pierce the Veil, but she wouldn't know what she was missing, and right now she thinks that would be better than either of the options she has now.

Once she's done crying, she calls Rey again and gives her an update.

Then she comes out of the bathroom, and gives the librarian an update.

And then she goes back outside and sits back down on the bench.

"I think it was your turn to ask a question."

Meredith suspects that Sanna was crying. But she's not running away and Meredith isn't sure anyway so, does it even matter? Not when she can ask about magic instead! 

"It was." She replies, nodding with a smile, "How does the ability you showed me in reply to my earlier question work?", she'd like to know if it's more like telekinesis or if it's relevant that Sanna lifted a water bottle, water manipulation would fit thematically better but that's not a guaranteed confirmation. (Although, really, she shouldn't trust Sanna's word on it, she's likely to lie or at least omit things again. Even Meredith can notice that she isn't excited to tell her about this but, until she says it explicitly, she doesn't actually have to stop asking.)

Ugh. Unless she directly says 'Pass' or whatever, Meredith's not gonna let this one go, is she. Sanna probably should have realized that from the start, and just said 'Pass' to begin with instead of trying to trick her. Stupid!

"I don't really want to go into much detail about this ability. I'll say that I can move things up to a certain size or weight. Both are factors, but I think it's fair to say that they're independent. And I think I'd rather not say more than that about this ability.

"Um… Let's see… Oh yeah. You mentioned the vampire transformation involving psychological changes. What kinds of changes?"

Yup, that’s an annoyingly (if expectedly) vague answer! And Meredith is not going to grit her teeth or frown. She’s going to look calm and answer the questions how she wants hers to be answered.

“There’s some general changes, mainly to keep up with the sensorial and physical ones. And then  there’s the big ones. So, this hasn’t been thoroughly studied,” it’s clear from her tone that she disapproves!, “but I’ll just tell you what I know and believe. Vampire minds structure themselves around goals. I’m relatively certain that these are tied to our human selves, how we felt at the time of being turned or both. We very strongly care about fulfilling these goals. I might call it irrational if I didn’t feel it but it seems very logical from an insider’s point of view, soooo-”

Okay, so, based on Meredith's behaviour so far, and based on her story about how she got turned, it seems safe to say that Meredith's mind was structured around curiosity and the pursuit of knowledge.

The sad part is, in most circumstances Sanna would be completely on-board with this mindset. But it's hard to appreciate it when it's not only aimed at her, but aimed squarely at exactly all of the things she least wants to reveal about herself!

They're also the things Meredith most wants her to reveal! 

(Yes, Sanna knows! That is precisely Sanna's point!)

Things are a little bit awkward now as Meredith waits for Sana to either ask for more information or let her know it's her turn! If Meredith asks a questions and Sanna feels like it's rushed, she might stop answering! Should she have specified what her drive is? Or mentioned that they're so important to vampires that she almost died purely from lack of motivation after having learnt all she could about magic (and before she managed to reorient slightly towards anything that seemed remotely interesting, which might have, in turn, made her curiosity even more intense with Sanna)?

(Sanna may or may not be interested in that information, but she doesn't know what Meredith's thinking, so she can't help her decide whether to say it or not.)

"…It's your turn." Sanna assumed that would be obvious from her silence, but maybe… um… maybe Meredith's trying to let her keep taking the lead?

She is! And hopefully Sanna appreciates it because it’s hard!

“Do you know why it might be that you feel…”, flairs are so hard to put into words, ugh, “magically distinct from any other creatures I’ve met? Not in the basic level in which all creatures are different. More like… if everyone was colours you’d be a texture? Or beyond the visible spectrum? I don’t know how to say it but the thing is that you don’t feel ‘right’.”

That’s a very confusing description and will get her no good answer! Words are hard and vampires should have telepathy. 

…Fuck.

Fuck fuck fuck fuck FUCK.

Sanna thought she only stood out because Meredith hadn't seen a mermaid before, maybe even hadn't seen any supernatural creatures aside from other vampires.

But no. She's seen plenty of creatures, and Sanna stands out from all of them.

Fuck. FUCK.

And Sanna probably can't just posit that sea creatures in general must feel different, Meredith's probably seen at least a few or she wouldn't be asking this.

If Meredith was telling the truth earlier, it might be a good thing if she knows… But it also might mean Sanna will suddenly become The Most Interesting Possible Thing Forever in her eyes, and then she'll never get her off her back…

"…I have an idea. I don't know if I want to tell you the idea yet. I might be willing to tell you at some point in the future, but I can't make any promises.

"…You can ask something else if you want, since that wasn't really an answer."

(Also: Powerful immortal blood-drinking creatures with obsessive temperaments and dubious morals should definitely not have telepathy, that would be the worst!)

(Meredith doesn't agree but she's obviously biased!)

That's... actually a better reply than she expected? Sanna knows what she was asking about and, although she doesn't want to tell her now, she might eventually do so. Also, she gets the consolation prize of being allowed to ask another question!

She's going to ask something she thinks is simpler this time because she can only stand so many I-don't-want-to-answer that's, "How old are you? And how long can your species live for?"

Oh thank God, an anthropological question. (Wait, not 'anthropological'. Um… 'gorgonological'? Yeah, there you go. Except who the hell cares anyway)

"I'm 16. That's not quite as young for me as it is for a human, but it's still pretty young. Basically a young adult.

"I actually don't know how long we live. Pods can have at least five generations of adult mermaids in them, so we probably live to at least 60 or so, as a lower bound. But lots of mermaids ultimately die of things like predation or injury or disease, which might be pushing the numbers down."

Sanna's thought about this quite a lot, actually. She's never seen an old-looking mermaid, but maybe mermaids don't senesce. She's never heard of a mermaid dying of old age, either. (Not that she was in a great position to learn about these things. Kind of the opposite, really.) For all she knows, maybe mermaids are biologically immortal.

She doesn't like not knowing how much time she has left. She curses her younger self for not having asked, it's probably an easily available known fact back home. At least she has a lower bound…

Straightforward questions get straightforward answers, who could have guessed? (Even Meredith managed to, after a lot of not doing so.)

It's a good thing that Sanna has told her that 16 for her type of mermaids isn't the same as 16 for a human because Meredith certainly wondered about it for the whole half-second before knowing! She doesn't feel much guilt anymore but if she did, having stalked a teenager would be something she would be upset about. Probably. Assuming she'd have a human-like moral compass. Not that it matters since she doesn't feel guilt and Sanna isn't a teenager in the human sense!

"60? That's a pretty short lifetime. At least it's the lower bound and not the higher one. It sucks that you don't know how long you can actually live for though."

Great. Sanna describes being in acute emotional distress, and gets nothing; but not knowing how long she'll live, that's what garners sympathy. It's better than nothing, but yeesh.

"Yeah, it does. I'd prefer to have a more concrete idea, for planning if nothing else. But I'm at least glad the lower bound is as high as 60. It's short, but it's better than 40. I'd be pretty depressed if I thought I might only live to 40."

…Ugh. She prefers this line of questioning to any of the others so far, but it's bringing up some bad thoughts. Go away bad thoughts, she is busy.

(Meredith might notice a look of deep misery flash across Sanna's face as she stares into the middle distance, but it's quickly replaced by her usual carefully neutral expression.)

Sure, twenty years are a lot when they’re a third of your life but they’re still so few compared to how long Meredith has lived and she’s far from the oldest creature around. She’s allowed to think that 60 years is way too few years. At least half of her reasons to get turned into a vampire where that she wouldn’t have had enough time as a human to learn all she wanted to.

Meredith notices the expression but she both struggles to read human emotions and thinks that being upset at living for 60 years is perfectly reasonable, so she doesn’t find it surprising.

She’d like to continue asking but… it’s Sanna’s turn. Sanna might be distracted enough for another question to slip past her but Meredith will keep to her side of the deal despite her curiosity.

“It’s up to you to ask something now”, she reminds her.

Sanna was leaving the floor open for follow-up questions, because she's a lot happier about answering this category of question, so she'd like to encourage it. But she's not going to say that out loud, so if Meredith doesn't follow up then she doesn't follow up.

At the very least, Sanna can try to return the favour by asking one of her more benign questions:

"Do vampires generally need to be convinced to turn people? Are there any that just go around turning people for fun?"

If Meredith had known she could ask more questions she would have done so but she was worried that Sanna would decide she wasn’t following their agreement and stop answering.

“It varies a lot from individual to individual. It’s related to our drives and personalities. I’ve personally turned a few people and I didn’t need to be convinced of it, although I did look for people who were interested in it. Some other vampires are driven by their thirst and will usually kill their prey without turning it. Yet some others will turn people  against their will, for varying reasons. And some, like the one who turned me, will be reluctant to do so.”

Makes sense. Sanna just nods.

“If it reassures you, the reckless ones usually get killed,” she adds.

That also makes sense. Sanna's not sure why Meredith thought she needed reassurance, but that's a prosocial behaviour, so… "Thanks."

Meredith nods.

“So, how do your strength and speed compare to a human’s?”

Goddammit. Right back to probing for weaknesses, apparently! And she can't pass or glomarize this one, that would be tantamount to admitting they're nothing special and that she wants to hide that. Better to only admit the first part.

…Actually, in terms of incentives it might be better to pass. It would be admitting weakness, but it would also annoy Meredith, which might discourage her from asking more of this type of question.

…Or, she could split the difference?

"In human form, they're what you'd expect for a human that looks the way I look." (Sanna is about 5′7″. She looks fit and healthy, but not like she goes out of her way to train.)

There. If Meredith only intended to ask about her human form, then the question is answered; but specifying 'in human form' emphasizes that she could have revealed more but didn't, which should annoy Meredith if Sanna understands her at all. And if Meredith intended to ask about both forms, then this answer should be even more annoying. (In either case, Sanna has the excuse that Meredith's phrasing called for an apples-to-apples comparison. Sanna genuinely does think that's probably what she wanted, so it's not just a convenient excuse.)

Sanna doesn't want to encourage this line of questioning, so this time she'll launch straight into a question, and this time she'll probe right back:

"How old was the vampire who turned you? And do you know how they died?" (Hopefully that phrasing sounds less predatory than 'How did they die?')

(She meant to ask about this earlier and immediately completely forgot. Stupid!)

Not a full answer but, honestly, still more than she expected. Assuming that she isn’t lying, of course, but there aren’t any signs pointing to that, so she’ll take it as true.

”Around 137 when they turned me, why? And they upset a dragon, I believe.”

HOLY SHIT DRAGONS

Huh. She was kind of expecting the answer to be either 'they and Meredith had a fight' or 'a vampire hunter got them'. (Not that Meredith would necessarily tell her if it was either of those things.) This is both way more interesting and way less informative. If it's true, anyway.

"Idle curiosity. A 50-year-old vampire dying a few decades after you meet them feels less weird than a 200-year-old vampire dying a few decades after you meet them. The former feels like maybe they just weren't that good at vampiring, the latter feels like a weird coincidence. Although, I guess it depends on what an actuarial table would have to say about vampire lifespans. Now I'm kind of wondering if anyone's collected enough data to compile actuarial tables for vampires…"

It's kind of difficult to not immediately ask about dragons, but she doesn't want to look desperate. She was planning to specifically ask about other creatures at some point, and she kind of expected Meredith to be cagey! Her mentioning them on her own might be a really good sign!

“Boredom or other losses of motivation play an important role in vampire mortality,” she replies, shrugging. “Also, dragons are territorial and can be pretty determined. And I don’t think there are any actuarial tables on vampires but that sounds like a good future project…”

Small smile. "A good future project for you, or for someone else? …Rhetorical question."

That's good to know about dragons. At some point Sanna should ask about how to avoid them, but she doubts any live literally in the city, so that's far from her top priority.

Boredom and 'loss of motivation' plays an important role in vampire mortality…? Sanna can only think of one way to interpret that, and it's pretty dark. …No, she can think of two ways to interpret that, and they're both dark, but one is darker than the other.

She wants to ask about that, but… She got a lot out of that question, she shouldn't punish that by being greedy. "Your turn."

“For myself, although I won’t stop others from participating”, she answers the rethorical question anyway.

“Why are you so far from the sea?” Meredith asks after a tiny pause (in which she searched for a hopefully not offensive question). 

Yeah, she knew that was coming eventually. She's kind of surprised it took this long.

"I'm not going to go into a lot of detail, because it's personal and a sore subject, but let's just say that I had a lot of bad experiences — beyond what most mermaids have to deal with, I mean — so I left. The details on what the bad experiences were and how I set up a life for myself as a human are the kind of thing I might — emphasis on might — be willing to tell you at some point in the future. If you think they'd interest you. I kind of doubt the 'bad experiences' part would interest you."

Personal reasons, alright. This is in fact something she’s not in a hurry to learn about. A supernatural creature’s past negative experiences are obviously more interesting than a human’s but not that much more, so she’d rather learn about the magic first.

“Yes, I don’t mind waiting for that. It’s honestly not what I’m most curious about. I guess it’s… good that you could pretend to be human? Also, it’s your turn to ask now.”

"Yeah, it is good." Not for the reasons Meredith is probably imagining, but still.

Hmm, what to ask next…

She almost starts to ask a question, but then has a thought.

"Meta-question. Meaning, a question about how we should ask questions. If I want to ask you a question, but I won't want to answer that same question about myself, should I just keep that question to myself, so that I'm not making you think of it and making you curious about something you can't learn?"

“It’s up to you. I might come up with that question anyway and you’ve already warned me that there are some you won’t answer. If you never want to answer that I’ll dislike it a bit more than if you don’t want to answer it yet and might do so in the future. I obviously will ask most, if not all, questions I come up with. But then, I don’t have much, or possibly anything, that I want to hide more strongly than I want to learn about you.”

"Okay. It's a question I might be willing to answer at some point. Question is: What exactly do you do with yourself? Like, on a scale from 'I live in the woods and I basically never leave' to 'I live in a normal house and have a normal job and the only really weird things about me are that I drink blood and sometimes I stalk people', where do you fall?" She's kind of assuming it's closer to the second one, given Meredith's clothes, but you never know. "And if it's closer to the first one, what exactly do you do with all your free time?"

“Somewhere in the middle? I do live in the woods and don’t leave that often but it’s in an actual house”, not that she really needs one. “I’ve written and a published a few books and I’ve had someone doing investments and stuff on my behalf for a few decades. I had to look for something to do once there weren’t any more new supernatural creatures to travel around the world for.

“With my free time I… don’t really do much? I read and occasionally write but I’d been pretty bored until you showed up.”

…She's published books? Wow. Sanna will definitely want to check those out. Regardless of whether they're genre fiction, high literature, non-fiction… She feels like Meredith's writing would have to provide some insight into her psyche, even if it's a series of bone-dry textbooks about leaf morphology or something. Even her choice of pen name feels like it would be enlightening.

Investments implies she has, like, a bank account. A civilian identity. Identity documents. Unless she's accessing her investment income under the table, which seems quite possible if she's doing it all through one person. Collecting royalties for her books, on the other hand… Sanna imagines it's technically possible to do that without a civilian identity — for example, by letting someone else take credit in exchange for passing along a portion of the royalties — but that seems difficult to arrange in a trustworthy fashion, and not necessarily worth the trouble compared to just having an agent who's willing to keep you anonymous. You'd have to be really determined to not have a registered identity, in order for any of the alternatives to be worth it. Then again, there's no rule Meredith can't have multiple civilian identities, especially given how long she's had to lay groundwork… It really all depends on what her goals are re: being known to the government, and Sanna of course doesn't know what her goals are.

…Wait, 'weren't any more new supernatural creatures'?! Sanna's not sure whether to be impressed or skeptical. But she doesn't doubt that Meredith's seen a lot. No wonder she was curious about Sanna. Now she's extra glad she didn't try to play dumb about why she stands out…

Well jeez, no wonder she's so bored! "Amusement parks don't grab you? …That's more of a conversational question, you don't have to answer."

(Sanna might be a bit disappointed to discover, when she looks for Meredith’s books, that her pen name is the same as what she’s introduced herself by.)

Well, there might have been some creatures that she hadn’t found. If so, they were hiding very well.  Meredith searched everywhere she could, asked anyone who might know, advertised her presence to other supernaturals… anything that might lead her to more magic species.

“Well, they’re usually closed at night,” she’s letting on about the weakness to sunlight but whatever, it’s an obvious one for Sanna to guess about anyway, “and they’re not very thrilling when you’ve got vampiric speed and reflexes.”

(She would at most be mildly disappointed. 'She just uses the same name' is one of the possibilities she's considering, and she feels like that would also provide insight.)

Sanna cocks her head. "Canada's Wonderland is open 'til 10 pm sometimes." She knows, because she gets a season pass every year. "Not every year, but last year and the year before… Although, I guess that only gets you an hour-ish in summertime. And yeah, good point about the speed." She's not even going to bother suggesting the off-season events; the idea that Meredith might find Halloween Haunt or WinterFest entertaining is laughable. "But like, that's just one example, what about –"

– and then her brain catches up. "Wait, you can't be in sunlight?" She's so surprised that she's now totally forgotten about giving Meredith a turn.

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.

…She looks like she really doesn't want to give it back.

"Um… I mean, I'll take the stick if you really want me to, but you don't have to give it back yet if you don't want to? I'll ask for it back if I really feel like I want it to be my turn."

Should she have pretended she didn’t care? Eh, it doesn’t matter. Instead, she can ask questions! So much better than self-doubt. In fact, she won’t even reply to that, she’ll just continue holding the stick and ask a new question.

“Compared to humans, how do your children grow up? Are they faster? When are they considered adults?”

"Yeah, they're faster. We're basically equivalent to human toddlers when we hatch, and I think a 3-year-old mermaid is probably equivalent to a human between the ages of 8 and 12, at least mentally. And then we're sexually mature between 8 and 10, physically mature between 10 and 12, socially considered adults between 10 and 15 depending on how one's clan defines adulthood."

“Which is why you specified that you aren’t sixteen in the same way as a human,” she nods. “Humans are pretty unusual in how much they rely on their parents when little compared to other species.”

“How does your clan define adulthood?”

"Well, we do still rely on our caregivers quite a bit during those first several years. Not nearly as much as humans, we're never as dependent as actual babies; but we're too small and ignorant to hunt for ourselves or know what's good to eat, we're silly and impulsive in the way that all juveniles are silly and impulsive… That kind of thing. But we definitely get past that stage faster than humans. In theory, anyway. Mermaids spend their whole lives with a family of some sort, and no mermaid can expect to survive in the ocean on their own even if they're an adult, so in a way we're never fully independent. But I feel like, if it was purely a question of being a competent hunter, a lot of mermaids could probably fend for themselves by the time they're 3 or 4? But it's hard to know, since we can't actually get rid of all the other stuff that kills mermaids and see what happens.

"My clan defines adulthood purely by age, as measured by how many assemblies have occurred since you hatched. You're an adult when you get to your fourth one. They aren't spaced evenly apart, but on average you'd expect to be dubbed an adult between 12 and 14. Maybe a bit earlier or a bit later if you get a weird distribution."

“Pack creatures, of course. Yeah, humans also continue living in society after reaching adulthood.  It’s also not uncommon. Although an important part of supernatural species tend to be more individualistic. It might be coincidental, I haven’t confirmed any theories either way.”

“That’s a nice system. Easy to keep track off. A bit better than years, even, since assemblies are more notable.”

Meredith even manages to avoid asking Sanna why she’s on her own given the facts! She’s maybe not a complete failure at respecting others’ personal space! (More likely, there’s so much to comment that she couldn’t say everything she was thinking.)

"I hadn't thought about it that way, but yeah, it is nice to have an unmistakable signal that you've become an adult. Something that's notable in and of itself, not just because it's a date on a calendar.

"And yeah, lots of animals of course keep living in groups after they're adults. But adult humans theoretically can go live completely by themselves, without even the support of wider society, if they know what they're doing. Whereas mermaids pretty much can't do that. Maybe it's not completely impossible, but they'd have to be fantastically lucky on a regular basis. Around here, the biggest thing a human has to worry about is a bear, or a mountain lion, or a wolf, or maybe an angry moose if they're unlucky. Where I'm from, the biggest thing a mermaid has to worry about is a 20-foot killer whale, or a 30-foot-plus whale shark." (The 'plus' is because they've occasionally been known to get way bigger than that. Apparently scientists straight-up don't know how big they can get, which is just fantastic. She doesn't miss the ocean.)

She tilts her head. "I dunno, maybe it could be done if we had institutional knowledge about the best way to go about it, the way humans have accumulated tons of institutional knowledge about how to survive in a cabin in the woods or whatever. But we don't have that, because mermaids almost never do that, and if there are any who do it and survive, they don't come back to tell everyone else how they managed."

"Well, moving to land seems like it's been an effective strategy for you so far! Maybe others have also done it in the past. As a side note, though, there are also some larger-than-bears predators on land, they're just supernatural and not widely known to humans because of that. They usually are either not interested in humans or too deadly for there to be any witnesses. I'm quite glad that you hadn't got killed by a dragon before we could meet!"

"Yeah, I was purely talking about mermaids who still live in the ocean. And non-supernatural predators. But, yeah, I get what you're saying."

What the hell does she say to that last part. She's not going to say 'Thanks', because Meredith's gladness is purely selfish. A stock response that she too is glad she's not dead yet seems redundant and inane. She can't say the feeling's mutual, because it isn't.

On second thought, maybe she just won't respond to that part at all.

Meredith also didn’t think that part needed an answer so it all works out!

She nods, “so, do you know if it’s common for there to be lone mermaids who do move out of the ocean like you’ve done? Doesn’t that make you miss your pod?”

"I doubt it's common. There are very few lone mermaids to begin with, and I expect a lot of them die before the idea of leaving the ocean even enters their heads. And then, turning human doesn't imbue us with knowledge of human language or behaviour or culture, and it especially doesn't imbue us with clothing or identity documents or literacy. A mermaid can't just waltz into a city and expect to get by. So I imagine most mermaids stick with the devil they know, and I'm guessing most of the remainder either wash out and flee back to the ocean, or wind up dead because being broke and homeless and ignorant makes them easy prey for human predators. I made it because I had help. I don't want to talk about it. I don't miss my pod, and I don't want to talk about why."

She does miss her nurse, but she doesn't see any reason to bring that up. And also she still isn't ready to admit it

But she does want to hear about it. She’ll push that feeling aside(-ish) and offer the stick to Sanna yet again, in case it helps her better resist the temptation to keep asking.

“Mhm… true. We vampires have the advantage of having been raised as humans, even if we’re actually more psychologically different from them than your species is.”

"Yeah."

She takes the stick this time.

So many questions, which one to start with…

Well, there's the obvious:

"What sorts of supernatural creatures should I be worrying about in this region, and how can I best avoid them or defend myself from them?"

“There’s nothing particularly dangerous very close by, mainly because, well, territorialism. If you go to the mountain range east of here, you get in a dragon’s territory. It’s best if you avoid it but, if you can’t, be deferential and make it very clear that you know and respect that you are currently under her authority.

“There’s some minor creatures in the woods nearby that might be harmful? Nothing that’s likely to be deadly unless someone new comes over. Oh, and avoid fae-portals. They have really earned their reputation.”

Sanna pulls out her phone and starts taking notes.

"…Mountain range east of here?" She could mean something really far away, or something in the US… "You'll have to enlighten me."

“Yes”, she nods and pauses for a moment, checking that she’s recalling the name properly before telling her, “in the Laurentides. Best if you avoid the whole range.”

"And the Laurentides are where, exactly?" Fuck it, she has Google Maps. It's annoying that Meredith didn't specify further, but, whatever.

Ah. Quebec. She didn't even know there was a mountain range there. It's huge.

Easy enough to avoid. She has no reason to go to Quebec, let alone the mountains specifically. Even without the warning, she probably would've gone her whole life without ever setting foot there.

"Okay. Thanks. What kinds of creatures are in the woods?" She doesn't hike much, and never alone, maybe that's why she hasn't run into any.

“There’s will-o-the-wisps, they’re usually harmless but you should still avoid following them. There are also many small animals and plants that aren’t all that different from the mundane. You’ll want to look out for the fae, as I’ve already mentioned. And, obviously, do not ride kelpies, although they aren’t common here. There’s a few other vampires further north but they’re unlikely to bother you unless you bother them first. And there’s a pack of werewolves near Toronto.”

Sanna was going to ask about vampires, so she's glad Meredith brought them up.

"Okay. I'll want to know more about these things, 'cause this isn't a lot to go on, but it can wait for another time." It's not like she was planning to tromp through the woods tomorrow or something. "But what's a fae-portal and how do I recognize one? Oh, and how much further north are the vampires? Are we talking Barrie, or further north than that?"

“Fae-portals are doors to the fae realm, of course. Many of them are like the ones in folklore, rings of  mushrooms or made by the branches of a tree. There’s also the occasional door or stairway that looks like it goes nowhere. You’ll probably be able to feel them, it’s like they vibrate on a different frequency on a magical level than their surroundings.”

“A bit further north than that, there are two near Thunder Bay, one by Sudbury. Some even further north if you want to know about those too.”

"Alright." Type type type. "Do you happen to know what their… fixations are?"

“The ones in Thunder Bay are extremely sappy and fixated on one another. The one in Sudbury was forcibly turned and, probably because of that, his initial drive was survival but he’s bent it towards comfort.”

…Interesting. Well, she can sure relate to the survival-comfort one. "On the face of it, they don't sound likely to be a problem even if I do run into them. Have I got that right, or would they be a problem?"

“They shouldn’t be one unless they think you’re a threat to them. Just make it clear that you aren’t such.”

"Alright."

…Should she ask this…

"Can I assume there's a natural limit to your curiosity about me? That eventually you'll have learned enough that you'll lose interest?"

After all, presumably she isn't still actively questioning members of all the other species she's found… But then again, she knows Sanna's different from all of them…

“Based on all previous cases, yes, I should run out of questions I really care about at some point. I might try to find you again after that if I don’t have some way to contact you and I come up with something else but I’ll be mostly done.”

Although she really really hopes this won’t happen soon because not having a target for her curiosity absolutely sucks.

Internal sigh.

"If at some point I were to say to you, 'I don't want to see you again or interact with you again', would you honour that even if you still had questions or you came up with more questions later?"

Meredith presses her lips tightly together. 

“Probably not”, she admits, “it would go against my nature.”

There’s magics that could ensure a deal is binding but she’s certainly not going to bring that up when she hasn’t even been asked about it.

There's a heavy silence, for a moment.

"So, earlier, when I was laying out my conditions for having this conversation, and one of them was 'I might just decide I never want to see you again after tonight, and I will expect you to honour that, so the things I tell you tonight might be all you ever learn', and you replied, 'Understood', in what sense was that not a fucking lie?"

“In the sense that I will really try my best to avoid bothering you if you don’t want to see me again. And that I hope that I’ll learn enough not to feel the need to do that. And, also, I probably didn’t listen to much beyond getting to learn things because I was very much overtaken by my drive at the time.”

"Not that I don't appreciate the hypothetical effort — assuming you're being honest, which is now very much in question — but you just said yourself that you probably wouldn't honour it. The fact that you'd try isn't nothing, but the condition was that you'd honour it, period! Not that you'd try your very best to honour it but realistically would probably fail!

"And if you straight-up weren't listening in the first place, then your answer would have been a lie even if it'd been coincidentally accurate! You just said what you thought I wanted to hear so that I'd tell you things! It didn't mean anything!

"Which means I just told you a fucking mountain of deeply personal things under false pretenses! You were already on thin ice thanks to the sketchy way you approached me, but I gave you the benefit of the doubt and gave you a chance to earn my trust, and you spat on it. Just when I was starting to think you might be trustworthy after all, I find out you got what you wanted out of me by lying to me!"

She takes several deep breaths.

"So." She drops the twig on the ground and grinds it under her shoe. "I'm going to be the one asking the rest of the questions tonight. When I'm done, we can talk about contacting each other later and maybe somehow reaching the possibility of me answering more questions. And the only reason I'm even leaving that possibility open, instead of just walking away right now and refusing to ever say another word to you, is because you at least admitted what you did, instead of leaving me in ignorance forever.

"And just so we're clear, it will not take much to make me withdraw even that offer, so this would be a bad time to push back."

Luckily, Meredith’s ‘don’t kill the interesting thing’ instincts still override the ‘violence upon being upset’ ones! In fact, she even mostly manages to smooth her expression after a second or two, closing her mouth over her eager fangs. She now kind of wishes she hadn’t replied to that question.

 (Fortunately for Sanna, she doesn’t have time travel nor is she willing to try to compel her, although it couldn’t make the situation much worse now.)

She tries to reassure herself with the possibility that she’s being offered for the future but it feels so frail. She’s been making mistakes this whole time, what’s to stop her from making yet another one and losing that too? But she still has it.

So, she will slowly nod and she won’t even ask if she still gets to decline answering certain questions.

…Okay. Well, Meredith hasn't lunged at her, so this is already not going literally as bad as it could have gone. That's something.

She hates gambling. Gambling is scary. She was supposed to be done gambling. She fucking hates this.

She keeps taking deep breaths until she feels calm again.

She sighs. Out loud, this time. "I'm worried you're just telling me what I want to hear again. Obviously I don't have a truth serum or mind-reading to verify your answer, but… Can I get some kind of indication that you were listening, that you understand what's going on now?"

Meredith won’t also take deep breaths but that’s more because vampires don’t need to breathe than because she isn’t upset. Instead, she bites the inside of her lips and then focuses on making her fangs retract (and her eyes and claws return to their ‘resting’ appearance too).

“I’ve upset you and caused you to think that you can’t trust me. Because you’ve told me a lot about yourself and feel betrayed,” does she understand these feelings anymore? She’s not sure but she thinks she can understand their impact enough, “you want me to answer your questions only. And if that helps you feel slightly less uncomfortable with me, you might sometime answer my questions again.”

"…That's about the gist of it, yeah. Close enough, anyway. Okay. So."

She exhales slowly.

"What's one of the books you've written?"

“I think the one you might find most interesting is ‘A Hidden World’. It’s somewhere between a travel diary and a field journal based on my experiences, although it’s presented as a work of fiction. Which it mostly isn’t.”

Oooh. That sounds fantastic.

Sanna Googles "a hidden world" "meredith baines". (She's guessing about the spelling of the surname.)

Huh. She publishes under this name. Interesting. Well, apparently she's not nearly as paranoid as Sanna.

The book's only about a decade old. Does Kalette Public Library have… It does have a copy! A couple, even! They're not at this location, but she can put one on hold for pickup here. Boop.

If it's as informative as it sounds, she should buy a copy for Miles and Neil to read if she ever sees them again. They'd love to have an account of another world's magic and mythic creatures. And Miles loves epistolary novels

"Neat. Thanks.

"Have you written any books under different pen names? Have you written any that are too old to be by 'Meredith Baines'? …You don't have to tell me what they are, if you don't want them connected to you or whatever, I'm just curious whether you have or not."

“I did write one before picking up this name but, one, it was pretty terrible, and two, it’s from a bit over a century ago and I really doubt there’s any copies of it left around. Anyway, all my other books are under the same name, yes.”

…Okay well now she's super curious about that century-old book, but this isn't the rabbit hole to go down right now. Time to change tack. She's put off the important questions long enough. Too long, really.

"This isn't a trap, I'm just curious: Do you drink blood, if so do you drink human blood, and if so then how do you get it?"

“I do drink human blood. I can live on animal blood and various other foods but human blood is much tastier. In fact, I was in town when I noticed you because I was looking for a human to feed from. As to how I get the blood, there’s a few people who know vampires exist and don’t mind if I occasionally drink their blood but that’s boring. So, I like to look for people out during the night and then just follow the mood. I don’t kill them, nor turn them. And when I’m done, they can be compelled into forgetting.”

…Ohhhh that's concerning. Ohhhh boy is that ever concerning.

But not concerning enough to be her main priority. Meredith could be lying about not killing or turning people, but Sanna has no way of finding out. Not yet, anyway. And if she's telling the truth, well, attacking people and then compelling them to forget is still bad, but if they're left alive and unharmed then Sanna isn't going to lose sleep over not addressing it immediately.

The fact that Meredith finds consensual feeding 'boring' is separately concerning, and also means it'll be a lot harder to steer her towards a more ethical alternative to attacking and mindwiping people. Sanna was vaguely hoping that she could just suggest Meredith advertise herself as a sanguinarian in search of some willing donors. But she already has willing donors, she just finds consent boring. Great. That bodes so well for the possibility of establishing any trust between them

Makes for a good segue though:

"Earlier you mentioned that 'Boredom and loss of motivation plays an important role in vampire mortality'. Can you elaborate on that?"

“We’re not particularly easy to kill but it can be easy for us to get bored or otherwise lose our drives. If it lasts long enough, we get suicidal. That’s pretty much all there is to it.” She’ll end that sentence with a shrug and pretend that it does not remind her of having lived through similar times which she’s glad are behind but which still feel very close sometimes. She could have died so happy if she’d done so while still exploring the world.

…Well, shit. It is the darker of the two options she had in mind.

"That… really sucks." She doesn't really know what else to say. She's not going to offer Meredith a hug or anything. Definitely going to brainstorm ways for her to be less bored, though. (She was already going to do that, now she just has even more of a reason. She knows what it's like to be so bored that she kind of hates being alive.)

She sighs, in a way that she hopes comes across as sympathetic rather than annoyed. She doesn't say anything else yet, in case Meredith wanted to… talk about it more, or something. She's probably humanizing Meredith too much, but, what else is she supposed to do. She doesn't know her well enough to guess what else would work.

Meredith really doesn’t want to talk about it. Nope. The faster they can move onto something else, the better.

She wishes she was still allowed to ask Sanna questions. She has magic that’s new to Meredith and she wants to learn more about it and she can’t and -

She’s not, though, so she’ll wait for her to speak. She can remain still enough to look like a statue (which unfortunately doesn’t need much of her attention and therefore doesn’t stop her from continuing to think about other, more unpleasant, things).

…Okay, stony silence seems like a pretty good indication that she doesn't wanna talk about it.

Moving right along…

"How did you suddenly appear behind me at the bus stop?"

It doesn’t show on her face but Meredith is glad for the topic change.

“Oh, I just jumped off the bus’ roof.”

Well, that sure does explain it.

"When did you get on the bus roof? And were you already on there when you spotted me, or did you get on specifically to follow me?"

She hopes Sanna won’t get upset again because of this! Lying won’t help if she doesn’t get away with it though. And she’d rather not risk it at this point when she’s not even sure which answer would upset Sanna most.

“I got on it after you did. I was following you when I did it.”

Should she sigh out loud about that? Eh, what's the point.

(She wants to chastise herself for apparently not being paranoid enough, but even she can't convince herself that she should have been expecting Death From Above while getting off a bus.

…Should she start looking up every time she gets off a bus now? …No, she shouldn't, that way lies madness. Unless? No, she shouldn't. But maybe if NO. …She will never forgive Meredith for making her seriously consider this. The answer is no, brain.)

"So you got on in Savoy. Is that where you normally live?"

Is Meredith skilled enough at reading expressions to understand that Sanna is upset about that? Nope, not at all. (She can guess that stalking her again would have consequences —like never getting answers to her questions— she’s not completely oblivious, just a lot.)

“Kind of? Not in the city proper, my house is in the nearby woods, but yes.”

Hm. Okay.

"How come I couldn't smell you until you were about to approach me? It's not just distance, you were closer than that when you first started following me."

“Oh, that’s a vampire ability. Let me show it to you.”

At that, she gradually ramps up said ability. As it starts, Sanna might realize that Meredith is becoming less noticeable. She’s still fully visible but it’s like she’s not important. This effect increases and, eventually, she just becomes fully invisible.

Meredith waits another second and then drops the effect completely.

Wow. Okay.

So there's no point in telling her not to stalk her again, because she won't be able to enforce it. Fuck.

…Actually…

"If you can do that, then why did you let yourself be noticeable at all before you approached me?"

“If you could feel magic it would have been more noticeable for me to be fully invisible. And I think I was hoping to approach you more straightforwardly but changed my mind? I’m not entirely sure, curiosity was getting the best of me.”

It seems like Sanna's revealed that she can't in fact sense Meredith by magic or see past her 'glamour'. But she knew that was the chance she was taking when she asked the question; and it was probably already pretty obvious anyway, from how Sanna reacted when Meredith turned the glamour all the way off earlier. Besides, in exchange she has learned about an ability Meredith has.

It's really starting to sound like Meredith's fixation often gets the better of her even when that harms her own selfish goals. That's… kind of a bad sign, actually. It means that Sanna perhaps can't trust her to act right even when she's actually trying her best. It means motivation isn't enough. Maybe nothing is enough.

For God's sake, why did it have to be her? Why couldn't it have been the safety–comfort guy? They would have gotten along great, probably! Possibly she is being too optimistic

…Will it be too obvious if she asks that question now? Maybe not, but better play it safe. What to ask instead…

"Are vampires smarter than humans, after you factor out things like being faster and having a better memory?"

“We’re a bit smarter, I think. Although it could just be that having learnt much more since becoming a vampire has given me that impression. I wasn’t literate when I was human, it was the 1700s. And most of us aren’t living lives where it’s easy to test our intellect. Might be a good idea to set up some sort of experiment next time someone wants to be turned…” new project ideas! Always great! Even if this is one she won’t be able to act on just now (forcibly turning people does not give you collaborative vampires), she’d need to do some research for it anyway.

Oh yeah, the 1700s. She should ask about that. Where is Meredith even from? Not important right now, though.

"Do vampires get more powerful as they age? Factoring out things like just being more knowledgeable or more experienced. Like… Have you ever played an RPG? I'm basically asking if vampires 'level up'."

“None of the supernatural creatures in this world ‘level up’. We can learn more and some abilities become stronger with use but it’s just not like that,” Meredith has lots of free time, she’s had the opportunity to get to know modern-day fiction and games. “It isn’t quantifiable and it has limits. It’s just training, discovering things and becoming more attuned to magic. We also don’t gain entirely new abilities. And magic is species based so there’s no spells to learn, you have to be born a witch.”

…Why did she say 'this world'.

…There's no way she suspects, right? Surely she wouldn't be able to hold back from flooding her with questions if she suspected. Right?

Maybe she was just being emphatic?

By the time she's done internally panicking, she's missed most of what Meredith said. She caught enough to gather that the answer is 'No, there's no levelling up', but that's about it. Oh well, not really a big deal.

"Do you need to breathe? Do you need to sleep?"

“No to both. Although I still need air to talk. We can’t sleep even if we want to. Which is great for not wasting time but can get a bit annoying when you’ve actually got too much time and nothing to do.”

Does Meredith have some suspicions about Sanna’s origin? Yes, absolutely. She’s explored this world as much as she could, she doesn’t really believe she could have missed an entire species. Plus, the fae sort of have a separate dimension (they insist the world ‘realm’ is better), so it’s not like there are no precedents. (Hell, however, does not exist.)

So she bores easily and she can't sleep. Great. Great combination. Sanna spent years being mind-numbingly bored too, but at least she could sleep! And it was 'only' 3–5 years! And it still sucked a whole hell of a lot!

…Even given that Meredith couldn't possibly know why she's asking, Sanna's kind of surprised she just told her whether she needs to breathe, just like that. Does she not realize strengths can be as important to hide as weaknesses?

Oh well. It's not purely to Meredith's disadvantage that Sanna knows that. There are upsides and downsides. And it's probably never going to be relevant unless Sanna has to defend herself. Which she kind of wishes would happen just to see how it would shake out, she wants to know what the real pecking order is.

Of course, Meredith could be lying. If they ever see each other after tonight, maybe someday Sanna can ask for a demonstration. (She doesn't really expect Meredith to agree, but that's mostly because she wouldn't agree, and it's becoming very clear that Meredith doesn't know what 'fearing for your life' is.) That's not a priority, though. Not yet, anyway.

Should she ask this one? Last time she asked a question she wasn't sure she should ask, it kind of blew up in both of their faces. …But, it blew up in a way she needed to know about. It sucked, but it was still information she'd rather have than not. So…

"What's a way that I can defend myself from you without permanently hurting or disfiguring you?"

"Well, I can't know all the options, since I don't know all about your abilities," she might be pouting slightly, though it's not intentional, "and vampires are hard to permanently harm outside of killing. A good strategy might be for you to carry a UV torchlight? That obviously wouldn't help right now, but in case of future encounters. If you turned it on and pointed it at me, the light would both weaken me and distract me, since it's pretty painful." She hesitates a bit while speaking, eager enough for a chance to learn more, even if it's not tonight, that she's making the effort, but still not entirely pleased with openly stating such a big vulnerability. Meredith could add some more details... but does she really want to? (No, not unless she's asked.)

…Ah, right. The sunlight thing.

If that's a real weakness, Sanna was assuming it only applied to real sunlight. It's not that it doesn't make sense for any UV light to work, but that's the sort of thing where she'd expect magic to draw a distinction between UV light that actually comes from the Sun and UV light that doesn't.

Knowing she can deter Meredith with a UV flashlight would be extremely comforting, but…

"Earlier, when you said sunlight hurts you, do you have any inkling about why I was surprised?"