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a little mermaid in a fantasy larp school
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There's one person you can go to, when your life sucks enough that you're ready to throw away everything about it in favor of something else.  Such as, for example, if you get into a terrible fight with your father and he wrecks all your possessions that matter and demands you be kept under constant guard, even if it's just by your other family members (who are also all the actual worst).

There's one person in Cyllene's family who isn't the actual worst, and quite conveniently it's the same one.

 

 

The witch runs a hand through his hair.  "You sure about this, kiddo?  I mean I'm all for sticking it to the man, but if anything's not how you like it you won't exactly be able to drift back to me and complain."

     "Uncle.  Please.  I'll be fine - or I won't; little matter.  I at least won't be here.  I'd take my chances if you'll let me."

"Yeah no sure, I gotcha covered.  You know I've gotta check, though.  Last call to bail out?"

     "I would say it was almost as if you hadn't known me since hatching, if the category's competition weren't so dismal."

He laughs at that, without much humor.  "Fair enough."

 

As it turns out, Cyllene ends up with several more opportunities to back out; figuring out how to order the spells is a small nightmare.  They have to do her legs and her lungs at the same time (and given the situation the two of them can hardly go up to the surface), but the language spell takes long enough that she would probably drown if they started there.  Under different circumstances it would be easiest to do language comprehension first, but the other two spells both require the use of her voice.  Ultimately the witch gives up and detours to find an air-creation spell, and Cyllene sings until she chokes and sticks her head into a little pocket at the top of the cave, treading water with her strange-wonderful-marvelous-perfect - but somewhat difficult - legs (legs legs legs legs legs!!!).  Her newly-webless hands aren't much help, sliding so frictionlessly through the water, but there's a little crevice in the rock where she can stick just two fingers, and by pressing her other hand in a different spot she can balance with her face in the air without needing very coordinated kicking from her confounding and delightful new limbs.

She runs her tongue over dull, rounded teeth while her uncle busies himself with the next set of preparations.

"You're real lucky we're pals, Llene," he sighs, and pulls out some ludicrously powerful little trinket which will allow her to sing two spells at technically the same moment, in some kind of time loop that Cyllene doesn't need to know the theory for to take advantage of.  The tunes clash and the tempos don't match at all but she's good at music and it doesn't matter that there's another Cyllene trying to pull her wildly off-key; she can hold her own line regardless.

Her voice - or voices- go out and for a moment she's terrified, that she's human and omniglottal but still here, that now she's not even stuck with forced supervision but stuck in this tiny crack of air - even if her father were agreeable she just wouldn't have time to make it to the surface alive - but then the tips of her fingers and toes start dissolving.

It is not comfortable, and it's in fact dread- and horror-inducingly not-comfortable; she tries to start screaming - but right, no voice - her grip falls away and she thrashes back into the water - there's a hand on her shoulder for the remainder of time her shoulder exists, a few seconds - and then there's nothing, she's nothing.

 

But only for a moment.

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She has landed in a copse of trees, winter-bare and snowy. In one direction there's a tall iron fence; in the other, a taller building, with stained glass in all the windows and a set of bells in a tower on one side and an open gallery with columns facing the yard she's sitting in. A human child is walking along the gallery, nose in a book; she's wearing a long, large-buttoned coat with upturned cuffs and a deep upturned hem which has been secured in place so it can serve as a kind of pocket, containing additional books and various other human implements. There's a snood-hood on her head and shiny shoes on her feet. The whole shebang is a dark phthalo green with gold detailing.

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Cold cold cold cold cold cold COLD COLD she had no idea human bodies were so weak about COLD

(But eeeee, she has a human body and everything is so pretty and intricate - )

She calls out to the human child - she does not call out to the human child, right; she wheezes slightly at the human child - she - smacks one of her hands against her other arm??  - She grabs a stick and hits it against a tree, trying to get it to be as loud as she can.  She sure hopes it works; Plan B is crawling on her belly naked through the snow.

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The human child glances up from her book! And looks in the direction of the noise! And yelps and breaks into a run, not remotely toward Cyllene!

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Nooooooooooooooo.

. . . Maybe she just magically knows how to walk.  She should try that; it's hardly going to hurt anything since she's going to end up on the ground anyways.

She lunges for the nearest tree, hauls herself up with great effort, and picks up one foot.  She's seen humans do this, both just now and before, sticking her head out of the water to catch snatches of their lives until she fell back under the waves, gasping - she puts that foot down, closer to the building.

That wasn't so bad.

She picks up the other foot, and can't really put it closer to the building than the first foot is without letting go of the tree, so she does that.  She immediately falls, and not even in the direction of the building or the right way up, and it does hurt because she hits the tree on the way down and the bark scratches her back all up.

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The small human is back a minute later, trailing an adult still in the process of putting on his coat, whose uniform is similarly constructed but red instead of green. "I told you it was a for-real-nonmagic emergency!" says the child.

"You sure did!" acknowledges the adult, doing up one button on his coat so it'll stop flapping open and leaving it at that as he takes long strides toward Cyllene. "Ma'am, what's your deal*?"

*More polite than it sounds but still kind of abrupt.

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She wraps a hand around her throat, teeth chattering.

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"- okay, well, obviously part of your deal is that you're freezing, come inside -" He holds out a hand.

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Cyllene smiles, big as she can manage, and extends her arm.

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He pulls her up but appears to expect her to be able to walk from there.

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Maybe if she clings to him very very tightly she can prevent herself from falling over again despite this misunderstanding?

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...sure, he will support her on the way into the building.

It's toasty warm inside, and there is a bench right next to a heat vent he deposits her on. "Sinzy, go get her a spare coat or one of the naproom blankets or something."

"Yes Preceptor," says Sinzy, and she runs off again.

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Whether or not these people have a gesture to indicate gratefulness is not something her uncle's spell was designed to teach her.  She does her best to convey it with her face instead; hopefully humans don't use their faces in wildly different ways than she does.  The ones she used to watch didn't seem to but who knows.

What a good human-cave, what good warmth, what a good invention this bench is.  Not only does it have warm, but she can sit without having to fold up her legs or stretch them out too much.  Ingenious.

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"Do you need some hot cider or something?"

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. . . blink blink.

 

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"Are you allergic to hot cider? You must be so cold and it's what we have in the hot drink department."

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. . . Actually her skin - especially her feet and fingers, and especially her toes - is stinging like she touched a jelly, and it's definitely Very Temperature but she's not quite certain it's cold anymore.  She pulls a foot up to investigate it, running her fingers over the toes (toes!!!  they're so stumpy and funny-looking).  But they don't dissolve even when poked at, and the stinging hurts worse than dissolving did but lacks the element of terror and fundamental wrongness.  And her toes are more of a sea-creature color right now than a human one but maybe that just takes a while.

She looks up and mouths, Cider?  There's absolutely no noise when she does so, not even a whisper, despite the fact that the rest of the time her breathing is a normal amount of audible.

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"...do you speak Kusan?"

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The gestures she's seen and the words she's heard so far don't leave much room for nuance - Yes, Preceptor.

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"Do you know what cider is."

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Drink?  Hot drink?

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"Yep. I'll be right back." He goes and gets her a paper cup full of hot cider.

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Apparently a drink is a very very very small really weird sea!!  It is indeed hot, and it makes the stinging in her fingers way worse.  Cyllene manages to hold onto it for a few seconds before half-dropping half-setting it down on the bench next to her.  Some splashes onto her fingers and she shakes out her hands trying to fling it off.

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"...if it's too hot for you now give it a minute, I guess. - Sinzy!"

"Sorry that took me so long, Preceptor and freezing lady!" says Sinzy, dumping two folded blankets on Cyllene's lap.

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Oh they're so soft!!  Wow!!!  She has never in her life felt anything like this!!!!

Cyllene curls up around them but still doesn't have any words for thanking people.

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"They'll work better if you put them around you," says Sinzy. "Preceptor, I have Sigils and Symbols now.."

"Yes, go ahead, Sinzy," says the Preceptor, and she runs off.

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