mermaid oh murmur into my ear

[pipers_son]

MERMAID AU MEME



Rules:
● Put down character name and series in subject line.
● Add any preferences (romance and/or general, human and/or mer) in comment.
● Reply to other people!

Scenarios:

1 ♢ Little Mermaid
♢ Mer
♢ One of you is a mer person with something you want. The other is a powerful mage who can possibly give it to you. Can an arrangement be made...?

2 ♢ Exploration
♢ Mer and/or Human
♢ Whatever you are, your curiosity has gotten the best of you. Whether it's a sunken shipwreck on the bottom of the ocean or a mysterious cove hidden away along the cliffside... Venturing with a friend or running into something unexpected... What will you find?

3 ♢ Exchange
♢ Mer and/or Human
♢ Sometimes, territories are broached, but it's not always a bad thing. Whether you're of entirely different species, or just from different seas, you've met in peaceful circumstances- perhaps as a direct result of those! So it's time for a cultural exchange. Just ignore the fresh water mer.

4 ♢ For Science
♢ Mer and Human
♢ This is a one in a lifetime chance.... for at least one person. Are you on an isolated island? A ship far out to sea? A highly funded aquarium? Or perhaps even a laboratory with more than questionable methods... Either way, you have the chance now to study something rarely seen before. How will it turn out for both of you?

5 ♢ Ariel's Dream
♢ Mer and/or Human
♢ Some say it's impossible for a mer to live on dry land... except that's been quietly proven wrong. One of you has taken to living among humans, whether for years or still learning the ropes. As for the other... Are you a concerned friend, checking in on them from the sea? Or are you a landdweller, stumbling onto a great secret?

6 ♢ Sea Life
♢ Mer and Human
♢ While they have the legs for landdwelling, some humans seem to have more saltwater in their veins than blood, and those are the kinds of humans that end up with dealing with the mysteries of the sea the most. A surfer catching waves with shark mer? A pirate bartering with sirens for safe passage? A fisherman working together with those who know fish best? There's all sorts.

7 ♢ Stranded
♢ Mer and Human
♢ Well, fuck. Good job. One way or another, you're stuck where you shouldn't be. Whether that's a human lost in the tides, or a mer trapped against the land, you need help.... So don't be picky with what you do get.

8 ♢ Not Safe For Water
♢ Mer and/or Human
♢ The scenario made explicitly for Guillermo Del Toro and anyone who was extremely anxious for a xeno sex scene in The Shape Of Water. Get your smut on. Feel free to mix and match it with any of the other scenarios as well.

9 ♢ Siren Song
♢ Mer and Human
♢ Sometimes, there's a good reason people fear the too wide expanse of the sea, or how deep its depths an reach... Strange songs which string through coastal towns and cause disappearances... The sound of something slipping through the water around a ship in the dead of night... Unexplained shapes which flicker outside of deep-sea vessels or submarines or installations. Do you want to know what's out there?

10 ♢ Capture
♢ Mer and Human
♢ Sometimes, there's a good reason why people fear humans. You don't belong here, being gawked at through thick aquarium glass or trapped in a too-small freakshow tank, but what can you do? Is there anyone who cares for your plight, or are there only people responsible for it?

11 ♢ Chance Encounter
♢ Mer and Human
♢ Well, this is awkward. You didn't mean to stumble onto a mer just... there, doing whatever, on the beach or by the docks or tangled up in your fishing net, but, well. It's happened. Now what?

12 ♢ Transformation
♢ Mer and/or Human
♢ For one reason or another, you want to go where you've never gone before... A mer, venturing on the land either as a rare chance or every day business? Or a human, accepting some sort of trade or just to run away from the life you have now? Either way, it might get messy.... Feel free to mix in with other scenarios.

13 ♢ Fantasy Meets Fantasy
♢ Mer and OTHERS!
♢ Who's to say that humans are the only other creatures in the world? Maybe people living beneath the sea's waves aren't the only strange things. Maybe there are centaurs who travel along coastal roads to watch the night sky along with mer astronomers. Perhaps selkies are just distant cousins. Or who's to say that mer can't be a host of things unto themselves? The ocean's the limit.

14 ♢ Sci-fi
♢ Mer and Human
♢ Some say astronauts are nothing more than sailors venturing off into another unexplored sea, one that's above instead of below. And, befitting those same sailors of older days, they seem to tell tails of strange melodic frequencies coming in over the radio to their ears, and strange comets that look like tails passing them by on a landed planet. Do they not know what's accompanying them in space, or is that what they're actively chasing?

15 ♢ Divinity
♢ Mer and Human
♢ There are stories told of what exactly it is that could be both human and fish... So it's not surprising that, eventually, one would land upon calling them divine entities, either gods of the sea or lakes, or just their messengers. Is that true, or just a very clever, long lasting ruse?

16 ♢ Afterlife
♢ Mer and/or Human
♢ Some say mer are just humans, wrongfully forced overboard by superstition or cruelty and welcomed by the sea into something more. Others say that they're the spirits, haunting a particular sea or lake town for a wrongful death. What's the truth? Time to find out.

17 ♢ Peaceful Living
♢ Mer and/or Human
♢ Not everything has to be a dramatic mess. Sometimes, things just... work out for the best. These are better times, and mer are just another part of life. Water-side towns where everything is built around those that share the waters with them, or huge metropolises with water tubes and sprouts for mer to travel through. How will you imagine this sort of life?

18 ♢ Wildcard
♢ follow your dreams, make up whatever

Comments

[tsukino_bunny]

Maybe it was a little odd that she was addressing the eels as though they were her friends. They'd probably just laugh at her if they were here to see her now, but she didn't really care. Usagi blinked a little as the eels turned tail and headed away as suddenly as they'd come.

"Hey, wait!" she called out, as though doing so would actually make a difference. But she's doing her best to follow them despite how silly it was to call after them. Because chasing them would absolutely be more effective. She wasn't actually expecting to catch them, so her face lit up in a bright grin when they stopped moving.

Only she wasn't quite so coordinated, and it took her an extra couple of seconds to stop moving and regain her balance. She might have walked right into Snake if he'd been just a little closer. As it was, she'd finally managed to spot him, and she's tilting her head curiously at him, because really, it wasn't every day that she came across someone up to their eyes in shallow water. "Hi! Were you here the whole time, too?"

[silentscales]

Snake is surprised to see her so close so suddenly. Just when he had given up on her showing interest, she didn't only nearly trip over him, but just said hello so cheerfully.

His eyes grow wide and the eels scatter as he quickly dips back under, quickly swimming away as his tail briefly nearly breaches the surface. A moment later he peeks back above the water about fifteen feet away, watching her carefully.

She'd not said anything mean despite the fact that even his human half is covered in eel scales. She just asked if he had been there the whole time. Did he really need to run away? He doubted he really did, and he still wanted to learn more about the humans that liked to show up all around his lake.

[tsukino_bunny]

Her eyes went a little wide at his sudden movement and her expression is a little disappointed when he surfaced again a fair distance away. Now she felt a little bad, because she hadn't been trying to startle him.

The brief glimpse she'd gotten of him before was just enough to make her curious. She'd met non-humans in the past, but most of the time they tended to want to kill her and all of her friends. But this one just seemed curious, and maybe a little lonely. Or maybe she was just assuming because she'd only noticed the one.

"Are you alone?" She'd been tempted to tack too onto the end of that question, but it didn't seem necessary. It was pretty obvious that she was here alone. "I'm sorry if I scared you before. Sometimes, I'm a little clumsy. Ami-chan says it's because I'm always in too big a hurry, and maybe she's right." And now she's babbling. Oops. "You don't have to leave."

[silentscales]

Snake cautiously moves a little closer, his eyes wide. He rises a little further out of the water so that he can speak without filling his mouth with water. "I'm alone... Aside from the eels," he says as he peers at her from a safe but comfortable distance.

He blinks a few times, looking her over again. Legs are such strange things. They don't look like they should be able to hold a person up, or move them anywhere. How did they balance on them? Those weren't even the least of his questions, but he felt his chest beating hard in his throat. He's actually a little surprised he was able to speak at all, from his nerves alone. It might be his first conversation, but it wasn't his first time trying to use their language. He would be embarrassed to admit it, though, since it was mostly talking to himself on some rocky outcrop.

[tsukino_bunny]

When he did move a little closer, she smiled. Now that she'd actually noticed him, he had become the center of her attention. Maybe because he was the only other person around, or maybe because she was tired of being alone. Either way, she didn't mind him coming closer.

The urge to move closer as well was tempting, but she was trying to be patient and let him come to her. She didn't want to frighten him again, partially because she didn't know how he might react, but mostly because she didn't want him to leave. So she focused on being as non-threatening as possible, in the hope that he'd want to come closer. "It's just you and the eels here all the time? That must be really lonely," she mused. "I'm sorry for startling you before. My name is Usagi."

[silentscales]

Snake nods to her. "Unagi," he says. Yes, he calls himself Eel. He does move a little closer, "You have many friends?"

[tsukino_bunny]

Her head tilted curiously at that, though she supposed it made a lot of sense. "It's nice to meet you, Unagi-chan," she chirped, even wiggling a little when he came closer. "I have a few that I love very much."

[silentscales]

Unagi tilts his head, "What's that like?" He moves just a little closer, his eyes wide with curiosity. It's his first time ever actually talking to a human. It was so strange, but also nice.

[tsukino_bunny]

"Having friends...?" She wasn't entirely sure which part he was asking about, but that had to be it. Right? But before she could ponder it too much, he was shifting closer again and she found she couldn't look away.

[silentscales]

Snake creeps just a little closer, nodding at that as he peers up at her. He wants to hear more about what it's like to have those. Sure, the eels were good friends to him, but they weren't the same as the humans.

[tsukino_bunny]

She'd never really had to explain what having friends was like before, so the question threw her off a little. "It's like... always having someone around so you don't feel so alone. Having someone to talk to, and to pick you up when you're feeling down..." That probably sounded like a greeting card, but it was genuinely the way she felt.

[silentscales]

"Feeling down?" He hadn't heard the phrase before. He tilts his head a bit, blinking at her.

[tsukino_bunny]

It hadn't occurred to her that he might not understand what she was talking about. So she considers for a moment before trying again. "You know... If you're feeling sad, or not-so-happy, or alone... then it's nice to have people around that you like."

[silentscales]

"Oh." He's quiet for a moment, mulling it over. "That would be nice." He tilts his head, "Can humans be friends with kami?" That's what people called him, at least, often combined with his apparent name of 'eel'. He's used to there being a lot more shouting and scrambling than this, however.

[tsukino_bunny]

"Yea! It's very nice," she told him cheerfully. "You can be friends with someone even if you're very different than they are. And we can be friends!" Because honestly, Usagi probably couldn't have cared less about the fact that he wasn't human.

[silentscales]

He tilts his head a little, "What does it take to be friends?" It's probably a good thing he has no idea how weird it is for a random person to not only be okay with him being a merperson, but quite possibly a type of Shinto god.

[tsukino_bunny]

That wasn't a question she'd really ever had to answer before, so it catches her a little off guard. "You don't have to do anything special to be friends," Usagi told him. "Do you want to be my friend?"

[silentscales]

Snake nods at that, gently, curiously. "What do friends do?" He really has no idea what to do. He'd mostly only had interactions with the fishers, and they either ran or gave him offerings, or things like that. "You didn't want the eels...." Because while yes, they were his friends, they were also the lifeblood of the humans that fished for them. They might not have the same relationship, but usually the fishers valued them just as much in their own way.

[tsukino_bunny]

He really didn't know? "Friends just get together and do fun things. Or sometimes they talk. Or sometimes they cuddle," she mused. There was also video games and singing and dancing, but somehow she got the impression that he wouldn't be up for those things.

"The eels?" For a moment, she looked confused, but then her expression softened and she smiled up at him. Did that mean he'd sent them? "I'm sorry. I didn't realize you were giving them to me." Mostly she'd just felt bad for startling them before. "Thank you. That was very kind of you, Unagi-chan!"

[silentscales]

The water almost seems to be boiling in this one spot, and then it moves towards Usagi. It doesn't take long for some of the eels to bounce out of the water at her as they turn up the water around her. He doesn't know that a random high school girl wouldn't have any way to take them home while just visiting the beach.

He sinks back into the water, watching to see Usagi's reaction.