The first thing Cora noticed as she started to regain consciousness was the warm temperature of her surroundings. At first she thought that she was in her bed and was waking up from a dream. She opened her eyes to see only darkness, and she noticed that the atmosphere around her was heavier for some reason. She winced as her chest twinged slightly from the same burning pain from before, and she had her hand over her chest briefly in reaction, only taking her hand off when the pain passed. Cora tried to look around around, trying to see where she was, but her eyes were taking their sweet time to adjust. 

Cora heard an older woman's voice speak "Hm? Oh! You're awake," Cora opened her mouth trying to speak as she normally would, only for no voice to come out, and only to hear burbling instead. She blinked in confusion, and tried again only to get the same result. She grabbed at her throat in worry as the woman's voice laughed at her in amusement (and almost condescendingly), "Don't you know how to talk properly? You don't use your mouth in the water. Everybody knows that!" 

Cora looked up to the source once she noticed that her eyes had adjusted (she could tell because she could see the cave walls now), and the person she saw gave her quite a shock. She saw a beautiful mermaid, floating right in front of her, in the flesh! Cora's mouth was open in a gape and her eyes were as wide as dinner plates. The older mermaid, an elder sister of Xuan's named Luna, called "Mother, our guest is awake!" Luna turned to look at Cora again and she raised an eyebrow asking "What?" Cora had closed her mouth and and was trying to mentally process what she was seeing. 

Cora shook her head and started to trying standing up, but fell over after her first attempt (which was surprisingly difficult), and Luna laughed at her "What are you doing? That's a weird way of getting up off of the floor," Luna continued laughing, as Cora looked at her legs to see why she couldn't stand, only to see that she had a tail instead. She stared in surprise and horror, her face hidden as she looked down, as she realized just what that stranger had done to her.
She thought to herself trying to tell herself that maybe this was just some weird dream and that she was going to wake up soon! She always thought that merpeople were just myth and that they didn't exist.