[center][abbr=Suiten][img]https://fontmeme.com/permalink/230311/09e37f447f3b4147d6f66d5a1e26118b.png[/img][/abbr][/center]
[hr][sub][right][i][b]South Blue[/b][/i][/right][/sub]
[color=salmon]"You're...?!"[/color]

Now that Suiten was face to face with it, she could see that this was not a shark at all, nor a fish of any kind. It had a literal face that stared back at her through the water with wide eyes. It was the face of a human.

[i]What the heck is this? Some kind of costume?[/i] 

It was a smallish person, definitely smaller than herself or Lide or Silva. They wore some kind of dark get-up that mimicked the look of a shark: a snout shape as a hood over their head with beady black buttons sewn on for eyes, trailing down to a pair of dorsal fins that stood stiffly on their back with even a stuff tail attached. Wide sleeves hung off of the outfit tappered into a point like fins, and when Suiten reached out again she took hold of one. [i]It's soft, but firm. It might actually help them swim—[/i] She was pulled from her thoughts when the person yanked themselves from her grasp.

"Blurubrilblurggg!" They tried shouted something, releasing a whole lot of bubbles and not much else. Voices didn't travel that well through the water, even newborn merfolk knew that... but this wasn't a merfolk. They didn't seem to be a fishman either, since they took their hands out of the fin-like sleeves and slapped them over their mouth a moment later. There was an expression of surprise and panic on their face, like they'd completely forgot that they weren't [i]actually[/i] a fish and they couldn't breathe while underwater. 

[color=salmon]"Are you some kind of idiot playing pretend?"[/color] Suiten questioned, jabbing a finger at the stranger. Unsurprisingly they couldn't answer, just pinching their nose closed with one hand and waving the other through the water. Suiten rolled her eyes and took hold of the mysterious little human, bringing them both to the ocean's surface.

"Bwaaaah!" The human (a girl now that Suiten got better look at them) took a huge breath as soon as her head was above water, shoving the hood off. Short strands of dark brown hair clung to her face even after she shook her head to clear the salt water from it. She coughed a few times, and then turned her attention back to Suiten.

"You scared me!" The girl said, "I - I thought you were a big fish at first and I was gonna catch you, then I thought you were a monster!"

[i]Is daydreaming about eating big fish all humans do around here?[/i] Suiten thought. She pushed her budding annoyance to the side, raising an eyebrow at the girl. 

[color=salmon]"Does this really look like the face of a monster to you?"[/color] she said, putting the palm of her hand softly under her chin and striking a pose. It seemed to calm the girl down a little more, since she smiled.

"I guess not. You're just like me!"

[color=salmon]"Hm? How?"[/color]

"Your tail!" The girl pointed to Suiten's tail of shimmery reds and golds, and then pointed to the false shark tail that she wore. Her legs were tucked into it, giving the overall illusion that she was a shark - at a distance, at least. Suiten stared at the costume, but she failed to see the similarities. She pursed her lips in thought, looking at the strange girl for an explanation.

"You're wearing a tail too...?" She said, like it was the most obvious thing in the world. "But yours looks a lot more real..."

After a moment of silence Suiten burst out laughing, and then quickly quieted herself by raising a sleeve to cover her mouth. [color=salmon]"Ehehe! What are you saying? Of course its real."[/color]

"...huh?"

[color=salmon]"Its a real tail. Really my tail."[/color] Suiten raised it up, neatly folding herself almost in half to hit the waves with her tail fin, splashing the girl. The stranger looked confused for a few seconds, like the gears in her head were heaving trouble turning. Eventually Suiten saw a shift in her expression as something must have clicked for her. Her gaze traveled slowly up from Suiten's tail to her face.

Suiten grinned, a little impishly if she were being honest. It had the opposite effect that she'd intended.

The girl bolted, pushing away from Suiten and propelling herself through the water with that fake tail. The wake of her escape threw water into Suiten's face, but the mermaid just ducked under the waves.

[color=salmon]"What's your issue?!"[/color] Suiten called after the girl, crossing her arms and huffing. [color=salmon]"What a weirdo... dressing up like that. It does make a pretty good costume though,"[/color] she said to herself, watching the wannabe shark get farther and farther away. 

Oh well, there was no time to dwell on some random mystery - she had a much more important mystery to look into! The Sea Lamp! 

Since she'd somehow overshot the area it was allegedly in, after swimming back and finding that girl she should be closer to where she ought to be. Suiten peered down below, towards sea shelves and darkness. She could see craggy rocks, a few crustaceans, but nothing promising. Plant life was a major clue on how far the sun's light could reach, or if there was something similar under the waves that could sustain such life. She saw no signs pointing to anything like that. It made sense, this was the open ocean - hardly anything [i]really[/i] lived out here. The closest she'd found were those palms, but it seemed less like they were naturally occurring and more like the island they'd originally been on kept sinking, forcing the tree tops to extend upward more and more.

...actually, why was there a human all the way out here in the first place? They'd certainly die from exhaustion if they were swimming out here with no land in sight for days. But it was impossible that they lived out here, right...? Lived where hardly anything else could? 

It couldn't be a coincidence that there was a human in the middle of the sea! They had to be living somewhere close by. Could it be possible there was a large air bubble around here, one with enough light to see and live by?! Could Suiten have stumbled into the Sea Lamp's whereabouts just like that?

[color=salmon]"...hey, wait! Do you know anything about a Sea Lamp??"[/color] Suiten yelled, swimming in the direction she'd seen the shark-girl go.