World Tree MUSH

    Rumors abound... Salome Highscribe is on the move. Or at least brewing up trouble since she was last seen in Puerto Rico. Anyone searching her out will find that she's been preparing some arcane ritual on a hidden little beach, away from prying eyes...
    Boy does that arcane ritual sure smell good though.
    Okay it's not much of a ritual and more like several beach chairs and towels have been set out, and Salome herself is manning a grill, humming to herself as she flips burgers and prods as hot dogs. Pierce, the cat, is resting in the shade of an umbrella while his master, clad in a red bikini, tosses a burger high in the air and catches it on her spatula.

    o/` ~ "Now we are ready to head for the Horn
    Way, hay, roll an' go
    Our boots an' our clothes boys are all in the pawn
    To be rollicking randy dandy-O" ~ o/`

    Okay she doesn't seem to be brewing up much trouble at all.

    It's been some time since Yumi last visited this world. And the last time she was here, Salome was causing quite some trouble. She'd thought to come take a visit again and check up on the reservation, but rumors that the witch is Up To Something(tm) are enough to get the redhead on the hunt.

    A hunt which has led... to a beachside barbecue.

    "...well, this isn't... what I was expecting," Yumi mumbles, scratching the side of her head awkwardly. "...this isn't some kind of secret curse ritual or something, is it?"

    Dante was expecting some kind of trouble, but this is...a welcome change of pace! "Hey Sally." He says, stowing Rebellion into the sand as he takes off to get changed. He emerges in a pair of red swim trunks (they might just be his boxers) and he eyes the food jealously, hungrily even. "I even brought the pumpkin gun and everything! Why the beach party, Sal?"

Holly's been rather busy with her courses at Columbia so she hasn't had a chance to chase down Salome lately. Now that's she free, she's decided to check on what the other witch is doing. She's wearing a one-piece swimsuit that's black and orange. On her outfit are a haunted house, graves with crosses, and bats. The bottom reads Happy Halloween. She's accompanied by Servis and Lavaux of course even though the ghosts can't eat. Hearing Yumi she can't help but to comment, "I certainly hope not, I don't want to throw up again."

    A four-armed lavender-skinned demon strolls over, dressed in a dreary black one-piece swimsuit. "For some inexplicable reason," she says, "I wouldn't really have expected to see you just relaxing like this, Highscribe," she says, one left hand reaching over to ruffle Yumi's hair -- both as a token act of perfunctory affection, and possibly annoying her. "Still, I'm not complainin'. I'm badly in need of a drink." (She can't get drunk.)

    ... She's tense. Very tense. It's a subtle set of behaviors she apparently can't just shapeshift away, but she is looking very high strung at the moment.

    She smirks faintly at Dante, nodding in greeting, and then gives Holly a look. "Don't talk to me about throwing up," she mutters under her breath.

    o/` ~ "Heave a pawl, o heave away
    Way, hay, roll an' go
    The anchor's on board an' the cable's all stored
    To be rollicking randy dandy-O" ~ o/`

    Still singing to herself for a few bars more as the group begins to arrive, Sally gives that burger one more flip, right into a bun that she had warming on the grill, slaps on a slice of cheese, a few caramelised onions and...
    Floats it on a plate towards Yumi.
    "Yumi, darlin' I solemnly swear I am up to no good." She says matter of factly, "But even I need a day off from time to time." Pointed out as she puts a few more burgers on the grill.
    "Drinks are in the cooler by the cat, Nyx, don't wake the cat." She asides to Emily before waggling her spatula at Dante and Holly. "Because I am but one elf with the weight of the world on her shoulders, I'm liable to snap under the pressure if I don't take a little ~me~ time. And if you throw up this time it's not my fault. Now who wants burgers?"

    "Bitchin, I love burgers." Dante says casually. He can understand the need for a break every now and then, and the devil hunter gently kicks the cooler open and grabs himself a beer, removing the cap with his teeth and spitting it into a trashcan. He also grabs a burger, with jammy onions, jalepeno cheese, pickles, ketchup, all that good stuff.

    When he spies Holly, he grins wide at her. "Hey, Holly! Brought the pumpkin gun!" He says, and produces said weapon. "Think I could make a good Gallagher routine out of it?"

"I can imagine it would be kind of awkward for a shapeshifter to vomit." Holly doesn't really want to think about how that would even work. "Speaking of elves I really should figure out how to become on before I get old, a human lifespan might not be long enough for me to come up a great witch." Come to think it might be diffcult for her just to finish her studies at Columbia in a human lifespan.

 She grabs one of the burgers before her attention turns towards Dante, "Who's Gallagher?" She's not really familar with 1980's American pop culture.

    "Oh, hey Emil- agh." Hair-ruffled. It doesn't bother Yumi too much, but it still gets a soft little grumble out of the redhead. "Yeah, I'm... I can't help but be a little suspicious," she says, even as she's reaching out to take the plated burger. Hey, she's not just a teenager, she's a teenage magical girl - her appetite is her weak point. "You just... tossed out rumors so people'd find their way here for a beach party?" Even as she's tossing suspicion at Salome, Yumi is reaching in to take a cola out of the ice box. Quietly. Don't want to wake the cat, apparently.

    Emily nods to Salome. "I can't get drunk, that was the joke," she says. She pauses. "... I still feel weird, just getting called 'Nyx'. It's not, like, I'm a member of a 'family', it's basically just my manufacturers." She's also slightly more rambly than usual. "Maybe I should come up with, like, a different full name? I don't even know at this point."

    Without even turning, she opens up a staticky portal to the grill, conjures up a spatula in a swirl of silvery nanomachines, and assembles herself a relatively simple burger. She shakes her head at Yumi. "Yeah, that's definitely something she'd do, Tachibana," she says dryly. "Anyway, how are you two doing?" she asks, addressing Yumi and Holly. "Haven't seen either of you in a dog's age."

    She pauses, glancing between Dante and Holly. She isn't particularl well-versed in 1980's pop culture either.

  There hasn't been much sign of the masked mercenary working for Salome Highscribe. A horse is tied on the outskirts of camp, cropping contentedly at the salty sea-grass. Occasionally he'll pick up his head and eye the various people, unconcerned. Otherwise, Naruiel clearly doesn't care.

  But where is his mistress?

    o/` ~ "Man the stout caps'n an' heave with a will
    Way, hey, roll an' go
    Soon we'll be drivin' her 'way down the hill
    To be rollicking randy dandy-O" ~ o/`

  She's on her way back to camp, lugging what looks like a lot of bottles of wine and a sack of something that might be foodstuffs over a shoulder. In concession to the heat she isn't wearing her armour; only the silk shirt, opened at the throat and tied at the waist, and leather leggings and boots; no gloves. The mask is still over her face, though, and the hat on her head. The bronze distorts the song weirdly, giving it a slightly sinister cast, though Lucatiel does have a fine enough singing voice: Rough, but not crude.

  Slowly, the mask swings from left to right to survey who all's shown up today. Just in case anybody intends to cause any trouble, her swords are nearby, but she isn't carrying any weapons right now. "This was all I could find. Where do you want the wine, Highscribe?" Lucatiel sounds weary, but then again, Lucatiel always sounds weary. "Wine, pitorro, beer. Ale. I thought I found a bottle of mead, but perhaps I was mistaken." Something for everyone, more or less.

    "Maybe I did, maybe I didn't." Salome replies to Yumi. "Rumors swirl around people of power all the time, whether or not they seeded them, themselves is up to speculation." The witch says with another waggle of her spatula.
    On to other matters, "Holly, I'm sure you'll figure out the trick to eternal life sooner or later. It's eternal youth you need to worry about." She notes as Lucatiel arrives. "Ah! Perfect timin'!" She drawls, motioning the masked mercenary to the coolers. "Coolers could use a refill." She says before snapping her fingers and floating a chilled beer over to herself.

"Well, I'm not sure if I want to live forever, but I want to become a great witch before I die. Yes, I wouldn't want be old for an eternity," Holly nods in agreement with Salome. "If I do it as a ghost then I'll move onto the next life. It's been kind of frustrating though, when my magic doesn't do what I want." She answers Emily's question at the same time.

 "Did you bring anything non-alcoholic? I don't think it's a good idea for Holly to drink.

" Servis sounds a bit concerned about the thought of that.

    Dante grins when he spies Lucatiel, "Yo! Didn't expect you to be the beachgoin' type!" He says, and takes a sip of his beer. Suddenly, he fires off a pumpkin from the gun Holly gave him, and lets Salome do the rest. "Basically, fruit or somethin' like it gets thrown into the air, someone shoots it." He explains succinctly to Holly and Emily.

    He takes a chomp out of his burger too. Delicious borgar.

    "...seriously?" Yumi says to Emily, blinking. The idea that Salome is that kind of person is... well, perhaps not 'frightening', but deeply worrying. All that trouble and roundabout methodology for a barbecue.

    And of course, Salome goes all 'well maybe', and in Yumi's head that just confirms it for her. She decides to put it out of mind, and instead watch Lucatiel approach with the booze. Someone she's never seen before, in a mask. Curious.

    "I've been alright," she adds in reply to Emily. "Rydia, uh... she kinda got taken to a mystical realm for a week, and came back ten years older. It was weird. She's actually a little older than me now." Let's try this burger. Nomf.

    Emily tenses up at Lucatiel's arrival, but almost immediately goes back to her earlier level of low-grade tension.

    "Maybe you should become a Eudaemon," she tells Holly dryly. "I have no idea if that would actually be possible, or even how. Maybe there's a world somewhere out there with, like, brain-scan technology ..." She shrugs, and takes a bite of her burger. "But then we still can't make new CPU cores," she says with her mouth full, yet somehow entirely intelligibly.

    She brightens at Dante's suggestion. "That sounds like an awesome idea," she says cheerfully. And then does a double-take at Yumi. "Wait, what," she says, once again tensing up for a brief moment. "That ... uh ... huh." She chews thoughtfully on the burger for a moment. "... Okay, then!"

  The mask tilts very slightly as a beer bottle removes itself from the detachment, floating towards the grill-tending witch. She probably could have shuffled her load around to toss one over. This ends up being much more efficient.

  At Dante's observation, the mask swivels and stares at the son of Sparda. The knight remains silent just long enough that it might be questionable whether she heard him. She did. "I do not," Lucatiel intones, solemnly. "Salome Highscribe required supplies. Therefore, I brought them."

  Gods know she'd be far away from this miserable humidity, otherwise. Why did Highscribe have to stick around the tropics, of all places? Why can't they just pack up and find a nice arid desert somewhere?

  Maybe she feels Yumi's eyes on her. The mask turns and stares for just a few seconds, before finally dipping slowly in what might be acknowledgement or greeting. Or both. A glance is likewise spared to Emily, but the knight seems unconcerned before dragging her load over to the cooler.

  She'll busy herself with loading the contents into the ice, free if anyone actually needs her for anything. The mask tilts toward Salome. "Where is the girl? Or has she moved on...?"

    Seriously?
    It's a notion that only has the elf witch flashing a fanged smile.
    A pumpkin goes launched.
    Quicker than lightning, Salome draws a pistol from seemingly nowhere and shoots it out of the sky from behind her back in a trickshot that ends in a series of expert twirls of the pistol in her hand before it vanishes behind her back.
    But what really has her grinning is Lucatiel's question.
    "The girl- ah yes. The girl... So everyone~. Who wants to help me summon a ~mermaid~." The elf pipes up.
    "Mind you, dealing with mermaids is ~illegal~ so I guess I am doing something ~technically bad~ today, but it's all in good sport."

    Yumi gives Emily an amused look. "That's about how I feel about it, yeah. Those beings she can summon? Their king came to pick her up and take her to their realm, and time passes faster there." She takes another bite of her burger, then adds, "I've still got some words for him, he put a lot of people in danger when he came to take her."

    She returns Lucatiel's nod - only to suddenly jolt with surprise at the sound of a gunshot. Pumpkin skeet shooting was not an activity she expected at a beach party. But it's the proposal that comes after which really gives her pause. "Wait. Why is dealing with mermaids illegal?" This woman just gets shadier by the moment.

>> SUMMARY[Yumi Tachibana] >> salome kinda sus

  Trick shots can happen at any time of the day or night when one works for Salome Highscribe, so the knight merely lifts her head, mask gleaming in the late afternoon sun. She doesn't go back to what she's doing right away, instead eyeing the witch as though suspiciously. Nobody said anything about summoning mermaids.

  Clearly she has to learn to craft her questions more specifically. Mention of illegality draws an exasperated sigh from behind the mask. "Well, I suppose that does satisfy technicalities."

  She glances to Yumi. "From what I understand, they are endangered within the scope of this world. This particular mermaid, however, is a different story." The mask turns back to Salome. "Is there any other way to call her, or shall I resign myself to another ritual of dubious safety and bizarre reagents?" Yes. She's totally screwing with Salome at this point, in deadpan. "A handful of sharks' teeth, perhaps?"

"A eurademon like you, Emily? I don't know that much about technology though and would my magic carry over?" Holly's not sure if that would be good or bad. "It wouldn't work for Servis and Lavaux though." They don't have physical bodies anymore after all. "I'm guessing because it's of mermaid hunting right?" After all they seem to be rare after all. "I don't think mermaid summoning follows under my magic, unless if they're undead." She's not sure how much help she would be.

    Dante isn't too terribly sus, openly anyways. He fires off another pumpkin for the sake of entertainment, watching as vegetables get splattered by Salome's pinpoint aim, and he draws Ivory and fires on the next volley of pumpkins. "I'm a laws-optional kinda guy, let's see the fuzz try and bust me." He says with a cheeky grin. "So what's the reason? You want to kiss some mermaids?"

    Emily applauds at Salome and Dante's gunplay with a spare pair of hands. She applauds very slowly. "I can already think of the very amusing dumb jokes I'm going to be making the next time we see each other," she remarks to Yumi. "And yeah. That's ... That's just Salome."

    She nods to Holly. "Probably not exactly like me." She considers the question of magic. "Yeah, losing the magic you've got might be another thing to look out for, in this wholly hypothetical and completely unrealistic scenario we're talking about here."

    She arches an eyebrow at Dante's question. "It's the mermaid whose voice got cursed who we rescued last year," she says. "... You weren't around for the bit where Lucky here died." She jerks a thumb at Lucatiel.

    "Really?" Dante cocks an eyebrow. "Luca's pretty spry for a dead lady." He muses, chomping his burger again. "Mean to tell me she's a zombie?"

    "Mermaids are rare. Rarer than rare, they're going extinct in this world. In order to keep people from meddling and making 'em go FULLY extinct laws were passed, treaties signed yadda yadda, you know he drill." Salome explains to Yumi while flipping another burger and pausing to sip her beer.
    "The reason is--" Emily beats her to the punch in explaining to Dante.
    "Now now, don't worry, I won't ~give her legs in an unfair trade for her voice~ or anything. I'm not a sea witch. Anyway the trick to summoning a mermaid..." She says, voice going conspiratorially low.
    "You gotta sing a sad sad song by the ocean. Nothing calls 'em quicker. Especially the young ones. They love learning new songs. So let's give this a shot..." She says putting her spatula down before clearing her throat.

    o/` ~ "Oh, I bid farewell to the port and the land
    And I paddle away from brave England's white sands
    To search for my long ago forgotten friends
    To search for the place I hear all sailors end..." ~ o/`

>> SUMMARY[Salome] >> I'm always sus.

    Yumi glances between Salome and Lucatiel, and though she frowns, there's a slow, hesitant nod. "Alright. I guess I'm not from this world, so..." She'll just have to keep an eye to make sure this doesn't turn into a problem.

    She goes to take a bite of her buger, only to realize that's the last bite. Oops.

"Yeah, I think becoming an elf would be a whole lot more likely. Rue would get upset if I became a vampire or anything like that. I'm not sure how she would feel about a eurademon." Holly does her best to sing along, but it's kind of off-key. She's not from this world either, but she lives here now. Then again she's a human not an elf so she might not be able to summon them either.

    Emily snickers at Dante's comment, and shrugs. "Who knows," she says cheerfully.

    She listens to Salome's singing for just a moment, just listening and eating her burger. Then she adds a synthesized backing melody and a drum beat, the tips of her horns flickering with pinkish light in time to the beat.

    "It's 'eudaemon'," she corrects Holly gently. "From an old word for 'benevolent spirit'. Dunno if they existed at the time."

  The mask swivels over and stares at Emily. Somehow Lucatiel manages to project mild exasperation, even though her face isn't visible at all. That somehow manages to ramp up into outright annoyance as the mask swivels over to Dante. There is a low growl and an non-specific curse voiced under her breath.

  As soon as Salome starts to sing, Lucatiel shucks off her boots, tossing them aside and striding into the surf. There's a faint wince at the touch of the tide, but it's not cold, nor particularly warm. Actually it feels quite nice in light of the beach's smothering humidity.

  Lucatiel folds her arms, and waits.

  "Neither am I." The aside is tossed over her shoulder to Yumi. "I have simply spent quite a long time here." There is no 'home' to return to, so this place is as good as any other, as far as she's concerned. "I had never spent much time by the sea, before..."

  The Eudaemon's musical embellishment draws a long, exasperated sigh from the Knight of Mirrah. It echoes weirdly behind the mask. She glances to Salome, gesturing to indicate the sudden electronic accompaniment. Lucatiel is not a person accustomed to electronic music. "Will that noise attract her, or frighten her off?" How does one even ritual??

    Dante admits, he's having too much fun winding up the Knight. It's boring when EVERYONE tolerates his jokes. He just watches her reactions, taking a final chomp of burger.

    "Mom loved the sea." He says after a pause, walking toward the sands. "We lived not far from the shore when I was young, when...well, my folks were still alive." The devil hunter gives a nostalgic sigh, staring out at the shoreline.

    To Lucatiel's question, Salome can't help but lift her shoulders in a shrug, continuing to sing as she slaps a burger onto a fresh bun.

    o/` ~ "As the souls of the dead fill the space of my mind
    I'll search without sleeping 'til peace I can find
    I fear not the weather, I fear not the sea
    I remember the fallen, do they think of me?
    When their bones in the ocean forever will be." ~ o/`

    Was that a splash out in the deeper waters? It's hard to tell with the dull roar of the water lapping at the beach. But the new burger is floated at Yumi as...
    A new voice joins in with Sally's.

    o/` ~ "As the songs of the dead fill the space of my ears
    Their laughter like children, their beckoning cheers
    My heart longs to join them, sing songs of the sea
    I remember the fallen, do they think of me?
    When their bones in the ocean forever will be..." ~ o/`

    Perched on a rock sticking out of the water is a small figure, a child really, with her upper body decorated in scintillating scales and seaweed, her lower body that of a fish.
    Ianthe, the mermaid, would be familiar to at least some here.
    "Oh! So you know that song already eh?" Salome says with a chuckle, taking another sip from her beer.

"Oh wow, a real mermaid! I've only read about them...I miss my parents too. I haven't seen them in 5 years," That doesn't sound likely a lot but Holly is only 23. "We haven't found out how to get back to the world, that the three of us are from. There's a lot of vines." She can sympthize with Dante and Lucatiel a bit. "I mean New York is nice and everything but it's not home. I should see what this world's Belgium is like sometime."

    It is with visible embarrassment that Yumi takes her new burger and starts eating it. But she stops for a moment when a new voice starts to sing along with Salome - and looks out over the water, watching with interest. That... is indeed a mermaid. Maybe a little more intimidating than Yumi expected, despite being so young, but a mermaid nonetheless. However, the senshi opts not to interact, just yet, instead watching silently.

  Salome shrugs, as Lucatiel had expected, and the knight looks past the witch to the rolling surf. The sizzle of burger reminds her that she's pretty desperately hungry, and her stomach reminds her of this, which hopefully the tide drowns out.

  "I do not have anything to return to, even if I could find the way back to my world. For me, is no great loss," the knight observes, in response to Holly. "Still, some of the buildings in Mirrah were a wonder, and it is a pity the sight of them cannot be shared. ...Belgium?"

  Her thoughts scatter at the sound of that familiar refrain. Behind the mask, Lucatiel's face creases into a genuine smile at the sight of the mermaid girl, perched on her rock. Mermaids really don't have great odds in this wretched world, so it's a relief to see Ianthe is well.

  So the knight sloshes out to the rock, and provided the mermaid doesn't bolt, will promptly throw her arms around the girl in a warm embrace.

  Totally a stoic, serious warrior. Yes.

  Over on the strand, Naruiel snorts, throwing up his head and whickering to the rock. Ianthe had fed the Mirrahi sand dancer many apples, and apparently, he hasn't forgotten that. In fact, he picks his way down the shoreline to stand beside Lucatiel, salt water up to his fetlocks, ears pricked.

    And Emily recoils from Lucatiel's glare, her music accompaniment going silent as well. "Uh ... sorry," she mutters uncomfortably, looking away. Her horns actually droop slightly, and she ... shoves what little remains of her burger through her face, where it vanishes. Emily is suddenly looking exhausted. "Yyyyeah, you know what, I'm just three eights of an inch from being about to fu ..." Beat. "... dging ghost outta here, hi Ianthe!" She laughs nervously.

    She hangs back, not getting in the way of Lucatiel. "That's the World Tree for ya," she absently remarks to Holly. "Good grief ..." She conjures up a spatula again; this time, she portal-assembles a hot dog.

    "Yeah, it's a country." Dante asides casually, and he eyes the mermaid, watching her. "So you must be the girl of the hour, huh?" He says, knocking back his beer until the bottle goes empty. He goes over toward the cooler, and gets a new bottle, again, he tears the cap off with his superhuman bite strength and spits it at a nearby trashbin, where the previous bottle goes too.

    Emily's bizarre sight does elicit a laugh from Dante. "Fuck me, that's disturbing." He says with a grin. "Do it again!"

    The mermaid... Does not bolt, no. Instead she actually returns the embrace, slender arms wrapping around Lucatiel's middle. It lasts for a good, long moment, or until whenever Lucatiel decides to detach, before the child of the sea waves to everyone still on land.
    "You and the witch still haven't left." She notes, voice almost lyrical and melodic even when speaking normally.
    Salome casually fashions herself a hotdog and bites into it, as though ignoring the fact that she has better things to do than hang around a Puerto Rican beach.
    "Yeah well, it's not like I've had many leads on how to fix things." She mutters before motioning Holly and Yumi to not hang back.
    "C'mon girls, it's not every day you get to meet a mermaid, go say hi."
    She pauses though as Emily shoves burger into face.
    "... That sure happened."

"That's like being a ghost!" Holly watches as the burger clips through Emily's face. She moves closer to Ianthe and waves, hoping that Servis and Lavaux don't scare the girl. "Hi, I'm Holly. I'm a witch like Salome. Those two are Servis and Lavaux." She introduces herself and the ghosts. "It sounds like Salome and Lucatiel have been here a while, is something wrong? She mentioned fixing something." Maybe she can help.

    Yumi has been around Emily enough that the faceburger doesn't surprise her. ...much. There's a brief, bafflet blink, but that's about it.

    Being told to interact with the mermaid, though - that stalls Yumi's thought process out a little. She looks between Salome and Ianthe a few times, before offering a hesitant sort of, "Um... hey?" and wave, and starting to walk a bit closer. She's never even contemplated meeting a mermaid before! Halp.

  The electronic backbeat stops.

  "Thank you."

  She actually sounds pretty sincere.

  Meanwhile, she's content to hug the mermaid, giving the girl a fond pat before straightening and stepping back to lean against her horse. The surf swirls around her ankles, bizarrely soothing, and--

  Lucatiel of Mirrah stares blankly as Emily shoves a burger into her face. That sure did happen. It gives even the hardened knight pause. A whole bunch of pause. By the time she shakes her head and reboots her brain, she looks over to Holly. "We have been based in this general area for quite some time, that much is true."

  She pauses, abruptly rummaging in a pocket. A glint of something metallic in her hand suggests a coin, and she presses it into Ianthe's small hand. "This is for you." It's like the bloody coin that had marked her death, but the design is slightly different. Common currency ornamented with symbols of the desert. "To remember me by, when I am not here."

    Emily just laughs nervously. "Yeah, yeah ..." She shrugs, and strides forward towards Ianthe. "But yeah, heya," she says. "Hope you've been doing well." And now there's a slight edge in her voice -- probably a mirror to whatever has her so frazzled today.

    She glances over her shoulder at Holly when she mentions something that needs fixing. "Oh, y'know, head to New York in this Blossom and you'll find out really quickly," she says cheerfully, conjuring up a little black orb, so black it looks like a rip in space. You know, like a black hole.

    She pauses, looking over at Lucatiel. "Wish I'd brought a gift now," she says dryly. "Oh well!"

    That's it, Salome shoos Holly and Yumi over in Ianthe's direction, and the littler mermaid blinks slowly as she's suddenly the center of attention. But it speaks a lot of her trust for Lucatiel and Salome that she hasn't bolted still. It's not misplaced considering the trouble Sally went to (and put others through) to get her voice back.
    "You can come closer." She says to Yumi. "I do not bite." Noted with a smile that flashes rows of shark's teeth.
    Then she's introduced to Holly and her ghostly companions. "You are not like Salome." She says matter of factly. "There is something different about you..." She considers, pursing her lips thoughtfully, though she cannot seem to tell what it is. She points webbed fingers north, in conjunction with Emily's reminder about the Anomaly hanging over New York.
    Before Lucatiel places the coin in her grasp.
    "Ah... I will keep it for as long as I live."
    "That's gonna be a long time." Salome notes from the grill "When not hunted down, mermaids are immortal."

"Oh, I know about the black hole. I thought you were talking about something else. Yeah, I want to live a long life myself, but hunting someone else down for it wouldn't be right!" Holly's a witch but she does have some morals. "You mean the fact, I'm human? We're not normally found here. I've seen a few others but it's mostly elves. I wish I was better with numbers so I could do something about the black hole, but languages are more my thing."

    Emily smirks. "That's it!" she says wryly, managing to regain some small modicum of her usual ... cheer. "You should become a mermaid, Holly! That'll definitely make you immortal!"

"I don't think I would make that great of a mermaid. Plus, it's kind of hard to read books in water. The ink tends to dissolve." Holly's not a great swimmer or singer.