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“You have come here without permission, invading my lands, you and that vampire of yours!”
She looked at me challengingly.
I looked back. She was truly amazing to gaze upon. There appeared to be tiny, jeweled crabs in her hair that caught the light, twinkling like orange diamonds.
One moved slightly, adjusting its grip on a tendril.
Jewel-like, I corrected myself.
“Well?” she demanded. “Do you have nothing to say for yourself?”
“I . . . did not wish to interrupt.”
The waves around us became agitated enough to wet my feet again. “Do you mock me?”
“No, I—” I stopped myself, because this was not going well. Possibly because I couldn’t seem to think and look at her at the same time. “I beg forgiveness,” I said, and bowed my head.
“Hmmph.” And then something reached out and poked my dangling legs. It was almost without color, although prismatic, flashing with fire like a giant diamond.
Perhaps, I realized slowly, because it had been carved from a giant diamond.
I blinked at it.
“Do you want a fish tail?” the creature asked.
I looked up. I did not know how to respond to that. “I . . . have had dinner?”
She stared at me. It lasted a long time. Then, very slowly and very deliberately, she poked my legs again. “Would you . . .”
She paused and waited. “Yes?” I finally asked.
“Like to have . . .” she poked my legs again.
“Yes?”
“A fish’s tail.”
Poke.
I looked down. I looked up. “No?”
She frowned. “Are you sure? These things,” she prodded my legs again, “do not appear to function.”
“I . . . not at present, no.”
“The present is all we have! You could be dead by tomorrow!”
“Yes, but . . . I would still prefer to have all of my original parts.”
She did not seem to think much of that answer, but at least she did not poke me again.
“I do not know how you think to live through what awaits you with half a body,” she said.
“What awaits me?”
She ignored that. “But if you are what I think, you will manage. And if not . . . then you should not have come here at all, should you?”
“I did not trespass willingly,” I said. “I was brought by—”
