Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Pearl looked out of her car window “This is it, this is my new house” Pearl thought with a smile on her face. She had done it, she had moved out of her own house and was now finally on her own. She had bought a house far away from her old house and was now staring at her own house.

It was scary to be on her own so far away from everyone she knows, but it was also exciting. Pearl stepped out of her car and walked up to the door with her key in hand. She had been here a few times before when she had checked it out.

But now it was actually hers, she owed it. Pearl put the key in the keyhole and turned the key, opening the door.

A smile appeared on her face as she walked into the empty house. She of course had been there before but the last time she had been busy just looking for some place to live, she had looked around and seen a house that was for sell. But now she owned it, everywhere she looked, it was all hers.

Boxes were all over the ground, words messily written on them. Pearl maneuvered between them and walked into the living room. She looked around, there was a lot of work to be done before this place would feel like a home.

Luckily Pearl had plenty of ideas.

The first time that she had walked into the house ideas had started popping up. All her furniture already had a space, all her decorations did too. Unfortunately all the decoration and all the furniture was still in boxes right now. It was going to take a while before before Pearl's vision would come to life.

Pearl quickly got to work, the sooner she started, the she sooner she would be done. Pearl worked the rest of the day on unpacking and building the important things. By the time the day was over she had a bed, closet and a functioning kitchen. The closet was still empty but that would be a job for tomorrow, at the moment Pearl was just exhausted.

She ate some dinner, sitting on the floor imagining all the things that she could turn this place into. After dinner she immediately went to bed, tomorrow would be another busy day. It didn't take long before she fell asleep, tired from everything she had done that day.

The next day Pearl woke up early thanks to the light coming from the windows. Pearl turned to lay on her other side away from the light “Should have made putting the curtains up a bigger priority” Pearl thought as the light in the room was still too bright.

A few minutes later Pearl got out of bed, deciding that she wouldn't be able to fall asleep anymore. She quickly ate some breakfast and got to work. Looking around the room Pearl realized that there were plenty of things that still needed to be done.

Pearl took a deep breath and eventually decided on assembling the couch, she didn’t want to make too much noise this early in the morning so she would have to be careful. Assembling the couch luckily wasn't too hard, it was just like one big puzzle. It would have gone easier with another person to help her but that didn't matter, she made it work.

When the couch was done she let herself fall down on top of it. All the boxes in the room was looking at her, almost shouting at her to get back up and work. And so she started working on getting the coffee table to the place she wanted it and she started working on one of the cabinets where the tv would stand on.

She was still working a few hours later but stopped when she heard a knock on the door.

Pearl walked to her door and opened it, she wasn't expecting anyone. In fact she didn't know anyone in the town yet, so who could be in front of her door. Well Pearl was about to find out, in front of her door were two guys. “Uhm hello” Pearl said, she put a smile on her face trying to look friendly.

“Hello, I’m Tango and this is Skizz. We live in the house next to yours. We saw that you moved in and thought that it would be nice to introduce ourself” One of the guys said with a big smile on his face. “It’s nice to meet you two, I’m Pearl” Pearl said, trying to sound friendly herself.

It was always smart to befriend your neighbours, you never knew when you could use an extra hand with something. “Welcome to the neighbourhood Pearl. If you have any questions don’t hesitate to ask. We have been living here our whole lives so we know everything there is to know” Skizz said confident

Pearl looked at the two of them, they looked friendly enough.

“Thank you, I do have one question already. Do you know where I can get something to eat?” Pearl asked, she had been distracted before but now that she wasn’t busy she realized how hungry she was. When she ad packed stuff for her trip she had packed enough for the trip and for one day here, but now she was out of food.

“Of course we do, there is a little cafe where they have the best food. We can take you there if you want, you know, show you around a little” Tango said. That sounded great, Pearl really didn't feel like getting lost in a town where she knew nobody.

“That would be great, let me get my jacket and then we can go” Pearl said, she walked back inside and grabbed her jacket from where she had thrown it the day before. She walked back outside and closed the door behind her “Let’s go”

The three of them started walking, Pearl letting Tango and Skizz lead the way. She was mostly looking around, looking at her soundings. “So Pearl, why’d you move here?” Skizz asked, starting a conversation while they were walking.

“Oh, I guess that I was just looking for a place to start my life. I wanted to get out of the busy city and saw this place on a website, I instantly fell in love” Pearl said, she had seen the house and decided that she had to have it.

Surprisingly it hadn’t been hard, apparently the house had been empty for a while.

“I understand why, this is a beautiful place. But we don’t usually get new people here, most people who live here have lived here their whole lives” Tango said. “Oh, is there a reason you don’t get new people here?” Pearl asked, she had done a quick google of the town.

The last thing she wanted was to accidentally end up living somewhere that was like on top of a graveyard or something. Pearl had seen enough horror movies to know not to take any changes. But when she had googled the place she hadn't found anything.

When she had told her parents that she wanted to move here they had looked at her like she was crazy. They had been supportive but they didn’t understand why Pearl wanted to move there. Was there a reason she shouldn’t have?

“No reason that I know of” Skizz said “I think people just like busy city’s more, we don’t have a lot here. But that is the beauty of this place, we don’t have much but we have enough” Tango said, sounding like he was advertising the place even though Pearl had already made her decision.

It was too late to leave now, even if Pearl wanted to.

“Hmm you two sound like you love this town” Pearl said, if she had to describe the place where she had lived before she had moved she would have described it as a dirty place with rude people.
“We do, it’s really a great place to live” Skizz said with a smile on his face. “Oh Pearl, this is our grocery store. It has everything you need, the owner's name is Xisuma. He runs the store with his sons Grian and Mumbo” Tango explained as they walked past a small store.

“Really the three of them run this place by them self?” Pearl asked, shocked. It was a small place but it didn’t look like it could be ran by three people.

“Yeah, it’s a family business. A little tip, buy all your fish here. One of the sons fishes and takes the fish back home to sell, they are always incredibly fresh” Tango said. Skizz took Pearl by her hand “Come, you wanna meet them?”

Pearl didn’t really have a choice as she was pulled inside the store before she could answer. Skizz brought Pearl over to the counter, behind the counter was a man with a smile on his face. “Hello, what can I help you with?” He asked.

“Hey X, we have a new neighbor. Pearl meet Xisuma, Xisuma meet Pearl” Skizz said, motioning to the people as he spoke. Pearl gave a small wave to Xisuma.

“Nice to meet you Pearl, welcome to the neighborhood” Xisuma said “Uhm hello, thank you” Pearl said, she had never introduced herself to a cashier. In the city it would have been impossible to run a store with three people, every day there was a different cashier.

“Where are Mumbo and Grian?” Tango asked, he had disappeared for a second but was back now. He was looking around the room, trying to look past Xisuma.

“They're out, as you can see it’s not very busy in here at the moment” Xisuma said motioning to the very empty store. He didn’t look sad about it though, he still had a smile on his face. As if an empty store just meant that he could have a break and not that he wasn't making any money “Are you two introducing Pearl to everyone?”

“Yeah! Or well we were actually just showing her where the cafe was. But then we passed this place and I kinda decided to just introduce Pearl to you” Skizz replied.

“Oh you’re on your way to the cafe, could you do me a favor and bring some fish with you. Impulse ordered it but I haven’t had the time to bring it over yet” Xisuma said, pointing at a few boxes behind him.

“Of course” Skizz said, Xisuma stood up and Skizz followed him, Pearl assumed that they were going to get those boxes. Tango turned to Pearl when they were out of earshot. “I’m sorry if Skizz is a bit too over excited, he means well”

Pearl laughed “What no, I love it. People in the city just look at you in disgust, I love how close everyone is here” Tango looked at her and smiled “I think that you will fit in here” Tango said.

Skizz and Xisuma returned not much later, Skizz holding two big boxes in his arms. The three of them said their goodbyes to Xisuma and continued their walk to the cafe. It didn’t take too long before they arrived, a good thing about living in a small town that Pearl was going to be happy getting used to.

The cafe was small but cozy, it had some tables outside and inside but that was about it. Tango and Skizz walked up to the counter and Skizz started ringing the bell. “Impy? You hiding in the back again?” Skizz said while he kept ringing the bell over and over again.

A man wearing a big chef hat appeared behind the counter “You’re going to break that bell one day Skizz” the man said, taking the bell away from the counter. “Oh who do we have here?” He asked as he noticed Pearl. “I’m Pearl, I’m new in town” “She bought the house next to us” Tango said.

“Ah, I was wondering when that house would finally be sold. It’s nice to meet you pearl, I’m Impulse. I wish you good luck with those two as your neighbours” Impulse started with a smile on his face. “Hey! We are delightful neighbours” Tango said, interrupting Impulse.

Impulse glared at him as if he didn't believe him before he turned back to Pearl “I own this little place over here, do you want something? On the house of course, since you’re new here” Impulse said, ignoring Tango.

“Oh uhm sure, what do you recommend?” Pearl asked, she had no idea what she wanted. She didn’t even know what they had and she wasn’t about to stare at the menu while Impulse was waiting for her answer. That would be rude and a terrible first impression.

“A sliced steak sandwich it is, grilled marinated steak tips, topped with grilled onions and melted mozzarella cheese on a hard roll, served with french fries” Impulse said, like he was trying to sell it to her.

“Sounds great” Pearl just answered, she had no idea what it was that Impulse was trying to sell her on but his sell pitch had worked.

“Tango, Skizz anything for the two of you?” Impulse asked “The usual” Tango, Skizz and Impulse said at the same time. “So predictable” Impulse said laughing as he walked into the kitchen.

“Wait dipple dop, I have fish” Skizz said, he had put the boxes of fish down, he picked it back up and ran after Impulse. “Dipple dop?” Pearl asked, who or what was a dipple dop?

“Haha, yeah Skizz likes giving people nicknames. He calls Impulse dipple dop, I forgot how confusing that must be for someone who has never heard it before. Everyone else here is pretty just to it by now” Tango replied. “Oh-kay, doe she have a nickname for you too?” Pearl asked.

"He sometimes calls me top, but it's mostly just Tango" Tango replied. After a while Impulse returned with some food, he put it down in front of them and turned to Tango. “Hey, do you think you’re able to work tonight? Bdubs called in sick”

“Sure, what time do you need me?” Tango asked as he started eating. “Like five, Joel should be here too so it will be the three of us” Impulse answered “Okay, I’ll be there”

“Do you work here?” Pearl asked obviously having heard the conversation. In the city nobody ever ate at the place that they worked at. Nobody wanted to run into their boss or other coworkers, that was awkward. Most people also didn't want their boss to just ask them to take over a shift but Tango didn't seem to mind.

“Yup, Skizz does too” Tango said “Yup, gotta earn a living somehow and this is a pretty nice job. Even if our boss is annoying at times" Skizz said as he glared at Impulse with a teasing smile "What do you do Pearl?” Skizz asked.

“Uh nothing yet, I used to deliver mail at my old place. But I’m gonna have to find a new job here” Pearl said, getting a job here was one of the things that Pearl was stressing about.

“If you want you can work here, we are always looking for more employees” Impulse said. “Wait, seriously?” Pearl asked, it couldn’t be that easy right? “Sure, we could always use more help over here” Impulse said, he didn’t look like he was joking.

“Wouldn’t you need to interview me first?” Pearl asked.

“Not really, there isn’t much that I need to know. Unless you’re a serial killer or something the job’s yours. Wait, you're not a serial killer, right?” Impulse asked. Pearl laughed “No, I’m not a serial killer”

“Good, in that case if you want the job then it’s yours” Impulse said “B-but I don’t know anything about working in a cafe” Pearl replied “These two didn’t either until they started working here, we’ll teach you” Impulse assured her as he pointed at Skizz and Tango.

Pearl looked over at Tango and Skizz who were nodding, she turned back to Impulse with a bright smile on her face “Then I will take the job” Pearl said, she still wasn’t one hundred percent sure if Impulse was kidding or not. “Great, then the job is yours” Impulse said.

The two of them gave their phone numbers and Pearl officially had a job. Pearl, Skizz and Tango ate for a while before they walked back home. Pearl looked around again, taking in the town that she now lived at too.

At one moment she saw something, there was a small cabin on the land close to the water. She hadn't noticed the cabin before but it stood out between all the other buildings and houses. “Does someone live there?” Pearl asked, she pointed at the cabin.

Skizz and Tango looked at the cabin “Oh uhm yeah kinda” Skizz said, Pearl looked at him “What do you mean kinda?”

“There is a girl that appears there every once in a while, we don’t know who she is. I wouldn’t go near it if I were you, people say that it’s haunted” Tango explained. Pearl laughed, thinking that Skizz and Tango were joking.

But when she looked at their faces she noticed them looking dead serious “We’re serious, don’t go near there” Skizz said. The two started walking again, Pearl forced herself to look away from the cabin and walked after them.

She got back home and started working on her furniture again, finally hanging her curtains. But as she worked she could only think about the cabin, what was in there? And who was the girl that Tango and Skizz were talking about?

Chapter Text

The next day Pearl went to the grocery store for some food, it was crazy how quickly she could run out of food. She walked through the isles looking for what she needed. She was distracted as she scanned the shelves when there suddenly were two men, one was placing stuff on the shelves while the other was throwing the stuff to him.

The man who was throwing stuff noticed her and accidentally threw something against the other guy's face “Ow, that was a terrible throw Mumbo” the guy complained, throwing the stuff back at the other man rather harshly. “Wasn’t my fault, I think we have met the new neighbour that dad told us about” the man, who's name apparently was Mumbo, said.

“Uhm hi” Pearl said with a small wave, the man that was stocking the shelves looked over at her “Hello” He said, he turned back to the other man “Not a good enough excuse to throw something in my face”

“Ignore him, I’m Mumbo. The guy being rude is Grian” Mumbo said with a smile, taking his own advise and ignoring him.

“I’m Pearl, are you two the sons of Xisuma?” Pearl asked, unsure. The two didn’t look like each other in the slightest bit. One of them had sandy blonde hair and was pretty short while the other guy had dark black hair and was tall.

They also didn't really look like Xisuma. Xisuma wasn't short like Grian but he wasn't incredible tall like Mumbo either. His eyes were light while the two men in front of Pearl had very dark eyes. Xisuma's hair was brown but not sandy brown, he also had freckles, neither Mumbo nor Grian had freckles.

“Adopted” Grian said “Oh uh I-” Pearl began “That’s what you were thinking wasn’t it? That me and Mumbo don’t look like each other. We’re both adopted” Grian said, he didn’t look angry about having to explain it. It sounded like he had to explain it a lot.

“Okay, well it’s nice to meet you two” Pearl said, this conversation was getting more and more awkward by the second. “Yeah it’s nice to meet you too, you live in the house next to Tango and Skizz right?” Mumbo asked, pointing in the general direction of Pearl's house.

“Yup” Pearl confirmed “Wow that old house finally got sold, that house has been empty for years” Grian said. “Uhm I’m glad that someone finally bought it, it's a lovely house” He quickly added.

“I heard that you sometimes go fishing Grian, what’s that like?” Pearl asked, trying to change the subject. “Yeah, it’s pretty great. It’s very calming too” Grian replied, Mumbo rolled his eyes next to Grian. It looked like Mumbo shared the same opinion about fishing as Pearl “Sounds pretty boring to me” Pearl responded, sitting around just waiting for the fish to bite. It all just sounded really boring to her.

“Well it can be calming, but it can also be exciting” Grian said, Pearl knew that he was just trying to get her to ask further. And it worked “How can fishing be exciting?”

“Well most people say that I’m crazy, but every once in a while I can see a big creature in the water. The creature is as big as a human, but it has a tail. Most people tell me that it's just a seal or something, but I think it’s something much better. I think that it's a mer” Grian said, acting like he was telling a scary story.

“Oh wow” Pearl said “You don’t think I’m crazy?” Grian asked. “No, not at all” Pearl said, shaking her head “I think you’re completely insane” Pearl continued, not changing her facial expression as she said it. But a second later she couldn't hold her laughter anymore and burst out laughing.

Mumbo started laughing too “He tells that story to everyone”

“Because it’s true, if you don’t believe me, come with me on my boat. I’ll show you, there is a mer out there” Grian defended himself, he crossed his arms over each other and looked away from Pearl “Okay, sure Grian. If you’re right and there is a mer out there then I’ll give you twenty bucks” Pearl said.

“Okay, I’m going fishing again on Sunday. Come join me, unless you’re scared of course” Grian said, an evil looking smile on his face. Pearl knew that it was a bad idea, she didn’t know this person.

But something in her told her to say yes, to go with him.

“Okay, I will come with you” Pearl said. Grian’s smile disappeared and he got a face of shock instead “Wait really?" he asked, Pearl nodded with a smile "okay” Grian said, the smile returning to his face. “Be here at 5am on Sunday, try not to chicken out”

“5am?” Pearl whined, she didn’t want to go fishing at five am. She didn’t even want to be awake at five am.

Grian shrugged “Early bird gets the worm”

“Fine, but only to prove you wrong” Pearl said, already regretting her decision. After her conversation with the two she continued shopping, getting everything she needed. When she was done she went back home, she walked past that strange little cabin again.

She wanted nothing more than to take a look inside, just a little peek to see what was in there. But Tango and Skizz had warned her not to. That, of course, only made her want to look inside more, she had to know what was in there. Pearl looked around, there was nobody who would know if she went to have a look.

Pearl walked closer to the cabin, she didn’t know why she wanted to look inside but she had too. She looked around again, still nobody, she then reached out for the door handle. She was about to open the door when “Hello, are you new here?”

A voice behind her said, Pearl turned around quickly, almost dropping her groceries. A man was looking at her, he didn’t look as friendly as everyone else in the town. “Uh yeah, I’m Pearl. I moved in two days ago” Pearl managed to get out.

“Hi, I’m Joel. Is there a reason you’re about to open my cabin?” Joel asked, that would be why he didn’t have a smile on his face. Pearl quickly stepped further away from the cabin “The cabin is yours? I’m so sorry. Skizz and Tango told me that it was haunted or something and it made me curious” Pearl tried explaining.

“Uhg those two, it’s not technically mine. But it is on my property, look there is nothing inside of it. Or well I don’t think so at least, but it most certainly isn’t haunted” Joel said, Pearl was just happy that he knew who Skizz and Tango were and that he knew of their shenanigans.

“Skizz and Tango said something about a girl showing up here every once in a while” Pearl said, she didn’t actually think that it was haunted like Skizz and Tango had said. but she wanted answers, if she wasn’t a ghost then who was she?

“Probably my wife, she travels a lot for her job so not many people know her. Believe me, there is nothing magical about this place” Joel said, Pearl just smiled “I’m sorry for disturbing you, it was nice meeting you. I’ll get out of your hair now”

She walked away quickly before he could say anything else, she should have listened to the voice in her head telling her to not look in the house. But even though she now knew what was going on, she still wanted to go check it out for herself.

But she ignored that thought and went home. Joel probably wouldn't be as forgiving if he found her snooping around for a second time.

When she got home she put the food in the fridge and searched for something else to do. She needed something to take her mind off of Grian’s story and the mysterious cabin. Eventually Pearl decided on just building the desk in her room. She didn't like the actual building part but when she was done she could at least empty some of the other boxes in her house.

After a while she was done, she started decorating her desk but stopped when there was a knock at the door. Pearl wiped some sweat away and quickly walked downstairs to open the door, only to see Skizz, before she could get out a greeting he said “Grian invited you on a boat trip”

“Uh yeah” Pearl said, confused at Skizzes statement. She knew that Grian had invited her on a boat trip, she was fully aware of that.

“Did he tell you about the mer?” Skizz asked, ah so that was what this was about “You believe his story about the mer?” Pearl asked, she didn’t think that anyone actually believed that story. She was convinced that Grian just wasn’t wearing his glasses when he saw the ‘mer’.

“Uh yeah, there are creatures that can breathe on land and air. Why would it be so weird for mers to be real?” Skizz asked "Plus we have weirder animals on this earth, I mean have you seen giraffes?"

“Mer's can't be real because humans can’t breath under water” Pearl responded, using her good friend logic.

“They could if they had gills, like mers do” Skizz argued. Pearl rolled her eyes “Is there an actual reason that you’re here or are you just trying to convince me that mers are real?”

“Yes, Impulse wants to show you around the cafe. But I’m mostly here to tell you that they are real, you have to get a picture of the mer when you see it” Skizz said, sounding sure that Pearl would see a mer. Pearl grabbed her jacket and key and closed the door behind her.

She had Skizz started walking to the cafe “Did Grian send you?”

“What no” Skizz said, Pearl looked him in his eyes “So you actually believe that mer’s are real?” Pearl asked, not believing that an adult would still believe in something as childish as a mer. Skizz nodded “Then why don’t you go mer searching with Grian? He invited me and he doesn’t even know me, he must have invited you too at some point”

“I can’t, I get sea sick. Can’t stay on a boat for longer than ten minutes without throwing up” Skizz explained “But if you can, then you can go for me and take a picture” Skizz said.

“Can’t you ask Impulse or Tango?” Pearl asked, “I did, they don’t want to wake up at five am to go searching for something that 'isn’t even real'. But you are willing to do that, please take a picture for me” Skizz almost begged.

Pearl rolled her eyes “Fine, if I see a mer I’ll take a picture for you” Pearl answered, she wouldn’t see a mer anyway since they weren’t real. Skizz seemed pleased with her answer.

The two of them walked to the cafe and Skizz let Pearl in through a side entrance. Impulse was already waiting for them “Hey! Did you convince her Skizz?” Impulse asked while laughing. “I did, she said she’ll do it”

“Seriously? you believe that mer’s are real?” Impulse asked Pearl, Pearl shook her head “Of course not, I just want to prove Grian, and now Skizz I guess, wrong”

“Those two really have a big imagination" Impulse said as he slowly shook his head "but that’s not why you’re here. Let me show you around the place now that we’re not busy” Impulse said, just like he said he showed Pearl around the place and showed her how certain things worked.

At one point they came to the counter in the front and Pearl could see people in the cafe. There weren’t many people but Pearl didn’t know any of them. “Do they all live in this town?” Pearl asked Impulse.

“Oh yeah they do, outsiders usually don’t really come into our town. Sometimes we get some people who are passing through the town, but that doesn’t happen a lot” Impulse said.

“So you know everyone in here?” Pearl asked, she didn't even know everyone at her high school let alone knowing a whole town of people.

“Yup, for example that over there is Etho and sitting at the same table as him is Bdubs. At the other table there is Scar, I think that he’s waiting for Grian. Little thing you need to know about Grian, he’s always late” Impulse said as he pointed at the tables were the people were sitting.

“Are you talking about me Impulse?” The person who Impulse had called Scar asked. “Yeah, we have a new neighbour. I was just explaining to her that you were probably waiting on Grian since he’s always late” Impulse explained.

The man came over to them, a friendly smile on his face.

“I’m afraid that you’re right, but I’m used to him being late by now. I’m Scar” Scar said, introducing himself to Pearl. “Pearl” Pearl simply said.

“Pearl is going to be working here too, I’m showing her how everything works” Impulse said. “Good luck Pearl, you’re gonna love it here” Scar said. Pearl smiled back at him “Thank you”

Scar went back to his table and Impulse continued explaining how everything worked. When he was done it had gotten dark outside and everyone had left the cafe, leaving only the employees.

Inside were Pearl, Impulse and Skizz. “Okay, I'm done, everything up front is clean" Skizz said as he walked into the kitchen area, taking his clove off he asked "How did everything go here?” eyeing Pearl specifically as he asked the question.

Pearl looked over at Impulse for an answer “Great, I think Pearl is almost ready for her first work day” Impulse answered, a smile on his face. Pearl didn’t know why but the smile made her feel proud of herself.

“I’ll be the judge of that, did Impulse explain the milkshake machine to you?” Skizz asked, a smile on his face. Pearl started smiling too and nodded “We’ll have to test that, don’t we? Could you make me a uhm I’m just saying something, a chocolate milkshake?” Skizz asked.

Pearl walked over to the machine and made the chocolate milkshake with a smile on her face, catching onto what Skizz was doing “Hmm it’s good, but you’ll have to know more then just one flavour. Try making a banana milkshake” Skizz said, Impulse didn’t stop her, so Pearl made a banana milkshake.

She handed it to Skizz “Well my taste was ruined thanks to the chocolate milkshake, Impulse you’ll have to taste this one” Skizz said as he handed the milkshake to Impulse, Impulse rolled his eyes but took it.

“It’s good” Impulse said “Buuuut you’re gonna have to make another one, I don’t know which flavor though. Pearl you chose one now” Skizz said as he interrupted Impulse. Pearl again did as she was told and made another milkshake, strawberry this time.

“I can’t taste it thanks to my chocolate milkshake and Impulse also can’t taste it thanks to his banana milkshake. Hmm guess you’re gonna have to taste it Pearl” Skizz said with a smile on his face. Pearl tasted it “It’s great” She said.

“I guess that proves it, but now we’re stuck with three milkshakes. It would be a shame to throw them away” Skizz said, Impulse rolled his eyes again “Come on, let’s sit down while we drink these” Impulse said.

He started walking to the employee only room and Pearl and Skizz followed with smiles on their faces. The three of them sat down in the employee only room and drank their milkshakes while they chatted.

“So Pearl, what do you think about our little town?” Impulse asked.

“It’s great, I love how close everyone is. I think that I could really start seeing this place as my home” Pearl said, it was the truth she loved this place.

“That’s good to hear, how’s your house? Nothing broken after it’s been empty for so long?” Impulse asked. “No, everything seems great, but I’ve been busy getting all my furniture up. And don’t even get me started on unpacking, I didn’t even know that I had so much stuff” Pearl said.

“All part of moving” Skizz said, Pearl nodded in agreement "And it will all be worth it in the end" She added. The three of them finished their milkshakes and Skizz walked Pearl home. Pearl went straight to bed, too tired to do anything else.

Chapter Text

Pearl woke up to the loud beeping of her alarm at four am, she opened her eyes and stared up at the ceiling for a little bit. She really shouldn’t be awake at this time. But she had told Grian that she would go mer searching/fishing with him so that was what she would do.

As she got ready she tried to remember why she had agreed to this. A few days ago when she had agreed to it had seemed like a good idea, but right now she hated past her for saying yes. Of course the only reason she had said yes was to prove to Grian that there was no mer.

She knew that, she knew why past her had agreed to this. But it still didn't exactly please her.

The past few days she had worked on her home and met even more new people. She met Etho and Cub and Cleo. And even more people but she couldn’t remember their names anymore. There were quite a lot of people in this little town.

All of them seemed really nice and they made Pearl feel welcome.

Pearl walked outside, it was completely dark. She hadn’t expected much else but it still wasn’t nice. Pearl started her walk to the grocery store, Grian had told her to meet him there. Apparently he lived on top of the store.

She walked through the empty streets for a bit, until she passed the cabin and paused. She tried not to look at it too much as she passed it, but she could have sworn that she heard voices coming from inside. Pearl blamed it on her sleep deprived mind and quickly continued walking.

It didn’t take too long before she arrived at the store, Grian was already there loading his truck. “Oh you’re actually here, I really thought that you would have chickened out” Grian said as he noticed her.

“Nope I’m here and I’m ready to go” Pearl said, a determined smile on her tired face.

“Good, but if you want to change your mind this is your last chance” Grian said, his mischief smile reappearing, making Pearl question her choices once more but she was determined “I’m not changing my mind, can I help you load the truck?” Pearl asked, trying to make herself useful.

“Sure, just place the things here inside. I’ll make sure that it ends up in the right spot” Grian said, Pearl started doing as he said and soon everything was in the truck. Grian jumped out and closed the back. The two of them got in and Grian started driving.

It didn’t take long before they arrived at a dock, a boat was waiting for them and Grian started loading the stuff onto it. Pearl looked around the dock, she hadn't been there before. There wasn't much to see in the dark but Pearl could see the way the moonlight lit up the water.

Pearl saw Grian jump on and off of the boat as he brought his stuff on board. The boat at least looked save, as Pearl inspected the boat she noticed something written on the side of the boat, mending it was called. “Why is your ship called mending?”

“It’s an inside joke, just get on” Grian said without looking at her as he was getting the boat ready to leave the safe dock.

Pearl got on the boat and watched as Grian got ready to leave. It didn't take long before they left, Pearl looked at the water as they got further and further away from the coast.

“No going back now” Grian whispered in Pearl ear making her jump which in return made Grian laugh. “Don’t sneak up on me like that” Pearl said, a hand on her heart. Grian just laughed louder. Time passed and Grian eventually stopped the boat, he got his fishing rod out and started fishing. Pearl had been right about fishing being boring, she was incredibly bored. Grian on the other hand seemed fine.

Pearl sat down on a bench on the boat and closed her eyes, she had gone to bed early the day before. But she was still exhausted, she had no idea how Grian wasn’t falling asleep. She tried to stay awake but lost the battle and let her eyes close.

“Pearl! Pearl! Wake up, look over there” Grian shouted waking Pearl up from her slumber.

“For god sake wake up, this is the whole reason you’re here” Grian shouted. Pearl slowly opened her eyes, trying to remember what had happened, where she was and why Grian was shouting at her like a lunatic.

“What is over there?” Pearl asked, still half asleep.

“A mer! Come over quick, they're stuck in my net” Grian said, Pearl looked over at him. Grian was standing at the side of the boat with his arms down over the railing. When Pearl got closer to him she saw that he was holding a net.

She took a closer look and saw a tail… Pearl blinked with her eyes, it couldn’t be. She saw hands, human hands. Or well human, their fingers were connected and they had claws. But they also had five fingers, just like a human.

But it couldn’t be a mer, mer’s didn’t exist.

The mer changed positions, they were now facing Pearl. Pearl gasped, the sea creature looked human. It was just a human face but the creature had gills on their neck.

It looked scared.

Without thinking Pearl reached out an arm, trying to somehow help it. Grian was still holding the next, making it impossible for the creature- the mer to escape back into the water. The mer slowly reached out to take Pearl's hand, but then they grabbed it and dragged Pearl into the water.

Pearl felt the fingers around her hand and wrist, the next thing she felt was water all around her.

The movement surprised Grian so much that he dropped the net, releasing the mer into the water. Into the same water that Pearl was now in.

Their hands still intertwined as they sank slowly to the bottom. Pearl was too shocked to feel anything else, she smiled at the mer. The mer hissed and showed her teeth, snapping Pearl out of whatever trance she had been in.

Pearl let go of the mer but started sinking down more, she tried to reach out for the mer again. Instead of grabbing the mers arm she missed and grabbed something that the mer was wearing as some kind of bracelet.

She sank down, having nothing to hold her up.

Pearl could swim, she knew how to swim. But her body wasn’t responding to her anymore, her body didn’t move as she hit the bottom. She stared up at the sky through the water as she lay there, trying to remember how to move.

Her vision started to blur even more and after a few more seconds under water went black. The last thing Pearl saw was the mer staring into her eyes.

The next time Pearl opened her eyes she wasn’t staring at the mer anymore, she was looking at Grian. Grian was ducked over her, looking at her with a face of concern. Pearl tried to say something but she started coughing instead.

“Let it out, let it out” Grian said as he started hitting her back.

Water started coming out of Pearl's mouth until she could breath again. Gasps left her as she tried to get oxygen back into her lungs.

After a while Pearl felt like she could breathe again, her throat burning. “What happened?” She asked, her voice rough. Grian handed her some water “We saw a mer, it pulled you into the water. You almost drowned but I dived in after you and got you, luckily you were still pretty high up in the water” Grian explained, guilt all over his face.

Pearl started remembering what had happened, she had met a mer. But that wasn’t possible, she must have dreamt it or something. Yeah that made sense, it was all a dream. “Mers don’t exist” Pearl said.

Grian’s story only made her believe that it had been a dream more. He said that she was still pretty high in the water, but in Pearl’s dream she had been laying on the bottom.

“You can not possibly believe that, you just got pulled into the water by one” Grian said “Did you actually see that it was a mer?” Pearl asked, she remembered seeing the hands and the face of a human, but with a tail.

But she must have imagined that, she was still half asleep when she had gone to join Grian on the side of the boat.

“Well no, but it had to be a mer, what else could it have been?” Grian asked, frustrated. Pearl started shivering violently, the cold water finally taking effect as her adrenaline worked out “A- a s- seal” Pearl said as her teeth chattered.

“But- no it had to have been a mer” Grian said “Can we just forget about this whole thing, I can’t believe that I fell into the water” Pearl said, how could she have been so stupid. She wrapped her arms around her cold body, trying to warm herself up.

Grian let out a sigh “Fine, come on let’s get you warmed up. But we are continuing this conversation later” Grian said, he brought Pearl to the inside area on the boat. Grian threw his coat over Pearl's shoulders and started the boat again.

Pearl didn’t pay much attention to the trip back, she just kept thinking about how she shouldn’t have come.

When they got back to land Grian helped Pearl off the boat and into the truck. He quickly turned the radiator from the car on and drove her home. He walked her to her door, but before Pearl could get inside her house Skizz walked outside his.

“You’re back early! Did you get- oh are you okay, what happened?” Skizz asked, his face changing from excitement to concern as he noticed the state Pearl was in. “I fell into the water, Grian said that there was a mer and when I came to look I fell” Pearl explained, her teeth still chattering as she spoke.

“I caught a mer, I did” Grian said.

“No, you just think that you had a mer. But you didn’t see the actual thing, it was just a seal” Pearl said, she walked into her house and Grian and Skizz followed her. “Are you hurt?” Skizz asked, his words filled with worry.

“No, I’m fine, just cold and tired” Pearl said.

She started getting ready to shower, a warm shower would warm her right back up. She dumped all of her wet clothes in a corner and stepped beneath the warm water.

When she was done she got out and put some warm clothes on. She walked back downstairs and saw that Grian and Skizz were still there. “What are you two still doing here?” Pearl asked, confused, she had expected them to leave once she went upstairs.

“I got you tea, as an apology for letting you fall into the water” Grian said as he held up a mug of tea “Thank you” Pearl said as she accepted the tea “But it wasn’t your fault, I guess waking up at four am makes me clumsy” She didn't blame Grian, it had been her own fault.

Pearl took a seat on her couch and started drinking her tea, covering herself with a blanket that was on the back of the couch “I’m sorry for cutting your fishing trip short” She said. “It’s alright, I had what I needed anyway” Grian said as he sat down next to Pearl.

Skizz joined them on the couch too “Will you ever join Grian on a trip again?”

“I- sure. but not anytime soon, maybe in the summer next time” Pearl said, taking a swim in the summer would be lovely. “Good idea, this adventure is not over yet” Grian said.

“But it is for today” Pearl said as she laid down on the couch. Almost drowning seemed like a pretty good excuse to not do anything else that day. “Yeah, you’re not going anywhere else today young lady” Skizz said while laughing.

“Do you want us to leave, Pearl?” Grian asked.

Pearl knew that she had only known these people for two days, but for some reason she trusted them. “Nah, but if you want to leave you can” Pearl said with her eyes already closed.

It didn’t take too long before Pearl fell asleep, she woke up hours later to Tango entering her house and Grian leaving her house. But she wasn’t paying attention to that, she just opened her eyes for a couple of seconds and then closed them again.

The next time she woke up she was in her living room with Skizz and Tango quietly chatting around her. Pearl was done sleeping and decided to just play a game with Tango and Skizz. She opened a box that she hadn't unpacked yet and showed the guys all the board games.

That is what she ended up doing for the rest of the day, playing board games.

It was a great way to keep her mind off of the things that had happened that day. Pearl had never almost drowned and she wasn’t a big fan of the experience. Tango and Skizz stayed with her the rest of the day, they were a nice distraction.

But they left in the evening, leaving Pearl all alone.

Pearl cleaned up and got ready for bed, it was weird how she was tired yet again. When she walked into the bathroom to brush her teeth she saw the pile of clothes that she had been wearing that day.

She decided to clean that before she went to bed. She picked up the clothes, they were still wet since Pearl had left them in a pile. Pearl hung them up, making sure that they would be dry by the next day.

When she got her shirt out something fell to the ground. Pearl ducked to pick it up, it was some kind of plant. When Pearl looked at it closer she realized that it had been the thing that the mer in her dream was using as a bracelet.

The thing Pearl had pulled off of her when she had tried not to sink.

But if she was holding that, that meant. It hadn’t been a dream, Pearl had really met a mer. Pearl dropped the plant at the realisation, the mer had been real. There was no other explanation, no other way she would have gotten the bracelet.

Pearl walked to her bedroom and laid down in her bed, maybe she was still asleep. Maybe when she would wake up all of this would be fine. Nothing will have happened, the whole day had just been a dream.

That was all that was on Pearl’s mind as she tried to fall asleep.

She laid there for hours, staring at her ceiling. Every time that she closed her eyes she saw the face of the mer. The scared, nice face of the mer that couldn't be real but somehow was.

Chapter Text

Gem was swimming through the water, searching for a delicious snack. It was early in the morning so she had the whole lake to herself. Well herself and some other fishes, but those fishes didn't count as they couldn't speak.

Everything was great, Gem swam close to the surface. She was looking at the sky through the water, it was beautiful. It was morning so the moon and stars were still visible, lighting up the sky and the water.

Gem liked being out this early in the morning, she liked seeing the moon and the stars. She liked the fact that not a lot of other mers were awake yet, the silence was great. There was nobody who could tell her not to do something, no one to tell her that she shouldn't swim so close to the surface.

This early in the morning there was nobody to tell her what to do. There was nobody stopping her from doing anything, she could do whatever she wanted and nobody would even know. Gem wasn't supposed to swim this close to the surface, and she knew that.

She knew that it could be dangerous but there was barely anyone there this early in the morning.

Everyone would always tell her that she would be seen by humans if she kept swimming so close to the surface. But Gem just ignored them, she was much stronger than any human. Plus they wouldn't even believe their eyes if they did see her.

Countless mers had been seen by humans, none of those humans had believed that mers really existed. A few humans did, but they never did anything about it. Gem knew what humans would do to her if they did see her, but she would just make sure that no human would see her.

Gem was swimming carelessly when she stuck her hand straight through a net. She looked up, the net was connected to a boat. Gem laughed and tried to pull herself free, but the net wouldn't let her go. She moved around a little, trying to untangle her hand.

But nothing that Gem did actually worked, she only managed to get her hand more stuck.

She started moving around like crazy, just trying to get her hand loose. The calm collected option had failed now it was time to try the move around like crazy and hope that it works. She was so busy trying to get her hand free that she didn't notice the human on top of the ship moving towards the net.

"Pearl! Pearl wake up, look over here" Gem heard someone say, she looked up and saw a human looking down at her. She kept moving but felt the net that she was now trapped in being pulled up. Panic rised in Gem, she was stuck.

She had let herself be captured, how could she get away now?

"For god sake wake up, this is the whole reason you're here" The man on the boat shouted. Gem realized that there must be another human on the boat. Another human that could help carry Gem out of the water.

Gem could maybe take one human, but two? How was she supposed to win against two, especially if she wasn't in the water?

"What is over there?" Gem heard another human ask, this human sounded female. "A mer! Come over quick, they're stuck in my net" The human said, He was right Gem was stuck in his net. He hadn't even captured her, she had swam right into his net.

Another human appeared, the human was looking at Gem. Shock appeared over the human's face as she looked at Gem, Gem had now truly been seen by a human. The female came closer, and reached out her hand?

Gem didn't know why the human had done it but Gem took the opportunity and took the hand. She then pulled the human into the water with her, using all her strength. The human fell down into the water. She at least would be able to fight the human in the water.

Once she had pulled the human into the water Gem was dropped back into the water too, her right hand untangling from the net. But her left hand was still holding the human's hand.

The human fell into the water with Gem, Gem let herself fall to the bottom of the lake. She wanted to be as far away from the human as she could, but she was still holding hands with the other human. The human looked at Gem as they were descending and smiled?

There had to be something wrong with this human, it was probably trying to trick Gem.

Gem showed her teeth at the human, trying to scare it. It seemed to work, the face of the human went from smiling to looking shocked to looking panicked. Mission accomplished. Now the human could just leave and go back to the boat. The human let go of Gem and started sinking further away.

Wait, no, she shouldn't go further into the water. She needed to get out of the water. The human tried to grab Gem again as it started sinking, but instead of grabbing gem's arm, they grabbed her bracelet. It took it down with them as it fell.

Gem watched as the human fell to the bottom, air bubbles coming up. She knew that humans couldn't breath underwater, that meant that this human would die. Gem started feeling guilty, no what no, she shouldn't feel guilty.

It was a human, it wouldn't matter if a human died. They had done countless horrible things to mers. One human death for all the deaths that they had caused sounded good. Gem should have been fine with it, but for some reason she wasn't.

For some reason she couldn't just watch the human sink to the bottom and die. Her body started moving towards the human, her head not thinking.

She stopped when she was right in front of the human, checking if it was still awake. The human had their eyes closed and wasn't moving so Gem moved even closer. She picked the human up and started swimming to the surface again.

Gem looked up as she was swimming and saw the other human dive into the water. Gem dropped the human and swam away again, hoping that the other human hadn't seen her. But the other human wasn't paying attention to her, it went straight to the female human.

The male human swam back up with the female human in his arms. He climbed back on the boat and pulled the female human with him.

Gem released a sigh of relief.

Both humans were alive and she was too. Gem watched the boat for a while, it started moving again a little bit later. Gem watched as it got further and further away from her. Once the boat was fully out of her view she left.

She went back to her house and quickly swam in, ignoring everyone around her. She had just been seen by two humans and then she had saved one of those humans from drowning. Why couldn't she have just let the human drown? That would have at least solved fifty percent of her problem.

Now the humans would go home and tell everyone about her, they would come back and take all the mers. They would be sold or killed or worse, Gem didn't want to think about it but her mind wouldn't shut up about it.

She had been told stories about humans her whole life, she knew what they would do if they discovered that mers were real. She had been told that she should be careful, she had been told that she shouldn't swim too close to the surface, but she had ignored those warnings.

And now she had endangered every mer.

There was a knock at her door, Gem swam towards her door and opened it. "Hey Gem, you okay?" Sausage, her oldest brother, asked with concern on his face. She couldn't tell him about what had happened, he would never let her go out alone again.

Gem loved her brother but he could be a bit overprotective. "I'm fine, just woke up really early to go swimming and now I'm tired" Gem replied, she knew that she wasn't going to leave her house anymore today.

Telling Sausage that she would go to sleep would be a good excuse. It was also believable, Gem often woke up early to go swim on her own to then later go back home for a nap.

"You're living life wrong, you're supposed to sleep and then wake up to do things. You don't wake up, go do stuff and then go to sleep again because you woke up too early" Sausage said, a smile replacing his concerned face. It looked like Gem had managed to convince him that she was fine.

"Hey, I live my life in my way and you live yours in your way" Gem said, she preferred going out early but she still needed sleep. Was it really that weird to go back to bed after she had already left her bed? "Your way is wrong" Sausage said.

"Fwhip, Sausage is bullying me" Gem said as she saw her twin swim by. He looked in her direction and smiled before swimming over to her and Sausage "what's going on now? Sausage why are you bullying Gem?" He asked.

"I'm not, I'm just telling her that she's weird for waking up, going for a swim and then going back to sleep because she didn't get enough sleep in the first place" Sausage explained "Sorry Gem, he's right. That is weird" Fwhip said.

"You're siding with him? Traitor!" Gem said, she slammed her door closed.

She could still hear her brothers laughing through her closed door, she opened the door again and shouted "You two are weirder than me anyway" She then closed her door again before sausage or Fwhip could respond.

Great response Gem, great response.

Gem swam to her bed and let herself slowly fall onto it, she closed her eyes. But snapped them back open when she saw the female human. She was laying on the bottom of the lake, eyes closed. It was the moment that she was dying.

Gem closed her eyes a few more times, but every time she did she could only see the human. She wondered if the human was okay, no! She shouldn't wonder about the human. She shouldn't care about the human at all.

And yet whenever she closed her eyes, her thoughts went back to the female human that had almost drowned in front of her. Maybe she had died despite Gem's action. Maybe she had already inhaled too much water, maybe she was in some kind of hospital.

Did human's even have hospitals? Gem didn't know. She didn't know a lot of things about humans, but she wanted to know more. She didn't know why but she had always been curious about humans. Whenever one was close she would watch it, it didn't happen often but when it did Gem would be excited.

The humans would never do that much whenever Gem was spying on them. They would usually just fish, they would sit on a chair on their boat and stare at the lake. Sometimes Gem would overhear some kind of conversation but she barely ever understood what it was.

Her brothers would tell her to stay away from the humans, but she just wanted to know more about them.

Gem gave up on trying to sleep and swam outside, she swam outside her safe town where there were no humans. She went back to the place where she had seen the human, the place where she had saved the human. There was nothing there, not a single sign that something had happened.

But Gem knew that something had happened, and she couldn't stop thinking about it. She swam to the docks, it was a place she wasn't allowed to go. But she couldn't help herself, she stayed low to the ground as she scanned the boats.

Now that it was getting later in the day there were more ships around, which meant that there would be more humans. Gem had been seen by two humans, it would probably be best if she wasn't seen by any more humans.

Maybe she could find the one that the human had been on, maybe she could find the human again. That was Gem's plan, to just see that the human was still alive. Hopefully that would help her thoughts, hopefully seeing that the human was alive would help Gem's mind shut up.

The human had to be alive, Gem decided. If she had been dead there would have been those humans in the blue outfits that always showed up when someone drowned. Besides that Gem had saved her, and the other human had taken her back to a place that she could breath.

The human would probably be fine, Gem was just overthinking stuff.

She searched for a while, but didn't see the human anywhere. She did find the boat that the human had been on, but the humans weren't on it anymore. Gem stayed around for some more time, trying to find the human on the dock, but she didn't see the woman or the male human again.

And so Gem gave up, not knowing what else to do. She couldn't just go up to a human and be like 'Hey, have you seen this female human that almost drowned a few hours ago?' That would be weird. And it would make more humans see her. And so Gem went back to her house, she went in and laid down in her bed again.

The human must be alive, so why could Gem still not sleep?

She didn't even care for this human, why was she worried about it all of a sudden? Humans were evil and Gem didn't know this human. And yet she still couldn't stop thinking about the human. Gem laid in bed staring up at her ceiling for hours trying to get some sleep. But whenever she closed her eyes the face of the human still showed up.

But now not just when she had almost drowned, now it was different moments. Gem saw her when she had reached her hand out to Gem, Gem saw her when she had smiled at Gem after she had fallen into the water.

And Gem saw her when she had fallen after grabbing Gem's bracelet. Falling further and further away from her.

It was driving her crazy, the human was driving her crazy.

Chapter Text

The next day Pearl woke up early, finally feeling a bit rested after she had woken up at five am. But the second she opened her eyes the thoughts were back. The mer had been real, or had she? No, no, mers didn't exist. It just wasn't possible that she had seen one.

She had been panicked and hallucinated, that was the only explanation. The events from the day before started playing through her head again, the mer still clear in her mind. Pearl left her bed, got dressed and walked outside. She got into her car and drove to the place where she had been with Grian the day before.

Pearl had only been at the place one time but she somehow remembered the way. Once she saw the docks she parked her car and got out, the cold morning air waking her up. “This is stupid” She thought but went closer to the water anyway.

She had to figure out what had happened, she had to see the mer again.

There was a big chance that this was all a big waste of time, but the plant had proved that the mer had been real. Or at least that there had been something with a tail and normal arms, and Pearl wanted to find out what it was. There was no denying that there was something, no matter how much Pearl wanted to deny it.

She looked at the water, nothing.

“Uhm hello, mer? Are you here?” Pearl asked, she didn’t really know what else to do. Pearl was happy that she was the only one there, thank god for living in a small town. The last thing she wanted was someone to see her standing there, calling for a magical creature to come to her. She had no idea what she was even doing, but she had to find the mer again.

Pearl sat down on the dock, if the mer wanted to drown her she would have done so the day before. Pearl looked at the water again, she saw her own reflection. She looked stupid, sitting on a dock waiting for a mer to come to her.

This whole situation was stupid.

She stood back up, the plant had probably come from somewhere else. Or maybe she had just completely lost it, that sounded very likely.

Pearl was about to leave, hoping that she could forget about this whole situation now that she had proved to her brain how stupid it was. But Pearl stopped her movements and froze when she heard something behind her. She quickly turned around and saw someone quickly dive under the water.

Freezing in place Pearl stared at the spot, there had been something there. She was sure of it this sime. When Pearl got herself to move again she kneeled down on the docks and looked at the water, coming close to the water without falling in.

“Hey? Uhm mer, I’m not here to hurt you. I wanna thank you” Pearl started, hoping that there was a mer listening and that she wasn’t just talking to nothing. “You saved my life yesterday” Pearl said. Sure, the mer had been the one to endanger her in the first place but she didn’t have to help Pearl.

And yet the mer did help her.

“And I also wanna apologize for my friend, he didn’t mean any harm. He just wanted to prove that mers exist” Pearl said, she could still see Grian with the net in his hands preventing the mer from swimming away. Pearl looked down at the water, not knowing what she was expecting to happen.

When suddenly “Humans can’t know that we exist, if you know what’s good for you you’ll just forget everything. Forget that we exist, return to the humans and don’t come back” A voice came, Pearl looked around desperate to find out where it had come from.

The voice seemed to be coming from under the dock, Pearl did the stupidest thing she could do and laid down on the doc. Her head hung over the edge as she looked down beneath it. She saw someone with orange hair right as disappeared under the water and out of Pearls sight.

“Wait! So you are real” Pearl exclaimed, she could barely believe it. For some reason now that she knew that the mer was really real, she didn’t want the mer to leave. She wanted to learn more about it, she didn’t even know that they could speak. “Please come back, I wanna know more” she pleaded.

“We aren’t supposed to interact with humans” The voice said, now coming from yet another direction. Pearl got up and looked around, but she didn’t see anyone. It didn’t matter, she now knew that the mer was at least listening to her.

“I won’t tell anyone” Pearl said, hoping that that would be enough to make the mer show itself again. “Come on, you have to be curious about humans too” Pearl said after she didn’t get a response.

“Maybe” The voice came again.

“Show yourself please, I wanna know more about you and you wanna know more about me I'm assuming" If mers knew as much about humans as humans did about mers than this mer had to be curious too, right?. "We can ask each other questions, nobody has to know” Pearl said, her curiosity in overdrive.

“How do I know that you won’t hurt me? Don’t think that I don’t know what humans like you do to creatures like me” The mer said. Pearl thought about that for a few seconds, she didn’t want to hurt the mer. But the mer had no reason to believe her. The day before a human had tried to catch the mer, of course she wasn't to trust Pearl now.

“We uhm- we can just keep our distance, I will stay on the land and you stay in the water. We won’t be able to hurt each other that way” Pearl said, her brain had been so busy with all the questions she had for the mer that she had forgotten to think about the possibility of the mer hurting her.

“F-fine” The mer said, her head appeared above the water.

“Let’s go to a quieter place, we don’t want another human to run into you” Pearl said, she also kind of didn’t want someone to see her talk to what looked like the water. Pearl looked around, and spotted a little beach area that was partly hidden by bushes.

“Can you come over there?” Pearl said, pointing at the little beach area.

The mer nodded and disappeared under water again, Pearl walked to the little beach area. It was a little hard getting there but she got there with a limited amount of cuts. She overlooked the water, would the mer even come?

The place where Pearl was standing still had grass but if she would take a few steps closer there would just be sand. The sand eventually ended with a little dip that ended with the water of the lake. From where Pearl was standing the mer couldn't hurt her but the mer would be able to get away if Pearl would try anything.

It felt like the perfect place to talk.

A few moments passed and the mer still wasn't there. Which was weird because she should have already been there, swimming would be much faster than walking. Maybe the mer didn’t trust Pearl after all? The beach area was less deep than the rest of the lake. Maybe the mer changed her mind.

Pearl was about to give up when she saw two eyes looking at her from the water “You promise not to hurt me?” A voice asked. Pearl smiled and sat down on the sand to show that she really wasn't planning anything “I won’t even get close to you”

“Okay” The mer swam closer to the beach. Her body became more and more visible the closer she got. Pearl could now see her full face and part of her tail. The mer was beautiful, she had sea green eyes and long orange hair decorated by the colourful flowers in it.

The mer left Pearl speechless, her tail was multiple colours. It was blue and green with some white at the ends. Her fins even had some pink, purple and blue lines on it. Now that Pearl got a better look at her she realised how not-human she looked. She had webbed fingers, pointed ears, sharp teeth and gills.

Besides that and the tail she could pass as human, but right now it was clear that she was anything but human. “You’re beautiful” Pearl said, she didn’t mean to say it out loud and covered her mouth with her hand.

What a stupid thing to say, Pear didn’t even know her.

The mer’s face turned red “T-thank you” She said softly. “I- sorry, I wasn’t thinking. I just- I’ve never seen a mer before” Pearl said trying to make the conversation less awkward. Pearl cleared her throat “I’m Pearl” She said, changing the subject.

“Pearl like a pearl from the sea, I’m Gem” The mer, Gem, responded. “I- I have a lot of questions, how about we ask a question at a time. You ask one and then I ask one” Pearl suggested, she needed to give the mer a reason to keep talking to her.

“Sounds great, what do you wanna know?” Gem asked, she kept her distance but Pearl could see the curiosity in her eyes. “Can you only breathe underwater?” Pearl asked, the mer had her head above water but seemed fine. Pearl wanted to know how long she had to talk to the mer.

“I can stay above the water for some time, but after a while I would need to return to the water” Gem said, her answer quite vague. “My turn, what are those called?” Gem asked, she pointed at Pearl’s legs.

“My legs?” Pearl asked confused, the mer nodded “yes legsss, how do they work?”

“Uhm well, they have bones inside of them and muscle which allow me to stand up” Pearl said, she stood up to demonstrate it. She really didn’t know how to explain the concept of legs “The muscles allow me to move which allows me to do things like walk, I don’t think it’s much different from your tail”

“Interesting, but you can stand. Sorry, it’s your turn to ask a question” Gem said.

“I can stand because of my feet” Pearl answered, answering her question anyway while she pointed at her feet before asking her next question “Are you the only mer here?”

Gem stayed silent for a few seconds, hesitating “No, but I can’t tell you anything about anyone else. Are you the only one living here? Well you and the other humans that I always see on their boats?” Gem asked. Pearl almost laughed at the question but managed not to, she didn't wanna be rude.

It was weird to her that the mer thought that the only humans here were the ones that actually went onto the water when there were so many more.

“No, there is a little town here with a lot of other humans. But there are even more all over the world, billions even” Pearl said, she didn’t really see the reason in not telling Gem about all the other humans.

“B- billions?” Gem asked, Pearl saw a look of fear on Gem’s face and quickly added “Yeah but they won’t come here. This is just a little town, according to the people who live here we barely get visitors anyway”

“O-okay, uhm what’s your next question?” Gem asked, moving on.

Pearl thought for a few seconds before asking “Do all mers speak English?” When Pearl was young and still believed in mer’s she always assumed that they would have their own language, like normal fish. Even this morning when she went to find the mer she still didn't think that she would be able to communicate with them.

“I don’t think so, but everyone here does” Gem answered. “Can all humans change their legs?” Her question confused Pearl “What do you mean, change our legs?”

“Well the colour, the other human that comes here comes here with different coloured legs each time. Can all humans do that?” Gem asked.

The explanation didn’t explain much as Pearl was still confused. She looked at her legs, was she asking about pants? “Do you mean these?” Pearl asked as she put her hand on her leg. The mer nodded and Pearl laughed.

She pulled her pants up a little, showing her ankle to Gem. “This is my leg” She said pointing at her ankle “This” She pointed at the now curled up pants “Are my pants, they go over my leg for warmth. It’s clothing just like my shirt”

“Clothing? So it’s not stuck to you?” Gem asked, now she was the one that sounded confused.

Pearl couldn’t help but laugh “No, it’s not stuck to me. It’s just like my shirt, I- I could bring you some pants to show you” Pearl said, she wished that it was summer. If it was summer she could wear shorts or a dress to show the difference between normal skin and clothing. But for now bringing a piece of clothing with her to show Gem would have to do.

“Yes, please” Gem answered.

“Do all mers have the same colour tail?” Pearl asked her next question, since they were on the topic of clothes anyway. “No, everyone has a different tail. They are all unique. But we can’t change the colour like humans with pants”

“Interesting” Pearl commented

The two of them asked each other questions for a while, Pearl learning more and more about mers. After an hour or two Pearl went back home, she didn’t want to leave but the place was starting to get a bit crowded.

She said goodbye to Gem and they decided to meet up again the next day. It was clear to Pearl that Gem didn’t trust her but Gem was as curious about human clothing as Pearl was about mers in general. They would meet up at the same time and place, Pearl couldn’t wait.

When she got home she walked into Tango “Oh hey Pearl, you were out early”

“Hello, yeah I just needed to clear my head after what had happened yesterday” Pearl answered with a smile. The interaction with Gem had made her weirdly happy.

“Well you seem like you're in a good mood so I assume that it worked. I’m glad that what happened yesterday didn’t scare you away or anything” Tango said.

“Believe me, I’m not gonna leave anytime soon” Pearl said, not only were the people here amazing. She also had a beautiful house and a job, But she now also had a secret.

Mers existed and Pearl knew one.

“I’m glad, if you need help with anything let me know. But I need to get to work now, don’t want Impulse angry at me, again” Tango said before leaving.

Pearl walked around town for a little after that, what other secrets could this place be hiding?

Chapter Text

Gem still couldn't sleep, it was now a day after she had saved the human. But she still couldn't stop thinking about the human. Every time Gem closed her eyes she saw the human in front of her, smiling at her. Maybe the human would be at the docks again, Gem's mind was screaming at her to go check.

But she had to refuse, it was stupid. She shouldn't care about the human, she shouldn't want to go towards it. The human was dangerous, it would capture her the second it got the change. It had been trying to capture her the first time they'd met. But whenever Gem thought about that the only thing her mind could think of was that smile.

The friendly smile the human had given her even though Gem had pulled her into the water. The human could have drowned all thanks to Gem, and yet she had smiled.

Gem gave up on sleeping and started swimming, her body subconsciously taking her to the docks even though she didn't want to be there. Gem looked around once she got there, nobody. Of course there would be nobody, had she wanted there to be someone? She didn't want to be seen by the humans.

She shouldn't be wanting to stay at the docks, it was too dangerous.

But her brain wasn't listening to reason and she stayed where she was. Watching the docks from underwater, waiting for the human to arrive. Not knowing why she even wanted the humon to come there.

She didn't know why she stayed, but she did. She waited and waited and waited, until she saw someone walk towards the docks. She hid beneath the docks, low in the water, hoping that the human wouldn't see her. Gem couldn't see the human anymore so she assumed that it was above her.

Gem swam up a little, checking if it was the human that she had seen the say before. To Gem's surprise it was, she hadn't actually expected the human to return. Now that it was light outside Gem could see her more clearly than she had been able to the day before.

The human was tall, although it might just look like that because she was above the water. She had long brown hair and Gem could see that she had sea blue eyes. The human was quite pretty, even if it was a human.

The human looked like she was alone, no others to try and capture Gem or all the other mer. That was a good thing at least. The human also looked empty handed, no nets, no knives, no nothing. Gem also counted that as a good thing. The human walked onto the docks and looked at the water, just staring at it. Gem wanted to come closer, to take a closer look but she was too scared to actually do so.

“Uhm hello, mer? Are you here?” the human asked, it looked like she was talking to the water. Gem could see that there was nobody at the place where Pearl was looking. Gem didn't answer, she was just watching the human.

The human sat down on the dock, a risky move if you asked Gem. Not that she wanted to drown the human, that obviously wasn't going to happen after what had happened the day before. But still, there were more mers in the water that wouldn't think twice about drowning a human.

Gem had heard other mers bragging about having pulled a human into the water. They would usually get scolded for interacting with the humans but they were proud nonetheless. If one of those mers saw Pearl sitting all alone on the docks, they'd pull her down into the water. Gem was sure of it.

But she wouldn't, she couldn't.

Gem instead swam up a bit, her head was now above the water. She could fully see the human now, but the human had her back turned towards Gem so she couldn't see her. The human suddenly stood up, Gem dived back under the water.

She watched the human from under the water, hoping that the human hadn't seen her.

But the human's eyes came towards the place where Gem had just been, she stared at the water. The human kneeled down, coming even closer to the water, and said “Hey? Uhm mer, I’m not here to hurt you. I wanna thank you" Gem didn't answer, it all felt like a trap.

A human thanking a mer, something like that didn't happen.

“You saved my life yesterday” The human continued, Gem didn't say anything. She had saved the human's life, but she had endangered her too. She had been the reason that the human had been in danger in the first place. She had been the one to pull the human into the water.

“And I also wanna apologize for my friend, he didn’t mean any harm. He just wanted to prove that mers exist” The human said. The human's friend, who had prevented Gem from getting away. The person who had dropped the net into the water in the first place.

He didn't mean any harm? Proving that mers exist would cause more harm than he could ever think of. The mers would be hunted, captured and killed if humans ever found out that they were real.

Gem swam up a little, making sure that she was still hiding from the human. “Humans can’t know that we exist, if you know what’s good for you you’ll just forget everything. Forget that we exist, return to the humans and don’t come back” she said trying to sound threatening, hoping that it would scare the human away.

The human laid down on the dock and looked beneath it, Gem noticed just in time and swam further under the water. “Wait! So you are real” The human exclaimed before saying “Please come back, I wanna know more”

Wait, she already knew that Gem was real right? She had seen Gem the day before, she had just been talking to her. Why was she surprised?

And she wants to know more? Gem couldn't tell her anything, she wasn't even supposed to talk to a human. She wasn't even supposed to be seen by a human, and now she had shown herself again. “We aren’t supposed to interact with humans” Gem said, hoping that the human would accept the answer and continue on with her life.

But that thought was proven wrong when the human said “I won’t tell anyone. “Come on, you have to be curious about humans too”

The human was right, Gem did want to know more about humans. They had always fascinated her, and now there was a chance of getting answers. But Gem wasn't allowed to talk to a human, it was dangerous.

Gem looked at the human, she didn't look dangerous. But that didn't mean anything, but on the other side Gem had saved this human's life. “Maybe" Gem ended up responding. She didn't really know what else to say, she didn't want to admit that she was interested in humans to this human.

The more she told the human, the more information that the human had to use against her.

“Show yourself please, I wanna know more about you and you wanna know more about me. We can ask each other questions, nobody has to know” The human said, she did have a point. No one had to know. But it could still very well be a trap.

“How do I know that you won’t hurt me? Don’t think that I don’t know what humans like you do to creatures like me” Gem asked, if the human could prove that she wouldn't hurt Gem then everything would be fine. “We can keep our distance, I will stay on the land and you stay in the water. We won’t be able to hurt each other that way” The human responded.

Gem thought about that for a few seconds, that couldn't hurt right? They would just talk for a little while, that would be fine. Nobody would know and nobody would get hurt, but Gem would still get the answers that she wanted.

"F-fine" She said, still not fully sure about this plan.

“Let’s go to a quieter place, we don’t want another human to run into you” The human said, at least she understood that Gem didn't want to be seen by other humans. “Can you come over there?” the human asked as she pointed at a little beach area.

Gem saw that the water was less high over there, but she would still be at a distance where the human wouldn't be able to hurt her. She would be able to swim away before the human could reach her. Gem nodded to the human and started swimming to the little beach area.

Gem swam to the place but stayed under the water, keeping her eyes on the little beach. The human appeared and looked down at the water, Gem swam up a little so that her head was visible “You promise not to hurt me?” she asked.

The human smiled and sat down on the sand "I won’t even get close to you” she said.

"Okay" Gem said as she swam closer to the human, her heart pounding in her chest as she got closer and closer. She stopped a little distance away from the human, but the human could now see her fully. “You’re beautiful” the human said suddenly.

It was the last thing Gem had expected to say and Gem felt her cheeks heat up from the compliment, the human covered her mouth with her hand. “T-thank you” Gem said softly. “I- sorry, I wasn’t thinking. I just- I’ve never seen a mer before” the human replied.

"I'm Pearl" The human said, introducing herself. “Pearl like a pearl from the sea, I’m Gem” Gem said, saying her thoughts out loud and introducing herself too. She liked the name Pearl.

“I- I have a lot of questions, how about we ask a question at a time. You ask one and then I ask one” The human said, Gem thought that it was a good idea. That way that would both get information. “Sounds great, what do you wanna know?” Gem asked.

The two of them talked for a little bit, learning more about each other. At one point Pearl asked Gem if there were other mers, but Gem didn't want to tell her anything about the rest. She didn't fully trust this human, they were only asking each other questions.

Luckily the human accepted Gem's answer and continued on with the question. The human had no problem telling Gem about the other humans, apparently there were a lot of other humans. It kinda scared Gem, but Pearl assured her that those humans wouldn't come to visit them.

They talked for a while but soon other humans started appearing and Gem had to start hiding again before any of them saw her. Gem and Pearl agreed to meet up again the next day, Gem didn't want to admit it but she was looking forward to it.

She liked learning about humans and Pearl had promised to bring Gem a human thing called a shirt.

Gem knew that it could still be a trap, but she didn't care. She wanted to learn more, she wanted to get to know Pearl better. Gem swam back to her house "Hey Gem, you were out early" one of Gem's friends, Scott, said as she passed him.

"Hello Scott, what are you talking about? I'm always up early. This is nothing new" Gem replied. She was always up and about early in the morning, this really wasn't something weird. The fact that she had always been an early riser really helped her today "Yeah but never this early, and you're never gone for this long" Scott said.

"Oh, I was just out exploring because I couldn't sleep. I wasn't paying attention to the time" Gem said, it wasn't really a lie. She was out and while she wasn't exactly exploring, she was asking questions about something that interested her.

"Sounds fun, was there a reason you couldn't sleep. Everything okay?" Scott asked, he was always a good friend. Always concerned about other people. "I'm fine, just having a bit too much to think about I guess. But I think that I will be able to sleep fine tonight"

She hoped that she would be able to sleep fine tonight at least, now that she knew that the human was fine.

"That's good" Scott said. Gem and Scott talked for a while, just chatting about random things. "You seem to be in a good mood" Scott said after a while. "I guess I am" Gem replied with a smile on her face.

It was exciting learning more over humans. She couldn't wait to learn more.

Gem and Scott parted ways after a while and Gem went swimming. She had a lot of energy all of a sudden, she swam through the lake in record speed. She didn't want to slow down so she didn't, she kept swimming until she was too tired.

She went back home and immediately went to bed. She was exhausted and couldn't wait for the next day, the sooner she would fall asleep, the sooner it would be the next day. Luckily for Gem it didn't take long before she fell asleep.

Chapter Text

The next day Pearl woke up early again, but for the first time ever she didn't mind. She basically jumped out of bed, quickly grabbed some different kinds of clothes for Gem and left to go back to the little beach. She drove there and looked around, luckily there was nobody around again.

Pearl hurried over to the little beach and looked around, it looked like she was there earlier then Gem. Pearl sat down on the sand, her eyes never leaving the water. As she waited there a thought came to her head, what if Gem didn't return?

Sitting there, thinking that made a huge wave of disappointment come over Pearl. But she didn't leave yet, Gem could just be running late. Every single sound that Pearl heard made her think that Gem had arrived, but when she would look towards where the sound had come from there was nothing there.

Until Gem did show up “Hi, did you bring them?” she immediately asked.

“Hello, I did” Pearl said, a big smile appeared on her face as she saw Gem. She quickly took the clothes that she had brought with her out of her backpack and showed them to Gem. “That’s so weird, do all humans have them?” Gem asked, looking at the few clothing items in awe.

Pearl nodded in response “And all humans wear them?” Pearl nodded again. It was weird to her that Gem found pants and shirts weird. To her they were completely normal, nothing to be amazed about.

“I also brought a shirt” She said as she grabbed the shirt out of her bag. “Do you wanna try it on?” She asked, realizing that unlike with the pants Gem would be able to put on a shirt. Gem nodded and Pearl threw the shirt over to her.

It landed in the water a small distance away from Gem, Gem swam towards, taking it in her hands and holding in front of her inspecting it closely. “How do I try it on?” Gem asked, Pearl laughed and started explaining how you put a shirt on. Gem succeeded and looked at the shirt she was now wearing.

She swam a little, a smile on her face. She swam to the deeper area where Pearl couldn’t see her tail anymore. With the shirt on Gem looked almost human, the only thing that reminded Pearl that she wasn’t a human was the sharp teeth and pointed ears.

Gem swam back towards Pearl “I wish I could give you something from under the sea… wait” Gem said, she went under water again and disappeared. Pearl did as she was told and waited, curious about what Gem was planning.

A few minutes later Gem returned with a flower in her hand, it looked like the flower that was in her hair. “It’s a water lily” Gem said as she swam even closer to the little beach and put it down on the sand. She went back to the water immediately after she had put the flower down.

Pearl calmly waited until Gem was at a safe distance again before she took the flower “It’s beautiful, thank you” Pearl said, inspecting it. The flower was almost completely white but had some pink lines along the bottom. It was the most beautiful flower Pearl had ever seen.

“You can put it in your hair or you can make a bracelet out of it, or even a crown. I have a friend who loves making flower crowns, she uses all kinds of flowers for them” Gem said, showing off her own flower jewelry as she spoke.

Pearl decided to put the flower behind her ear, she couldn’t help but smile.

“What’s living on land like?” Gem asked suddenly.

“Oh, uhm boring I guess. When you’re young you go to school and play outside but as you get older you start to get responsibilities. You have to get a job so you can pay for a house and so that you can pay for food” Pearl said, thinking about all the things that she was worried about.

“Pay for food? Can’t you just hunt for your food?” Gem asked, Pearl chuckled in response “No, no it’s not that easy for us. We go to a store and buy food there” Pearl explained, she doubted giving Gem a long history lesson about how humans used to haunt but decided against it.

“Humans are weird, hunting sounds way easier” Gem said, Pearl just nodded. She didn't want to hunt but the part about humans being weird, that part she agreed with “Yeah, that we are. What do you do in your free time? Are you just hunting the whole day?” Pearl asked, getting curious again.

She had asked like a million questions the day before but she still had hundreds more.

“No, I just hunt when I’m hungry” Gem answered “In my free time I usually go exploring or I hang out with my friends. What do you do in your free time?”

“Well I just moved so there are a lot of things I need to take care of in my new house, building stuff, getting to know the new town and the people living in there” Pearl said, trailing off. There were so many things that she still needed to take care of “You don’t sound happy about it” Gem noted.

“Oh, no I am happy. It’s just very stressful you know? Being all on my own for the first time and in a place that I don’t know. It’s a lot” Pearl responded with a sigh that turned into a smile. She liked the town, she really did. But the move brought a lot of stress with it.

“Mers don’t really live on their own, we all live really close to each other” Gem said. “That sounds nice” Pearl replied, her smile disappearing slightly. She started to wish that she was a mer too. Not having to work and living close to everyone she loved, it all sounded great.

“It is, but it can get kinda annoying too. It’s nice to get away from there every little once in a while” Gem said “I like this, I like talking with you. It’s nice”

Pearl got a smile on her face “I like this too, do you think we could keep hanging out? Not just to learn more about humans or mers, but to get to know each other” Pearl asked, she really wanted to become friends with Gem.

She hadn’t even minded getting out of bed early to visit Gem. She had only known Gem for twenty four hours, but she was already sure that they could become great friends. She wanted to become great friends with Gem.

“Yeah, as long as you don’t tell anyone about me” Gem said, she said it with a smile on her face but Pearl knew that she was being serious. She didn't exactly know what humans would do if they found out about Gem but she had her ideas.

She had seen enough movies to know what humans did to unknown creatures.

“Of course not, I promise” Pearl said, she reached out a hand to shake Gem’s. Gem swam closer to her and took her hand, for a second Pearl feared getting pulled into the water. But Gem just shook her hand and then let go again.

Gem swam back into the water, getting away from Pearl. Pearl knew that Gem didn’t trust her, but that was okay. She didn’t fully trust Gem either, she just knew that Gem wouldn’t let her drown.

Pearl smiled, “Is there anything else that you want me to bring from land?” She asked, Pearl could tell that Gem was curious about humans, Pearl wanted to teach her about everything she wanted to know.

“I don’t know, tell me more about humans” Gem said, Pearl thought for a little bit. She started telling Gem about her first few days in this town. She told Gem about the people, about the cafe and about the mysterious cabin.

Gem listened and every once in a while asked questions, it was nice.

When they were in conversation Pearl came up with a new subject. She was about to keep talking but quickly shut up when she noticed people arriving at the docks. Gem noticed too, hiding beneath the water just a bit more. Pearlquickly said goodbye to Gem again, and watched as Gem disappeared into the water completely.

Pearl stayed there for a little bit, watching the spot that Gem had disappeared in. It was hard to believe that this was real, that Pearl had just really talked with a mer. She kinda wished that she could have talked to Gem for longer, that there was a place to talk to Gem where they wouldn’t be seen.

Pearl returned home and decided to get some breakfast at Impulses cafe. She was hungry and not in the mood to make anything. She arrived and went to order “Hello Pearl, what can I get you?” Impulse asked, a big friendly smile on his face.

“Pancakes” Pearl decided as she looked at the menu, she deserved something delicious after the busy week that she had had. “Pancakes coming right up, anything else?” Impulse asked with as he wrote down Pearl's order.

“Nope, just pancakes” Pearl said, Impulse went into the kitchen and Pearl sat down at a table. It didn’t take too long before Impulse returned with her pancakes “How would you like to have your first shift tonight?” Impulse asked as he placed the food down in front of Pearl.

“That would be amazing” Pearl answered, the sooner she started making money the better. “Could you be here around five?” Impulse asked, Pearl didn't have any plans so she nodded and said “Yeah, I’ll be here”

When she was done eating she went back home and unpacked a few more boxes. She was almost fully unpacked now, most of her things already put away. She was done with most things and most of her furniture stood. Pearl was proud of herself for all the progress that she'd made.

The things that weren’t done by now, weren’t too important.

Before Pearl knew it, it was time to leave. She put her coat on and walked outside to the cafe. She used the side entrance to get in and Impulse immediately put her to work. “We’re gonna get the dinner rush in a little bit so everything needs to be ready for that” Impulse said.

Today Pearl was working with Impulse, Skizz and Joel. Impulse and Skizz were in the kitchen while Pearl and Joel would be in the front. Pearl would take orders and bring orders to the customers.

It looked like way too much work for four people, but Impulse assured Pearl that everything would be alright. He was right, everything would be alright. Pearl could do this, she didn't have a single idea what she was doing but she could do it. The first few customers started arriving and Pearl introduced herself and took their order.

Everything was going fine, until it wasn’t.

Pearl was running around the cafe, taking orders and giving customers their food. But she didn’t remember anything they said, she kept messing up orders. After a while she even started stumbling over her words.

It was eight when she was done, she walked into the kitchen defeated. She wanted to crawl into a hole and hide away forever. “Everyone's first day is a bit rough, you’ll you way better next time” Skizz encouraged her, patting her on the shoulder.

She thanked him and Impulse and then left. She needed some peace and quiet for a little while. Before Pearl realised what she was doing she had stepped into her car and driven to the docks.

Now she was sitting in her car overlooking the water from a distance. What was she even doing there? Pearl looked around her car and noticed a book that she had never gotten out of her car.

She took the book and walked to the little beach area, Gem most likely wouldn’t be there but it was a nice place to sit. She sat down on the cold sand and started reading in the dim light of the sun as it went down.

The book was quite interesting and before Pearl knew it she had forgotten all about her awful work experience. Pearl was so distracted by the book that she didn’t notice a certain mer appearing from the water.

“What are you reading?” Gem asked suddenly.

Pearl almost threw her book as she jumped up. “Oh Gem, Hi. Just a random book that I found in the back of my car” Pearl answered, she doubted that Gem would know any human books.

“I didn’t except to see you here” Pearl admitted, she hadn’t expected to see anyone here. “I like to come here when I want to be alone, I don't know why. It's just nice here” Gem answered, staring at the sun as it went down with a smile. She closed her eyes for a few seconds, taking in the warmth that the sun gave off.

“Oh, I can go if you want” Pearl said, already standing up “No” Gem said very fast, opening her eyes and turning back towards Pearl “You can stay. I- I uhm mean that it’s a public place, don’t walk away because I told you to. And besides that, you were here first”

“O-kay” Pearl said sitting back down, she was glad that Gem wasn’t sending her away. “Why did you want to be alone?” Pearl asked “Huh?” Gem responded. “You said that you like to come here to be alone, is there a reason that you want to be alone?” Pearl asked, she had wanted to be alone and there was definitely a good reason for that.

“Oh yeah, just my brothers being annoying I guess. They’re always so worried about me because I’m their little sister. But I can take care of myself, they need to understand that” Gem said, sounding frustrated. It sounded like siblings were the same underwater as they were on the land.

“That does sound annoying” Pearl replied, she didn't have any siblings herself but she could imagine how annoying it would be to have someone constantly being worried about them “Are your brothers much older then you?” She asked.

“Sausage is five years older than me, Fwhip and I are twins. But they always act like I’m still five” Gem said.

The two of them chatted for a bit, just talking about the things that annoyed them. It turned out that they could relate to each other a lot, at least about the things that annoyed them. They talked for a few hours and Pearl ended up venting about her work day.

Gem had laughed and told her that it would all be fine. Pearl should have been upset that Gem had laughed at her, but she wasn’t. Gem’s laugh even seemed to cheer Pearl up a bit.

When it got darker Pearl had to go back home, but Gem and Pearl had planned to meet up again soon. Pearl went home and changed into her pajamas, she had to take the flower out of her hair before she went to bed.

She put it on her nightstand and quickly fell asleep.

Chapter Text

Gem woke up and immediately got up from her bed, excitement filling her. She started swimming towards her door, ready to leave. But paused right in front of the door, noticing how dark it still was outside. It was still a bit early, would Pearl already be there? It wasn't likely

But Gem also didn't really think that she could go back to bed now. She could just go to the little beach and wait there for Pearl. Yeah, and then when Pearl would arrive Gem would be there waiting for her and they could start a conversation. Gem decided that she didn't care if she would have to wait and she left.

When Gem left her house she almost swam into someone else, Sausage. "Oh sorry… Gem? What are you doing up so early" Sausage asked, Gem got her bearings and looked back at him "I uhm- I could ask you the same question" She responded instead of answering.

"I asked you first" Sausage said, Gem got up in his face "Which is why you also get to answer first" she said, a grin on her face. "Fine, I couldn't sleep. Now, what's your excuse?" Sausage asked, Gem back off a little as she realized that it was now her time to answer.

She had hoped that she could come up with an excuse while Sausage explained what he was doing out so early, but his answer hadn't exactly been long. "I just uhm- hungry! I woke up really hungry so I decided to get a little snack, couldn't fall back asleep while my stomach kept making noises" Gem replied, coming up with an excuse right in time.

"Oh, well we could get some food together. Like the good old days" Sausage said, a smile on his face. "You mean the good old days where you and Fwhip wouldn't let me go out hunting alone?" Gem asked, for years she hadn't been allowed to go out on her own.

Maybe that was why she was so focused on exploring now.

"Exactly, come on what do you say?" Sausage asked, Gem nodded "Let's go" she said, she had never liked having to hunt with her brothers when she was younger. But now, she kinda missed it. Don't get her wrong she didn't want things to go back to the way they were back then, but she missed being with her brothers the whole day.

During their hunt Sausage told Gem more about the reason that he was awake. Apparently he had another nightmare that woke him up. Gem asked if Sausage wanted to talk about it, but he didn't want to. And so the two just hunted, when they had their food they ate together.

After that Gem told Sausage that she was going to try and go back to sleep. They said goodbye and Gem acted like she was swimming back to her house, but switched directions when she was out of Sausage's sight. It didn't take long before she arrived back at the little beach.

From the water Gem could already see Pearl waiting for her.

Gem swam higher so that Pearl could see her too "Hi, did you bring them?" Gem asked, not being able to wait any longer. Sausage had already slowed her down enough in her honest opinion. “Hello, I did” Pearl answered as she took something out of her backpack. The pants, Gem realised, they looked a bit weird when they weren't on a human's body.

“That’s so weird, all humans have them?” Gem asked curiously. Pearl nodded in response “And all humans wear them?” Pearl nodded again.

"I also brought you a shirt" Pearl said as she reached into her backpack again. She took something out of her bag and held it up for Gem “Do you wanna try it on?” Pearl asked, Gem could see that Pearl was also wearing a shirt and nodded.

Pearl threw the shirt into the water, it landed not too far away from Gem.

Gem swam a little closer to the shirt, ignoring the voice in her head telling her to not get too close, she just swam closer to the human. Pearl wouldn't hurt her, right? She picked up the shirt and inspected it. It was a plain white shirt but Gem couldn't be more excited.

She wanted it on like she was a human, but how did it work. The shirt had some holes, Gem could see that but “How do I try it on?” Gem asked, Pearl laughed but started explaining how you put a shirt on. Gem succeeded and looked at the shirt she was now wearing.

It was so human, it was so cool. Gem swam underwater a little, testing the shirt against the water pressure. The shirt was a bit big on her and floated around her as she swam, making Gem laugh. It was weird, but she liked it.

She came back to the surface and swam closer to Pearl again. She loved the shirt that Pearl had gifted her. Wait Pearl had given her something, she should give something back. But what, Gem started thinking about all the things that weren't on land as far as Gem had seen.

“I wish I could give you something from under the sea…" Maybe some coral or seashells "Wait” Gem said, coming up with the perfect thing to give to Pearl. Gem swam under water and swam as quickly as she could to the perfect place. She arrived at the little part of the lake covered in water lilies.

It was from under the sea but it was something that mers wore so it would be kinda like the human shirt that Pearl had given her.

She inspected all the lillies and chose the most beautiful one for Pearl.

Gem swam back, trying to hurry up. She made it back and swam even closer to the little beach, making sure that she could get away quickly if Pearl did decide to attack after all. “It’s a water lily” Gem said, she put it on the sand and swam to the deeper waters again.

Pearl took the flower and put it behind her ear, she smiled after she did so. It gave Gem a nice feeling, knowing that she liked it. The two of them talked about what it was like living under water and on land again. After a while Pearl noticed people arriving and she left, the two of them agreeing to meet up again soon.

Gem swam underwater, wishing that she didn't have to leave. She swam around for a little bit, bored out of her mind. But after a while she went back home, seeing if there was anything to do there.

She saw some of her friends around and went to them "Hey Jimmy, Scott" Gem said, the two of them turned to face her, a smile appearing on their faces "Hi Gem" Jimmy greeted her. "Hello Gem" Scott said at the same time.

Jimmy and Scott were two of Gem's best friends. Jimmy was a tall blonde man with a blue tail with some white at the bottom. Scott on the other hand had a very colorful tail, blue, gold, brown and white decorated his tail. He was tall too, but far from as tall as Jimmy.

"Do you two have any plans today? I'm bored" Gem said, hoping that she could hang out with Jimmy and Scott the whole day. Time usually went faster when she was around the two of them, the sooner time went the sooner Gem could see Pearl again.

"Yeah, we are going seahorse riding. It's going to be so much fun, you're free to join" Jimmy said, the smile on his face only growing. "You sure? I wouldn't want to be third wheeling on one of your dates" Gem said, teasing them.

Everyone could see that Jimmy liked Scott and by now it was pretty well-known that Scott also liked Jimmy. The only people who don't realise that the two of them like each other are the two of them. Gem liked to tease them about it, hoping that the two of them would just admit their feelings already.

It was obvious that they were made for each other, Gem wished that there was someone for her like that.

"We are not dating" Jimmy said "Then stop acting like you are" Gem said, she didn't want them to stop acting like they were in love. But if they weren't going to actually do anything about their feelings then they should stop acting like they had feelings for each other.

"Hey Gem, what are you wearing?" Scott suddenly asked

Gem looked Scott in the eyes, she knew that he was just trying to change the subject but it did work. She had completely forgotten that she was still wearing the shirt. "Oh it's called a shirt, it's a human thing. I uhm found it, it looks pretty cool right?" Gem asked, hoping that she sounded believable.

It wouldn't be that weird for her to have found the shirt. Humans often lost stuff and mer often found that stuff on the bottom of the sea. Usually the stuff was useless, but sometimes there were some valuable things among them.

She couldn't tell Jimmy or Scott about Pearl, they wouldn't understand. The two of them didn't care about humans, they just feared them. Gem did too, but she was also fascinated by them. It was a dangerous combination but Gem couldn't help it.

"Yeah, sure" Scott said with a fake smile, Gem looked over at Jimmy who was trying not to laugh. "Sorry Gem, it looks good" Jimmy said.

Gem took the shirt off "Let's just go seahorse riding" She said as she swam away, Jimmy and Scott followed her soon "Wait, sorry. We didn't mean to offend you, it just looks weird" Scott said, not trying to offend her? Jimmy was literally laughing at her.

"sure, sure" Gem said, she started swimming a bit faster.

It wasn't to get away from Jimmy or Scott, she knew that they were just joking around. She could take a joke, but she wanted to race the two of them. Gem looked behind her, smiling at the two of them.

The two of them saw her expressions and looked at each other before copying her expression and smiling. Scott began to swim even faster, the show-off. But Gem wasn't beaten that easily, she swam even faster, sticking out her tongue when she passed Scott.

Scott rolled his eyes as he tried to keep up with her, he was right behind her.

Gem could see the top of Scott's head from the corner of her eyes as he came closer and closer to her. But then out of nowhere he was pulled back, Jimmy shooting towards her. Gem realised what had happened, Jimmy had grabbed Scott's tail and used it to launch himself forward.

Jimmy smiled but Gem quickly passed him again, she swam faster and faster before she reached their imaginary finish line. She only looked back once she had fully crossed it, Scott was already back to being pretty close to her.

While Jimmy was far behind him, trying to keep up.

Scott reached the finish line "that's not fair, Jimmy pulled me back" He said as he tried to catch his breath. "There are no rules in racing, you know that" Gem said, the two of them waited for Jimmy. When Jimmy was about to reach the finish line Scott launched towards him.

Scott tackled Jimmy, pushing him to the bottom of the lake. He held him against the bottom "You made me lose, how dare you" Scott said, he tried to sound angry as he said it but through his laughter and the smile on his face it was clear that he wasn't actually angry.

"Oh please you can't stay mad at me and you know it" Jimmy replied, a smirk on his face. Gem swam towards the two "Now kiss" She said, she couldn't help it.

Scott and Jimmy blushed and Scott let Jimmy go and swam up a little, Gem just laughed "Now can we go seahorse riding?" She asked, giving Jimmy and Scott a change to make things less awkward. Jimmy smiled and swam off "Last one there is death seaweed"

Gem and Scott looked at each other for a second before swimming after Jimmy. They easily swam past him, smiling at him as they did. The three of them arrived at the place with the seahorses and led them towards them.

The seahorses came towards them and Gem, Jimmy and Scott put their arms around their necks and got dragged through the ocean by the seahorses. They rode there for a while until it was time to go, the three swam back home and said their goodbyes.

Gem went back home but was stopped by her brothers.

They were waiting for her by her front door, arms over each other and serious looks on her faces. "Gemini Tay, and where did you come from?" Fwhip asked, using her full name. Gem just rolled her eyes at him, she was about to answer when Sausage said.

"Did you go seahorse riding? You know that you're not allowed to do that" Sausage said, it was true seahorse riding wasn't exactly safe and that Gem's brothers had forbidden her from doing it. But she was her own person who could make her own decisions.

She didn't have to listen to her brothers if she didn't want to, and she definitely didn't want to listen to them about this. Besides that nothing had gone wrong, nothing ever went wrong.

"Why are you asking me if you already know the answer?" Gem asked.

"Why would you go seahorse riding? It's dangerous and you know it. We have told you not to do it" Sausage said, ignoring Gem's question. "It's fun, and Scott and Jimmy did it too. I don't see you two bothering them about it"

"It's dangerous, we can't say anything about Jimmy or Scott, those two aren't our sister. Come on Gem, we're just trying to look out for you" Fwhip answered. Gem knew that they just cared about her, but seahorse riding was not that dangerous.

There was no way that she would tell them that she was meeting up with a human. They would go absolutely crazy.

"Just let me do what I wanna do, what's the worst that can happen?" Gem asked, she was done with Fwhip and Sausage but they were blocking the way into her house.

"You could fall" Sausage replied. "fall into the water? I can swim better than the both of you, I'll be fine" Gem argued. "But-" Fwhip began saying but Gem was done with him. She swam away, swimming as fast as she could.

She didn't really know where to go, until she remembered a place where Sausage and Fwhip would never go. The docks, the place had humans so Sausage and Fwhip wouldn't come there. Gem could just go there, there would be peace and quiet there.

When she got there she saw a human on the little beach, she swam closer making sure to stay hidden. To her surprise the human was Pearl, Pearl had returned. “What are you reading?” Gem asked, making Pearl look up from her book and look at her instead. The two of them soon started a conversation.

It looked like they both had been looking for a place to get away from other people.

They talked for a while, it looked like they could relate on more fronts then Gem had originally thought. Eventually Pearl left, but Gem and her had had a good conversation while she was there. Gem also couldn't help but notice how Pearl was still wearing the flower Gem had given her in her hair.

Gem swam back to her house, Sausage and Fwhip seemed to be gone, she went inside. Fwhip and Sausage hadn't left, they had gone inside instead. Gem couldn't help but smile as she saw them asleep on her couch, they must have fallen asleep while waiting for her.

She knew that Sausage had been exhausted since she saw him that morning so she let them sleep and went to bed herself. It luckily didn't take long before she fell asleep.

Chapter Text

Two weeks had passed since the first time Pearl had met Gem and Pearl could confidently say that they had become friends. Pearl had visited Gem every day, never staying away for long. Every time they had to say goodbye they promised to meet up again the next day.

Whenever she talked to Gem it felt like life was easy, like all her problems just vanished.

Waking up early in the morning to speak with Gem, it was easy. Even though Pearl had never been a morning person. During the two weeks Pearl had gone back to work and was finally starting to understand the cafe a little. Every time she came she got out a little smarter than the last time. Skizz, Tango and Impulse helped her a lot.

Mistakes were still made but it was getting easier. Whenever something went wrong Skizz, Tango and Impulse would reassure her that she would get it eventually and that it wasn't a problem to mess something up every once in a while.

These pep talks that Pearl got from them were usually followed by some embarrassing story of when they themselves messed up. Those stories never failed to bring a smile to Pearl's face.

Joel tried to help too, even though he mostly just advised Pearl about stuff. Besides that he never started a conversation with her. When Pearl told Tango about this he told her that he just needed some time to warm up to her. But Pearl doubted it, she felt like Joel didn’t want anything to do with her.

And she couldn't really blame him for that.

Pearl wouldn’t like someone either if they had almost broken into their cabin the first time they had met. Pearl still didn’t like the cabin, she still wanted to take a look inside. But every time she walked by she just forced herself not to look at the cabin.

Out of sight out of mind.

Or well that is what Pearl hoped and what she kept telling herself. Even though the cabin was now out of her sight, it definitely wasn't out of her mind. It was weird, it looked like a normal cabin and it probably was a normal cabin. The only thing that made Pearl curious about it was Tango's story.

Pearl had grown closer to the other people in the town, she had befriended Mumbo, Grian and Scar. Grian had felt a bit guilty about being the reason that Pearl almost drowned, but Pearl had reassured him that it hadn’t been his fault and that she wasn’t angry at him.

How could she be angry at him? He was the reason she had met Gem.

At the moment Pearl was with Gem again, they were talking about flowers since Gem had a new flower crown on her head. Pearl had asked about it, apparently she had gotten it from one of her friends who was leaving for a little while.

Pearl didn’t understand where they were leaving too, the lake was big but not that big. But she didn’t say anything about it. She had no idea what things were like down there, for all she knew there was a secret tunnel that led to the other side of the world.

Even though Gem and Pearl had grown closer, Gem still wouldn't tell her about the other mers. She sometimes told stories about what they did under water, like sea horse riding. Pearl wished that she could do that once. But Gem didn't trust Pearl enough to tell her about secrets or about too many facts about the underwater world.

Pearl didn't mind, she liked talking with Gem no matter what they talked about.

But she on the other hand told Gem all about the human world. She told her about what things looked like, what the people were like, she told their names to her and she told Gem about all the drama that was going on on land. Even if it was just about Mumbo and Grian getting into another fight at their work, Gem seemed to like those human stories.

“Do you still have the flower that I gave you a few weeks ago?” Gem asked, Pearl did still have the flower. It had already died by now, but she had worn it for multiple days after Gem had given it to her.

“Yeah, but it died days ago” Pearl said, she had been sad about the fact that she couldn’t wear it anymore. But she wasn't about to wear a dead flower, even for her that would be weird.

“Oh just bring it back to me, I’ll fix it” Gem said, she looked genuine. Pearl didn’t know what she meant with that she could fix it but she said “Okay, sure, I’ll bring it next time”

They kept talking for a little while, Pearl was telling Gem another story about how Grian had dropped a whole box full of fish in the cafe during a delivery because he was too busy bickering with Mumbo. But eventually Pearl had to go home again.

The rest of the day Pearl spent working, she was proud to say that nothing went wrong this time.

She went back home and went to bed. The annoying thing about working in a cafe was that they closed really late. Pearl had wanted to visit Gem one more time but she was too tired. And so she just let herself fall asleep.

The next day she woke up and left to go to Gem again, it had become a little routine. She would wake up, visit Gem. And then when people started appearing on the docks she would leave and continue with her day like she wasn't friends with a magical creature.

Pearl remembered to bring the flower and left, she hadn’t had the heart to throw it away yet so it had just been laying on her nightstand. Pearl drove to the docks, her body knowing the way without her mind having to pay attention.

She arrived and walked to the beach area, knowing exactly where to stand to not be caught in a bush of thorns. She sat down and already saw Gem swimming towards her, a smile appeared on her face as she waved, Gem exactly waved back.

The two of them started talking until Gem eventually asked. “Hey, so how did work go yesterday?”

“Great, I didn’t mess up a single order. I really think that I’m starting to get the hang of things” Pearl answered, she was proud of herself. At first she thought that she would never understand the cafe, never understand how people could remember so many orders at once but now she was starting to understand. Gem smiled “Told you so, did you bring the flower by the way?”

“I did, but I don’t really understand why you wanted me to bring it with me. It's dead” Pearl said, holding the flower out in the palm of her hands. Gem swam closer to the beach and took it out of Pearl's outstretched hand. “It’s my ability” Gem said, she took the flower and covered it with her hands.

A light came from Gem's hands "What are-" Pearl started but then something happened and Pearl couldn’t believe her eyes. When Gem opened her hands again the flower looked like it had just come out of the ground. Gem handed it back to Pearl with a smile.

Pearl took it, speechless.

The flower was back to the way it was when Pearl had first gotten it. No longer was it a brown crumpled up flower.“I- You, how did you just do that?” Pearl asked, shocked. “It’s my ability” Gem said, like that explained anything. “What do you mean ability?” Pear asked, looking back at Gem.

“Do humans not have abilities?” Gem asked, confused. Pearl just shook her head as she looked back at the flower in her hand. “Oh mer’s get an ability when they grow up, you never know when it’s gonna show up. One day you just wake up and you’re able to do something magical”

“All mer’s can do that?” Pearl asked, still shocked.

“No, we all have different abilities. Or well most of us do, I can make plants grow and bring them back to live when they die. But I also have a friend who can freeze things and I have a friend who can speak with sea creatures” Gem explained.

“That sounds amazing” Pearl exclaimed, she wished that she had some kind of magical ability.

“It’s pretty cool, I just wish that I had a cooler power. Like talking to other sea creatures sounds so much cooler than just being able to make decorations” Gem said, her hand going up to one of the flowers in Gem's hair. Now it made sense how she always had those same flowers in her hair.

They would never die.

“It’s better than what I can do, which is nothing” Pearl said, she only wanted to be a mer more now. She wanted to have a cool ability, she wanted to swim around with Gem all day under water and explore the sea world. “I wish I was a mer”

“Well I wish that I was a human, I wish that I could explore the lands of the humans. It looks so much cooler than under water” Gem replied.

The two of them talked for a little bit, trying to convince the other why their worlds were more boring. "Your world has better food" "You don't have to work in your world" "You don't have to stay hidden" "You have magic" Unfortunately they had to stop when people started appearing again, the mornings with Gem were always short. Pearl wished she could stay longer, but she couldn’t risk Gem getting seen.

Another reason that Pearl wanted to be a mer, so that she could talk with Gem the whole day. So that they weren't limited to the times that the beach was empty. The two of them said goodbye and left, both going back to their own worlds.

She drove back home and watched some tv while eating breakfast. Today was Pearl’s day off and she was going to use it to relax. But of course it didn’t take long before Pearl’s quiet morning was disturbed by a knock on the door.

Pearl stood up and opened the door, Skizz and Tango were in front of her door. “Hey Pearliepop! It’s dippledops birthday so we’re celebrating tonight at six in the cafe, Wanna come?” Skizz asked, boxes with all kinds of decorations in his arms.

So that’s a no for a relaxing day “Of course I wanna come, but I don’t know what I could get him” Pearl said, she had only known Impulse for three weeks she didn’t know what he wanted for his birthday.

“You don’t have to bring anything, Impulse doesn’t want any gifts. We asked him what he wanted and he said that he just wanted to be with his friends” Tango replied, acting like it was the craziest thing ever to not want gifts (he was right) “That is such a dad answer” Pearl responded with a chuckle.

“Yeah, but it’s an easy gift to get. Just make sure that you show up, okay?” Tango asked. Pearl smiled “I’ll be there” she assured the men.

“Good, we’ll see you there. You better not be late, that’s Grian’s thing” Skizz said with a smirk on his face "And we really don't need another Grian" he added. “Oh I remember” Pearl said, she thought back to the time she had planned to meet with him. He had arrived twenty minutes late.

Pearl hadn't minded it too much, she didn't have anything else to do that day. But a warning would have been late. When Grian had eventually arrived he had told her that everyone always tells him to show up at least half an hour before they actually wanted to meet up. Pearl decided that she would be doing that as well from now on.

Skizz and Tango left and Pearl went back to her soft couch.

She had been waking up early and going to bed late the past few weeks and it was catching up to her. With the sound of her tv in the background Pearl fell asleep.

Pearl woke up hours later, she took a shower to wake herself up and got ready for the party. It was still early but she didn’t really have anything else to do, it was weird.

The past two weeks there had always been something for her to do, but right now she didn’t have anything that needed to be done. Everything that needed to be done, was done.

Pearl just ended up watching tv until it was time to go. Time passed quickly and soon it was time to leave. Pearl left her house and walked towards the cafe. She walked inside and saw a lot of people that she didn't know inside.

The cafe was beautifully decorated with balloons, flags and a banner that said "Happy birthday Impulse". Tango and Skizz had done a great job decorating.

Pearl noticed none other than the birthday boy himself, Impulse, walking towards her “Pearl! I’m so glad that you could make it” He said as he wrapped his arms around her. Pearl hugged him back “Hello! Happy birthday” she said with a smile on her face.

“Thank you” Impulse said, they chatted for a little bit until Impulse walked away to greet some other guests. Leaving Pearl alone to wander around, she walked around the room, searching for someone she knew. In a corner Pearl saw Skizz and Tango talking to Joel and a pink haired lady.

Pearl walked up to them, she knew three of them so it would be fine.

“Pearl, are you enjoying yourself?” Tango asked as he saw her approach. “Yeah it’s a great party” She said, she wasn’t really enjoying herself. She had spent most of the time that she was there searching for people she knew.

Not that she was going to tell him that of course.

“You’ve met Joel already, this is his wife Lizzie” Tango said, so the pink haired lady was Joel’s wife that Pearl had heard so much about. “Hello, I’m Pearl” Pearl said as she extended her hand for Lizzie to shake. Lizzie smiled and shook her hand.

“I heard that you work here now, I hope that Joel isn’t giving you too much trouble” Lizzie said, nuching her husband a bit “No, he’s being really helpful” Pearl answered, it wasn’t a lie. Joel had helped her a few times while they were working.

Lizzie looked at Joel “What I am being helpful, she said it herself” Joel protested. “Sure sure, I didn’t say anything” Lizzie responded with a smile. “Well I will have you know, I’m a delight” Joel said, making Pearl laugh.

She didn’t mean to laugh, it just slipped out.

Tango, Skizz, Lizzie and Joel were all looking at her before they burst out in laughter. All of them except Joel “When was I not a delight?” He asked, his arms crossed over each other.

“When I bumped into that one table and spilled all the food over myself and you just laughed” Pearl answered. Right now she could laugh about it too, but that day had been awful and she had not appreciated the laughter. “You have to admit that it was funny” Joel answered with laugh as if he was imagining the incident.

“You dropped a plate of food over yourself?” Lizzie asked, still laughing.

“Maybe, it was my first week okay” Pearl defended herself. She still couldn’t believe that she had done it herself, it had been such a stupid action. But that wasn’t the worst part about it, the guests around her had tried to help her.

While Joel had just stood there and laughed at her.

Impulse had scolded him afterwards, after he was done laughing at her too at least. Joel had to do all the cleaning alone that night while Pearl could go home and change clothes. Impulse luckily hadn’t been angry at her.

Pearl kept talking with Skizz, Tango, Joel and Lizzie for the rest of the night. She actually ended up having a pretty great night. When the party was over she walked back home with Skizz, Tango, Lizzie and Joel.

Lizzie and Joel’s house was the closest to the cafe, this meant that Pearl walked home with Skizz and Tango for the most part. They chatted until they got home, they said their goodbyes and walked inside.

Pearl changed out of her normal clothes and put her pajamas on before going to bed. She had been asleep for most of the day, but she was somehow tired again. Her head hit the pillow and she fell asleep.

Chapter Text

Gem woke up and swam into her living room, she saw her two brothers still there from when they visited her the day before. The three of them had had a little game night, they used to have them all the time when they were little and they never stopped.

Sometimes there was no game night for a little while because her brothers were busy people. But every once in a while they would see each other around and the topic would come up again. That conversation usually led up to pricking a date to have that game night.

Every time when Fwhip and Sausage would go home they would say "We should do this again soon" and then they would wait another few months before doing it again. But every single time that they did have time for it it would feel like they were little kids again.

After the games Fwhip and Sausage had decided to stay over, Gem had been fine with it. When Gem walked out of her bedroom she saw that the two of them were making breakfast, or well Fwhip was making breakfast. Sausage was sitting on a counter in the kitchen talking about something to Fhwip.

In the past few weeks they had been getting more and more suspicious of Gem's behaviour. Gem had left her house every morning to go visit Pearl, it didn't go unnoticed by her brothers. But Gem and Pearl had grown a lot closer and Gem couldn't tell her brothers about her.

In the last few weeks they had even become friends, it was weird and it was never something Gem thought would happen. A mer and a human, friends. She had never heard of that happening and yet, here she was being friends with one.

Her brothers had been asking about her disappearances a lot, Gem had just made up excuses every time they asked. She soon ran out of excuses though, forced to keep repeating some. This also didn't go unnoticed by Fwhip and Sausage, it only worried them more. But there was no way that Gem could tell them about Pearl.

The two of them were overreacting anyway. They kept treating her as if she were child, Gem knew that they were just worried but it was still annoying.

"I'm sorry if we're being annoying, but we just want you to be safe. I hope you know that" Sausage said as if he had been reading her mind. Gem let out a sigh, he could be sweet from time to time but that didn;t mean that he and Fwhip weren't overdoing the overprotective brother act.

"I know, but you can dim it down a little. I'm not a child and you can't treat me as if I am" Gem said, hoping that her brothers would finally listen to her and see reason. "We know that you're not a child, but that doesn't mean that you don't need protection" Sausage said.

That stupid excuse again, she didn't need protection from anything. She could look out for herself. And besides that there wasn't anything in the lake that could really harm Gem. What was the worst that could happen? She was stronger than almost every sea creature that lived there.

The most dangerous thing for mers were the humans and Gem wasn't doing a very good job at avoiding those. She was avoiding the dangerous ones at least. But Fwhip and Sausage couldn't know about that anyway.

"Yeah but I don't need protection from things like sea horse riding" Gem said, she knew that Sausage and Fwhip wouldn't stop worrying about her, it was their job to worry, they liked to say. But Gem needed them to let her live a little. She really needed her freedom.

"Fine, we'll try to dim it down a little. But just know that we'll always be there if you need us" Fwhip said from the kitchen. Gem looked at Sausage "Fine, fine, we'll try to dim it down a little"

The three of them started talking about something else until breakfast was served, fish,as always. "Gem, are you going to Lizzie's today?" Fwhip asked while they were eating. "Yeah, I will" Gem answered, cleaning some of the bones from the fishes away.

"Tell her that I wish her a good trip" Fwhip said, Gem nodded "I will" she replied. "Where is she going?" Sausage asked, he didn't know Lizzie that well so he didn't know that much about her. "She's going exploring again, but she won't tell us any details. She doesn't even know how long she'll be gone this time" Gem explained.

Lizzie was one of Gem's friends, Lizzie liked exploring things. She would often go away exploring, she would often stay away for a pretty long time. Everytime she came back she had the most insane stories, and sometimes she brought some amazing gifts.

But she never told anyone where she was going, or well nobody except for her family. They knew, Gem had asked them about where Lizzie was going but they had never answered Gem. Gem had also asked Lizzie if she could with her, but her brothers had shut that thought off before Lizzie had even been able to answer.

"Sounds exciting, tell her that I wish her a good trip too" Sausage replied, he always told Gem that they had everything they needed where they were. There was no reason to go into the dangerous unknown, he'd say. But they just didn't understand it.

Gem didn't understand how they didn't want to go out exploring.

"You could always come with me to say goodbye to her, Jimmy, Scott, Katherine and some others will also be there too" Gem said, Sausage didn't know Lizzie that well but he still kinda knew her. Maybe if he got to know her better she could reassure him that everything was fine while she went exploring and that there were no dangers.

"Nah, I have some stuff to do" Sausage said, he finished his fish and left, apparently not having realized how long it had been. "See you soon" Sausage said before closing the door behind him. "Fwhip?" Gem asked, hoping that he would come with her. "Sorry, I'm busy too" Fwhip said.

Gem and Fwhip talked for a little bit until Gem had to leave to go to Lizzie's. When she arrived at Lizzie's she was giving a flower crown that Lizzie had made. Lizzie loved making flower crowns, it was how Lizzie and Gem had met.

Lizzie had been making a flower crown, she told Gem about how all the flowers on her last flower crown had died. Gem had asked to see the flower crown, Lizzie had shown it to her and Gem had brought the flowers back to live.

She had made new flowers grow for Lizzie in their next few years as friends. They made a pretty good team. Lizzie had never gotten her mer ability, she had always been a bit jealous of Gem's powers. But Gem was always happy to help Lizzie make a flower crown.

It was weird for a mer to not have a mer ability, but apparently it was possible. Gem had never met another mer that didn't have an ability, nor had she ever heard about someone without one. It was weird, and Gem felt some pity for her but it wasn't much that she could do about it.

Gem had stayed with Lizzie for a little bit and waved as she swam away, going on another adventure. Gem was jealous of her because of that, she would love to go on adventures every few days. Gem swam to the docks after that, hoping to see Pearl there.

Pearl was there, sitting on the little beach. Gem smiled and swam closer to her, revealing herself. "Hello Pearl" Gem said, greeting Pearl. She saw a smile appear on Pearl's face too "Gem! Hi, how are you today?" Pearl asked.

"Good, my brothers stayed over at my place last night. They're gonna try to not be so worried about me the whole time" Gem said before asking "How are you?"

"I'm fine. Nice that your brothers are seeing that they are being annoying" Pearl said, the two of them talked a bit about the stupid things that Gem's brothers had done. But after a while Pearl said "I like your flower crown, did you make it yourself?"

"Thank you, one of my friends made it. She is going away for a little while, she made one for all of her friends. She loved making flower crowns, if she gives you a flower crown it means that you're her friend" Gem explained, showing the flower crown off.

"Do mers make a lot of flower crowns?" Pearl asked.

The two of them had asked all the questions that they could think of already, but every once in a while they got a new question. They learned something new about the species of the other every single day.

"We do, some more than others though. Do humans not make flower crowns?" Gem asked, a world without flower crowns sounded very sad to her. "We do, or well most humans do when they are children. But we stop once we become older" Pearl explained, a sad look on her face.

“Do you still have the flower that I gave you a few weeks ago?” Gem asked, she noticed that Pearl wasn't wearing it anymore. Pearl had worn it for a week straight after Gem had given it to her. Maybe Pearl lost it, maybe a new flower would cheer her up.

“Yeah, but it died days ago” Pearl said. Gem could fix that “Oh just bring it back to me, I’ll fix it” Gem said with a smile on her face. Pearl looked at her with a look of confusion but said “Okay, I’ll bring it next time”

The two of them talked for a little while afterwards but eventually Pearl had to leave. Gem went back home and hung out with Scott for the rest of the day, the two were making up theories about where Lizzie would go when she went on her adventures.

When it turned evening Gem swam to the little beach, she sat there for a while hoping that Pearl would show up. She had gone to the little beach pretty often the last few weeks, most times she would just hope that Pearl would come.

Pearl rarely came to visit Gem in the evenings, but the waiting was worth it when she did show up.

This evening Pearl didn't show up, Gem went back home and went to bed. The next morning she went back to the little beach, she saw Pearl walking towards her and started swimming faster. Pearl waved so Gem waved back as she swam.

They talked for a little while until the subject of the flower came up, Pearl handed the flower that Gem had given her back to Gem. Gem made it come to live again using her powers, Pearl looked stunned. Apparently humans didn't have abilities like mers did.

Gem explained to Pearl that every mer had an ability and that her own ability was growing flowers and bringing flowers back to live. Pearl seemed to think that it was really cool, Gem didn't really see it that way.

Sure her power was cool, but Scott could literally freeze water and Jimmy could talk to sea creatures. Their powers were way cooler than Gem's power. Gem's power was useless, mostly while they were underwater.

Pearl left after a while, people started showing up once again. Gem hated it when Pearl had to leave, she hated it when other people would show up to the docks. She knew that she couldn't stop them from coming and she knew that it wasn't safe to show herself to them.

But sometimes she just wished that it was safe for her, that she could talk with Pearl during the day. Gem swam back home and started looking for something to do, Pearl had told Gem that she had a job. Pearl had to do work to make money with which she would buy stuff like food.

It sounded ridiculous to Gem, but she was just bored most days.

She ended up hanging out with Jimmy for a while, he was making sure that the sea turtles were taking care of. Gem started helping him, Jimmy had always been good with animals. When his ability appeared he only got closer to the animals.

He loved taking care of them and Gem loved cuddling with them. Sometimes Jimmy let Gem name a sea creature, Gem had named one of the turtles after Pearl. She didn't know why she did it, but when no one was around she would refer to the sea turtle as underwater Pearl.

Gem had an above water Pearl and an underwater Pearl, she absolutely loved both.

Gem mostly stayed with Jimmy the rest of the day, she also hung out with underwater Pearl for a little bit. "Hey, why did you call her Pearl?" Jimmy asked after a while, Gem froze for a few seconds.

"I- uhm- It was just a name that came up in me" Gem answered, it was a lie but she wasn't about to tell Jimmy that she had named the sea turtle after a human friend of hers. "Why did you name one of your sea turtle snowflake?" Gem asked him in return, knowing that the answer was because of Scott.

"Look at him, he looks like a snowflake" Jimmy said, pointing at the sea turtle. Gem looked at it "It looks like a sea turtle, it's green and brown. It doesn't look like a snowflake in any way" Gem said, looking at Jimmy with a smirk on her face.

"Yeah well, the name just fits okay? Your turtle doesn't look like a Pearl either does it now? It's not round or shiny" Jimmy asked, his response made Gem laugh a little. It was so obvious that he was in love with Scott that it was becoming painful.

"Pearl is still a better name for a turtle than snowflake is" Gem argued.

"That is your opinion" Jimmy said as he crossed his arms and looked away from Gem. The action only made Gem laugh louder. Later the two of them went hunting for their dinner together, when they had eaten they had gone back home since it was already getting dark.

The lake wasn't a good place to be when it was completely dark. In the place where Gem lived there at least were some sea lanterns that would light up the place. But outside of that, it would be next to impossible to see anything, especially if you were as deep underwater as they were.

If you would swim up a little the moon would light up the place. It was a light source that Gem had been using a lot ever since she was meeting up with Pearl.

Gem had asked every mer that they came across if Pearl was a better name for a sea turtle then Snowflake. Most people agreed with her, Pearl was the better name. Gem celebrated while Jimmy tried to come up with an excuse for why he had named the sea turtle snowflake.

"It's just a cute name, okay?" he asked, Gem smiled "Yeah, it is" It is a very cute pet name for Scott. Gem would love to see Scott's reaction to hearing the name for the first time. She and Jimmy said goodbye after a while and Gem went home and to bed.

She stayed awake a little while, thinking about Pearl.

Human Pearl, not sea turtle Pearl. Why had she named the turtle Pearl, it had probably just been because she had that name in mind. She was thinking about Pearl a lot lately, she actually could barely stop thinking about Pearl most of the time.

It was weird, but not bad.

Chapter Text

The next day Pearl woke up early again, just like she did every day. It was like her brain was telling her body "This is a perfect time to wake up so that we can go see Gem" and that her body actually listened to her brain. It seemed like Pearl woke up at the perfect time every single day.

After getting ready she got into her car and drove to the little beach where Gem would hopefully be waiting for her. Arriving Pearl looked around the beach and soon Gem appeared from out of the water. The two of them talked for about an hour about sea turtles until people started arriving again. They said goodbye and Pearl went back home. She had to hurry a little as she had to work in the morning.

She got home, made breakfast and ate it while she walked to the cafe.

When she got there she got to work immediately, by now she knew what to do. No mistakes were made and for a few seconds Pear actually believed that she was getting better. After a little while Joel and Lizzie came in with Grian and Tango. The four of them took a seat and called Pearl over “Waiter, we would like to order” Joel said with a smirk on his face.

“What would you like?” Pearl asked, doing her job and ignoring Joel’s smirk. “What do you have?” Joel asked. “Joel you know what we have, you work here” Pearl responded, she knew for a fact that Joel knew every single dish on the menu. The man had bragged about only about a thousand times.

Joel put a hand over his heart and gasped, acting dramatic “I am a customer, when a customer asks you what is on the menu, you tell them what’s on the menu. Don’t make me ask for the manager” Joel said, Lizzie, Grian and Tango started giggling.

“We would just like some burgers with fries, please” Lizzie said, luckily getting Pearl out of her misery. Pearl smiled at her “It will be right up” she said, she walked to the kitchen and told Impulse the order. After that she walked to the front again and continued working.

Luckily it was a calm day, only a few tables were filled. Impulse had somehow predicted this, it seemed like the man always knew how many people they were going to need that day. Pearl was getting orders that day and bringing the orders around.

After a while the food for Joel, Lizzie, Tango and Grian was done and Pearl served it to them. “You took your sweet time” Tango fake complained, a look of annoyance on his face but a smile shining through. “Keep complaining and I’ll actually take my time” Pearl replied, a smirk on her face.

She placed the food on the table and asked “Anything else gentle- men and women?”

“Yes, our water is up. Could we get some fresh, new, cold water?” Grian asked. “I will make sure that it is the freshest, newest, coldest water there is” Pearl replied, taking the watercan from the table "And add some ice cubes so that the water stays cold" Grian said, sounding as if he would die without the ice cubes.

“Good and hurry up a little” Tango said, clapping in his hands "Chop, chop"

Pearl laughed and walked back into the kitchen with their empty watering can. She filled it with water and some ice cubes as requested. It now definitely was the freshed, newest, coldest water that the restaurant had to offer at least. She returned to the front and brought the water to their table.

As she walked up to their table she heard that Grian was telling them a story. Or well that is what Pearl thought what was happening, Grian was moving his arms around like crazy. Pearl couldn’t really hear what Grian was talking about but it looked interesting.

Pearl walked closer, catching a few words from his story "And I swear that I saw a human head AND tale" he said, it sounded like he was telling the mer story again. He had been telling that story to a lot of people, it had worried Pearl a little at the beginning. But once it was clear that nobody believed him she relaxed a little.

Pearl kneeled a little and was about to place the water can down but Grian made a sudden movement towards her with his arms, hitting her in the process. Pearl lost her grip on the water can and it fell, splashing water all over Lizzie who had been sitting next to Grian.

She had hoped that nothing bad would happen today, that she wouldn't mess up. But she did, of course she did. But this time instead of spilling food all over herself, she had spilled water all over a customer. That was so much worse.

“Oh my god, I am so sorry” Pearl said, noticing what had happened. She felt awful, she had already made a bad first impression on Joel by trying to break into his cabin. And now she had spilled water all over his wife.

And Lizzie, Pearl had only met her the day before. She had wanted to make a good first impression on Lizzie after what had happened with Joel, she thought that she did a good job. But now this happened, probably ruining all her chances of befriending either one of them.

Lizzie looked over at Joel and quickly stood up, she then ran to the restroom. Joel started to follow her, making Grian, Tango and Pearl also follow her. Joel stopped following her, the rest stopping behind him as they had been following him “She uhm isn’t wearing water proof make up I guess” Joel said, turning back around.

“We can just go ahead and eat while we wait for her to come out” Joel said as he sat back down at their table. “Are you sure that she’s okay? She looked genuinely panicked” Grian asked, sending glances towards the bathroom.

“Yeah, yeah it was just water after all. Speaking about water, Pearl out water can is empty again” Joel continued, eyeing the watercan that was on the floor. Pearl rolled her eyes and picked the water can up from the floor, she was glad that it hadn’t broken.

“I’ll get you some new water” Pearl said, she walked away and filled the can again. Bringing some towels with her to clean the wet floor. She walked back to their table and set the can down, carefully this time. Then she got on her knees and started drying the floor.

To her surprise Tango kneeled down next to her and started helping her. “Tango, you don’t have to help, you’re a customer,” Pearl said. She didn’t want him to clean up after her mistake, not even if he had been working.

“I’m not letting you clean this place alone, it wasn’t your fault that the can fell” Tango said, a smile on his face. When they were done and the floor and chair and table was clean again Pearl got back up and brought the now wet towels away. She walked past the restroom on her way to the trashcan.

As she passed she looked at the door before she looked back at the table. Lizzie should have returned by now right? But when Pearl looked back at the table she just saw the three men there, meaning that Lizzie was still in there. Guilt hit Pearl again, she threw the towels away and decided to check up on Lizzie.

Pearl walked to the restroom and tried to open it, but the door wouldn’t budge.

“Lizzie, are you okay?” Pearl asked through the closed door.

“Uh yeah, I’m fine. Just give me a minute” Lizzie responded, sounding stressed. Had Pearl ruined something? She really hoped not “Are you sure? Do I need to get you something?” Pearl asked, trying to find a way, any way to help. “N-no I’m good” Lizzie answered, but it didn’t sound like she was good.

“Are you coming out soon Lizzie?” Grian, who was now standing next to Pearl, asked. Pearl didn’t know when he had appeared at her side, but he was there now. “Yup, just give me a minute”

“What’s wrong?” Grian asked.

“Nothing, just my makeup got ruined a bit. I’m just trying to fix it” Lizzie replied. “Just come out, it doesn’t matter that your makeup is ruined. Just come eat your burger before it gets cold” Grian said, getting a bit impatient. Pearl didn't really know what to think about it, she wanted to help Lizzie but she didn't want to annoy her.

“Nope, I really need to fix this” Lizzie said.

“Come on” Grian said, he was about to turn the handle to the restroom but Pearl stopped him “I’ll check on her” Pearl said, she expected Grian to walk back to the table but he didn’t. “Okay, go in there then” he said, crossing his arms over each other.

“fine” Pearl said, she turned the handle and opened the door. In all honesty she had expected the door to not open just like it had done before. But the door opened without a problem, allowing Pearl to walk in. she had to cover her mouth to keep herself from gasping at what she saw inside. Lizzie was laying on the floor, but her legs were gone instead there was a long mer tail.

Her tail was some different shades of blue with some white mixed into it. It was beautiful and it made Pearl pause for a second as she took in the sight. Lizzie had pointed ears, sharp teeth and webbed hands.

Lizzie was a mer.

“You- uhm- She’s fine Grian, but she’s definitely gonna need some new mascara. Could you get some from my purse in the employees only room?” Pearl asked, trying to get Grian away. “Uhm sure” Grian answered, a few seconds later when Pearl was sure that he was gone she started talking again.

“What? How are you human but you’re not human” Pearl asked, not really knowing what to say. Lizzie had had legs, she had been a human. But looking at her now Pearl knew that Lizzie was in fact not a human. “I turn into a mer when I get wet, just help me, please. I’ll explain later”

Pearl got some towels and helped Lizzie get dry “Is this your mer ability?” Pearl asked, Gem had told her about how mers had abilities. Gem was able to make flowers grow and she was able to bring them back from the dead. Could turning into a human be a mer ability too?

Gem hadn't told her much about mer abilities, Pearl had no idea what the limits were for those powers. Someone could freeze things, someone could talk to sea creatures. Were there any limits to the abilities?

“How do you know about that?” Lizzie asked, stopping what she was doing to look over at Pearl.

“I- I have a friend who’s a mer, she told me about it. I won’t tell anyone, I promise” Pearl said, she couldn't believe this. “Who knows about you being a mer?” Pearl asked, it didn’t look like Grian knew since Lizzie wanted him gone.

Joel probably knew, he had made everyone sit back down when they had wanted to follow Lizzie. Did Tango know? Or Skizz? Pearl didn’t know who else Lizzie really hung out with. Were there other mers that could turn into humans? Were there others in this town?

“Only Joel knows, hurry Grian will be back soon” Lizzie said, she was clearly panicked. Pearl understood why she was panicked but she had had a plan “No he won’t, I didn’t bring a purse. He’s gonna be looking for that thing for a while” Pearl replied, she was trying to think about everything else she knew about mers.

Pearl eyes fell onto Lizzie’s gills, and a horrifying thought came to her. Could Lizzie even breathe here? Pearl remembered asking Gem if she could breathe out of the water. Gem had told her that mer’s could breath out of the water for a bit, but they would have to return to the water eventually.

But she had never said how long a little bit actually was. Could i t be minutes? Could Lizzie be running out of time? There was no place here that Lizzie would be able to breathe in, there were no big containers of water.

“Can you breathe on land, Lizzie?” Pearl asked, starting to panic. How long could Lizzie stay on the land in her mer form before she ran out of oxygen?

“I don’t know, a little while. But we’re good as long as I can turn back into a human” Lizzie said. After a while of aggressively rubbing the towel over her she dried up and her tail turned back into legs, her ears turning round and her hands turned back into human hands.

Lizzie stood up and looked into the mirror before turning to Pearl “Please don’t tell anyone about this, I’ll explain later. But if you are friends with a mer like you say you are, you have to know how dangerous it is for a mer to be discovered by a human” Lizzie said.

“Of course, I promise you I won’t tell anyone” Pearl said, Lizzie looked into her eyes for a couple of seconds before nodding and leaving. Pearl went out too and continued working, trying to not think about what had just happened. Trying to not look at Lizzie the whole time.

“Lizzie you’re back, sorry I couldn’t find Pearl’s bag” Pearl heard Grian say as he sat back down at the table. “That’s okay, as you can see I managed to fix my makeup” Lizzie responded, a smile on her face as she spoke. Acting like nothing had happened.

“Girls and their makeup” Joel said while rolling his eyes.

“And yet you spend more time than me getting ready in the morning” Lizzie responded, taking a bite from her burger. Pearl walked around the cafe, away from their table, so she didn’t hear any more of their conversation.

The group left when they were done eating, they left. Lizzie looked at Pearl one more time before walking through the door, Pearl gave her a reassuring smile. She wouldn’t tell anyone Lizzie’s secret.

The next of the day seemed to move slower than ever. Pearl only had to work for a few more hours but those hours felt like forever. Every minute she would look at the clock until she was finally done, she left almost immediately and walked to Joel and Lizzie’s house. Lizzie told her that she would explain, Pearl couldn’t wait for an explanation.

Pearl knew thanks to Gem that it was rare for a mer to interact with a human. Gem didn’t know anything about humans, meanwhile Lizzie was here as a mer living among the humans and even being married to a human.

She knocked on the door, hoping that Lizzie would be the one to answer the door. Pearl was lucky, Lizzie did answer the door, she smiled at Pearl but Pearl could see that she was nervous. Lizzie didn’t say anything and just motioned for Pearl to follow her.

Pearl followed Lizzie, Lizzie walked outside, towards the cabin.

Pearl had been wanting to take a look inside the cabin ever since she had seen it. Was today finally the day that Pearl would get to see the inside of it? What would even be inside of it? Lizzie stayed silent as they walked, giving Pearl enough time to think about what could possibly be inside the cabin.

Maybe Lizzie didn’t trust Pearl to keep her secret, maybe she was about to murder her. Pearl didn’t know Lizzie, but Lizzie didn’t really look like someone who would murder her.

It might have been a stupid thought, but it was a possibility. Pearl didn’t really know Lizzie after all. What else could be in the cabin? Maybe it just had all of Lizzie’s mer stuff, maybe Lizzie just needed her stuff to explain things.

Maybe there was another mer inside, maybe that mer would explain everything to Pearl instead.

All those thoughts and more went through her head as she Lizzie reached for the handle of the door.

Chapter Text

Gem woke up early and immediately went to the little beach, like she did almost every single day. When she arrived Pearl wasn't there yet, Gem dove into the water a little and kept her eyes on the surface. waiting for Pearl.

Pearl showed up after a little while and Gem quickly swam up, showing herself. "Hi, good morning" Gem said happily. A yawn left Pearl before she answered "Good morning Gem"

"You tired?" Gem asked, she knew that it was still early but Pearl had never really looked tired. They had been meeting up almost every single day since they had met, maybe she slept bad "Yeah, my friend, the one that owns the cafe, Impulse. It was his birthday yesterday so we had a party, I got home pretty late" Pearl said.

"What are human party's like?" Gem asked curiously.

They had parties underwater but humans and mers had so many differences it wouldn't surprise Gem if their party's were different too. She tried to imagine what human parties were like, what they would do during them.

"Oh well we just meet up in some place and there's music and some food and drinks. I don't really know how to explain it, what are mer parties like?" Pearl asked in return. "Well we usually have our parties outside of our houses and we just chat, dance or play games" Gem explained.

"Sounds a lot like a human party" Pearl said.

Well that was a bit disappointing, Gem had imaged human parties to be different, for them to be cooler. "Was it a fun party?" Gem asked, Pearl had told her a lot about her new friends. Gem was curious about everything human, could you really blame her though?

"I did, I didn't think I would have fun but I saw Skizz and Tango talking with Joel and his wife. Joel introduced me to his wife by the way, she's very nice. I just talked with them for the rest of the night, we then walked home together" Pearl said, a smile on her face.

Seeing Pearl smile made Gem smile too "I'm glad, so is Joel finally warming up to you?" Gem asked, Pearl had told her about her coworker Joel. Joel wasn't the nicest to Pearl, Gem wanted to drag him into the ocean for a little bit.

She didn't want to drown him or anything, she just wanted to make him panic a little.

Could you blame her? She didn't like that the man was being mean to her friend. Of course there was no way to actually reach him, but if the man would ever come close to the water she would make sure to throw a pufferfish his way.

"Not really, but he's alright. I can handle him" Pearl said, a reassuring smile on her face. "Hmm, if he's ever getting too annoying just drag him over here. I'll take care of him for you" Gem said, a smile on her face as she imagined all the things that she could do. Harmless things, of course. Pearl laughed at her response "Thank you, but I can handle him for now"

The two of them talked for a little bit after that, mostly making fun of Joel. But just like every single day Pearl had to leave a little bit later. This time it wasn't because of other people arriving though, it was because she had to get to work.

Gem swam back down and swam into her house. She started cleaning a bit, deciding to be productive today. She had been cleaning for a while until she got hungry and hunted for some fish. She quickly found one and ate it, swimming on her back while looking up at the sky.

She was laying on the bottom of the lake, looking up. She saw clouds above her and imagined them as things, it was hard to actually see them since the water made them look blurry. But that only made the game more fun.

Gem had played games like that since she was young, nobody really understood it. They would look at her as she lay there with confused looks. Whenever she tried to explain what she was doing their expressions only became more confused.

They would nod with fake smiles and swim away, but that never bothered Gem. There weren't that many things to do underwater for Gem, cloud watching was just fun for her. Others would call it a waste of time or weird, but it was entertaining and calming.

It was also one of the only things that Gem had been allowed to do when she was younger. While her friends would do fun things like sea horse riding or chase other fish, she would be stuck with her brothers. Laying on the bottom of the lake looking up apparently was one of the only things that wasn't dangerous.

As the years went by Gem was allowed to do more and more. As she got older she also just stopped listening to her brothers, she started making her own decisions.

Even now that Gem did more dangerous things it was nice to go cloud watching every once in a while. It was peaceful to just lay there and ignore everything around her. It was nice to not think about anything but the shapes of the clouds.

It didn't take long before Gem's eyes started closing, she had been tired the past few days. Going early to Pearl was really taking a toll on her sleeping schedule. That in combination with going to bed late, it made Gem really tired.

Which is why Gem let herself fall asleep.

The next time she woke up she was still staring up at the sky. The clouds were gone now though, instead there were a million little stars in the sky. Gem lay there staring at the stars for a little bit while fully waking up wondering how long she had been asleep for.

When she was ready to move again she swam back to her house, but she didn't get in. Instead she turned around and went to the little beach, checking if Pearl might be there. Gem swam there and looked around, making sure that there was nobody else around before swimming closer to the little beach.

Pearl unfortunately wasn't there, Gem was all alone.

She sat on the sand for a little while, most of her body was still under water but her top wasn't. The cold evening air moved through her hair, it was nice. Gem just sat there, lost in her thoughts until she felt a tug at her hand. She was pulled fully back into the water. She started struggling against the hands pulling her down, but it was no use. She was pulled fully underwater, away from the little beach.

Struggling hard and while fighting Gem was dragged down. She stopped though when she looked at the two who had taken her.

"What is wrong with you two?" She asked, angrily. She was now face to face with her two brothers Sausage and Fwhip. Her two brothers who had basically just kidnapped Gem from the land "What is wrong with us? What is wrong with you you mean, what were you doing up there? Do you want to get seen by a human?" Fwhip asked furiously.

"There was nobody there, I checked" Gem said, defending herself.

"Somebody could have shown up, they could have seen you. Gem, what were you thinking?" Sausage asked, sounding just as angry as Fwhip. But Gem was even angrier as a realization hit her "How did you two even know that I was here? You wouldn't come here if it's as dangerous as you say it is. Did you two follow me?"

"We did, you have been disappearing a lot and we needed to know where you were going. We knew that it was an invasion of your privacy but I'm now glad that we did it. We thought that you were doing something stupid and we were right" Sausage said, clearly not caring about the fact that they had invaded her privacy.

He just said himself that he knew that it was an invasion of privacy, but he didn't care.

"You could have asked me" Gem said, frustrated. They had followed her to the one place where she could be alone. The one place where she could talk with Pearl.

"We did, you said that you were just exploring. You didn't say that you were going this close to the humans, it's dangerous Gem. How do you not see that?" Fwhip demanded.

"It's only dangerous if I get seen, I'm fine as long as I stay underwater. And besides that, nobody was there. There was no one who could have seen me. You can check for yourself if you don't believe me" Gem argued, pointing up at the surface.

Of course she wasn't stupid, of course she realized how dangerous she was being. But there really hadn't been any humans around, she was fine. And she was hidden from view from anyone who wasn't standing on the little beach. She would be able to see anyone coming towards her but they wouldn't be able to see her.

If anyone would come to her she would just go underwater, there was no human that could swim faster than a mer. She could easily stay away from them as long as she stayed in the water. She had thought this through, why didn't her brothers realize that.

"Someone could show up, that's the thing about humans they can move" Sausage said "I know, but I can swim away faster then they can see me" Gem argued. "What if you don't get away fast enough?" Fwhip asked, anger still clear in his voice as he tried to reason with Gem.

"It's late at night, it's dark, nobody is going to believe that they saw a mer. I would be gone before they could even blink. But if they did see me I could just swim away, there is no human that would be able to keep up with me" Gem said.

"Yeah but they would know that mers excited, they could come back during the day. They could bring multiple people back, those people could go searching for other mers. They could catch some of the younger ones or they could go after us when we're asleep" Sausage said, Gem had also thought about that.

She had thought about the scenario that Pearl would come back with an army. That Pearl would use all the information that Gem had told her to her own advantage. That she would kill or capture everyone and that it would all be Gem's fault.

But she didn't want to think like that, Pearl was her friend. Pearl would never do anything to hurt her, she wouldn't. Other humans could see her, but mers could kill a human faster than a human could attack a mer, mostly underwater.

"I-" Gem started, she couldn't tell them about that. She couldn't tell them that she had a human friend who she trusted. They were already freaking out about all of this, they didn't even know that Gem had came even closer to a human.

They didn't know that she had befriended one.

"Come, let's just go back home. Where we are save" Fwhip said, he put a hand on Gem's back. Gem looked him in his eyes. "We are just doing this because we care about you Gem" He said as he started stirring her back home.

Gem could see Sausage look around, looking at the surface before following them. He swam on Gem's other side taking her hand in his "You're our little sister, we don't want anything to happen to you" he said, a sweet smile on his face.

"I'll be fine" Gem reassured them. Her brothers hugged her for a few seconds, they let her go again and together they swam back home. Gem entered her house, she knew that Fwhip and Sausage hoped that she wouldn't go back to the docks.

But she would return the next morning again, she was going to see Pearl again.

She wasn't leaving Pearl now, it was too late for that. They had truly become friends, Gem wasn't just leaving Pearl. She could trust Pearl, she didn't know how she was so sure about it, but she was sure. Pearl would never hurt her.

Gem looked at the shirt that Pearl had given her the second time that they had seen each other. Gem had kept it even after Scott and Jimmy had made fun of her for wearing it. She had brought it home with her and put it in her room.

She picked the shirt up and put it on, she still thought that she looked great in it. She went to bed after that, somehow feeling tired again. She knew that her brothers were still in her house but she didn't care. She trusted them as much as she trusted Pearl.

Fwhip opened the door to Gem's room and saw her asleep on her bed. He quietly closed the door again and swam back to Fwhip. "She's asleep" he said.

"We have to tell her" Sausage said, Fwhip knew that they should tell her but he didn't want to. "No, Sausage" He started but Sausage interrupted him. "We need to tell her, she has to know. It might just stop her from doing these reckless things"

"It will break her heart" Fwhip argued.

"But it might save her life. If we continue with the way we are acting right now, she'll end up hating us. You saw how angry she already was" Sausage said, he was whispering so that Gem wouldn't hear him. Gem could never know, Fwhip had decided that the second he had heard the news.

"I don't care if she hates us, we are not telling her this" Fwhip said, Sausage was older then him but Fwhip was not letting him win this argument.

"She deserves to know" Sausage answered.

"I know, I know. But I just don't want her to know, come on we both decided years ago to not tell her" Fwhip said. "Because she was too young, but she can handle it now" Sausage said, both of them knew that that wasn't the real reason that they hadn't told her.

They hadn't told her because they didn't have the heart to tell her.

"We both know that that wasn't the reason, we were the same age and yet I knew" Fwhip said "Because you were there when I first heard the news" Sausage responded, all the anger melted away from his voice as the topic was brought up once again.

"Are you telling me that you wouldn't have told me either if I didn't already know?" Fwhip asked, Sausage looked him in the eyes. "You're my little brother, just like Gem is my little sister. I would have protected you both against this news if I had had the chance"

Fwhip got tears in his eyes again, he always did when they talked about this. Sausage pulled Fwhip into a hug and the two of them stayed like that for a little while. When Fwhip pulled away he looked at Gem's closed bedroom door.

"We should leave" he decided.

Sausage didn't protest so they left, they swam out of Gem's house and went to their own.

Chapter Text

Lizzie opened the door to the cabin, it felt like time slowed as it was finally revealed what was inside. Lizzie walked in like it was nothing, for her it probably was nothing. For her this probably was normal. But for Pearl, Pearl had been waiting to see what was inside since her first day in the town.

Pearl looked around ro make sure that nobody could see her, there was nobody around. Nobody to notice her, nobody to save her if this did go wrong. She stepped inside, ignoring those thoughts. The second she was inside she started looking around.

The inside at least didn’t look like a place where you would murder someone, it was just a wooden cabin. Pearl wasn't sure what else she was expecting.

Inside was a small wooden bench and a closet. Walking further into the room Pearl suddenly noticed the hole in the ground when she almost fell in. Luckily Pearl kept her balance, she leaned over the hole to look inside of it, it looked like the hole led to water.

“When I turn back into a mer, or when I turn into a human I do it here. Nobody’s here to see me, it’s safer" Lizzie started explaining, she sat down on the little bench and stared at the hole. Pearl tried to read her expression but she didn't know what Lizzie was feeling.

“I- how?” Pearl started, she still had no idea what to say or ask.

“You can ask me anything you want but just please don’t tell anyone that I’m a mer” Lizzie said before Pearl got a chance to ask anything else. “I won’t tell anyone, I promise. I don't know much about mers but I do know the dangers of humans finding out about you" Pearl said, she sat down next to Lizzie and gave her what she hoped was a reassuring smile.

"Thank you" Lizzie said, returning the smile. "You must have some questions" she added, Pearl nodded. She didn't want to overwhelm Gem in any way but she was incredibly curious "How are you a human and a mer? How are you living on land?” Pearl asked.

“When I was younger I discovered that I could turn into a human, that that was my ability. My parents told me to keep my ability hidden, they said that humans were dangerous. That I should never, ever, go close to them. They told me that my ability was useless and that I was never allowed to use it” Lizzie started.

“But you did” Pearl thought out loud.

“Yeah, I got curious. One day I changed into a human and I went on land. It took some time to figure the whole walking thing out” Lizzie chuckled, lifting her leg a little before placing it back on the ground and continuing “At first I just stayed on the land close to the water, I made sure that I could get away whenever I wanted to"

"But eventually I went further and further away, eventually I walked to this town and met other humans that lived here. I kept going back into the water and then coming back here as a human. I- I knew that it was dangerous but I liked hanging out with the humans. I liked being on land and I didn't want to stop”

“I liked it on land and then I met Joel, I completely fell in love with him. I didn’t want to be with him while I was keeping such a big part of my life secret, but I couldn’t tell him. I was always told that humans would kill mers if they saw one. But then one day Joel found out, instead of killing me… he helped me”

A small smile hit Lizzie's lips as she started fidgeting with the ring around her finger, her eyes fixed on it.

“I told him my story, I told him about my life. I told him the risk and why I kept everything a secret from him. He- he was mad and confused at first but he promised me to keep my secret. After that we didn't see each other for a little bit, Joel needed time to think about everything he had learned about me"

The smile disappeared from Lizzie's face as she spoke but it returned when the next words left her mouth.

"We couldn't stay away from each other for long, so we started hanging out again. After that we started dating, it turned out that he liked me as much as I liked him. We eventually got married and now I live here with him and in the lake with the other mers. We knew that it would be hard and we knew that there would be problems."

"But we also knew that it was worth it, so we made a plan. We told everyone in this town that I go on a lot of business trips, but the truth is that me and Joel see each other almost every night. I just come here” Lizzie said, finishing her explanation with a sigh.

"I- I'm telling you this so that you'll know that I understand what this secret can do to someone." Lizzie said ,looking back at Pearl. Pearl stayed quiet for a little bit. She had no idea what to say, questions were still going through her brain but after everything Lizzie had just told her she wasn't sure if this was the right moment for any more of those questions.

Pearl decided to at least ask one question “Do the other mers know that you can change into a human, do they know that you are living this life?” or what Pearl actually wanted to ask "Does Gem know that you, does she know that you can change into a human?"

“Not really, only my family knows. But the others wouldn’t understand, all of them think that humans are heartless monsters. Some of them even think that humans would eat them if they saw them” Lizzie answered.

“I’m sure some humans are weird enough to want to. I understand why you want to keep this a secret, I promise you that I won’t tell anyone. Really” Pearl tried to reassure Lizzie. Pearl completely understood Lizzie’s fears, Pearl felt those same fears whenever a human appeared on the docks while she was talking to Gem. The fear that a human would see her and capture her, that they would experiment on her. Or that they would use her for their own entertainment.

The thought sent a shiver over Pearl’s back.

“Thank you, I appreciate it” Lizzie said, she didn’t look too sure about trusting Pearl though.

Pearl understood why, they had literally only known each other for twenty four hours. And now Lizzie was asking Pearl to keep a secret like this. Lizzie had basically been forced to tell all of this to Pearl, guilt hit Pearl when she realized. Maybe she shouldn't have opened the door to the bathroom, even if she hadn't known what would be behind it.

“But can’t you trust any of your friends with your secret? N- not that I’m telling you to tell them, I’m just curious. They’re your friends they wouldn’t hurt you” Pearl said, she had met most of the people in town. They didn't seem like the kind of people who would do anything to hurt or endanger their friends.

“I know they wouldn’t hurt me, I just… The less people that know, the better” Lizzie answered simply. “You said that you have a mer friend, tell me about that" Lizzie said, changing the subject. Pearl suspected that Lizzie did want to tell the rest, but that she was just scared. "As you probably know it is very rare for a human and mer to interact” Lizzie said, brining Pearl back to their conversation.

“I- yeah. A little while ago I went with Grian on one of his fishing trips. A mer got caught in his net and when I walked closer to her she pulled me into the water. She saved me from drowning, but I didn’t think that it was real. When I got home I found some plants that I had ripped from her, proving that it had really happened” Pearl started.

After all the information that Lizzie had just told Pearl, that she just trusted Pearl with. It just didn't feel right to not tell her.

“The next day I went back to the docks and called out for them. I still don’t know why, but I just needed answers. The mer appeared and she was just as curious about humans as I was about Mers. We talked for a bit and well we're friends. We meet up at the docks almost every single day ” Pearl explained.

“You played a dangerous game, that could have gone very wrong” Lizzie commented, Pearl knew that she was right but she still thought that it was a little hypocrite “As wrong as you transforming into a mer in a cafe?” Pearl asked in return.

“Point takes, but wait if all of that happened on Grian's boat.. Does that mean that Grian saw the mer too? Does he know that mer exists?” Lizzie asked in a panicked tone. Pearl quickly shook her head “No, no, don't worry. He only saw part of the tail, I convinced him that it was just a seal” Pearl answered. Grian was going to be a problem with his beliefs.

“Oh uhm good, don’t get me wrong I trust him to not hurt me or other mers. But I do absolutely not trust him enough to keep a secret” Lizzie said, laughing although Pearl could see some disappointment in her face. It quickly disappeared though when Lizzie said “It does feel nice to finally tell someone about this”

“It really isn’t an easy secret to tell someone is it?” Pearl asked.

It was less of a shock to her since she had only known Lizzie for a day. But if the others found out, they had known Lizzie for years, and she had lied to them for all those years.

Pearl understood why she had lied, if Lizzie told the secret to the wrong person she would have a lot of problems. The things that could go wrong if she told the secret to the wrong person.
Or not even the wrong person, the things that could happen if someone heard about the secret. If someone overheard them talking about it. Pearl didn’t want to think about all that.

“No, it is not. Yet it is still easier than telling your parents that you are dating a human when humans have been made out to be humans” Lizzie replied.

“I can imagine, do they accept him now at least?” Pearl asked, she tried to imagine how her parents would react if she would be dating a mer. There was a big chance that they would laugh in her face and call her crazy, they would never believe in mers. Not even if a mer was right in front of them.

“No, but they can’t get on the land so there is nothing they can do about it” Lizzie said with a smile. “That works I guess” Pearl responded. Lizzie’s parents literally couldn’t stop Lizzie and Joel from being together, they couldn’t reach Joel.

“I guess you got the perfect mer ability for you” Pearl said, Gem had mentioned all different kinds of abilities but Lizzie’s ability seemed like the best one. Lizzie could be both a human and a mer.

“Yeah, I did” Lizzie responded.

“I’m sure that my mer friend would love that ability” Pearl said, Gem had mentioned that she would love to be a human. That would be nice, Pearl would love to show Gem around. She would love to show Gem all the places that she had been talking about.

“Really? Most mers would find the power useless. They would never want to interact with humans, either because they’re too scared or because they don't care for humans. Most mers don't even want to get close to the surface, some have never even seen a human” Lizzie said.

“I understand why, living underwater seems way cooler than on land” Pearl responded, not really wanting to talk about why the mers would be scared of the humans. Keeping the positivity up would be great in this situation.

“You don’t know what you’re talking about, living underwater is cool but you don’t know how cool the land is since you’ve been living here your whole live” Lizzie said “I don’t see underwater as cool either but you seem to like it”

“It’s weird” Pearl responded.

Lizzie and Pearl walked for a bit, mostly trying to not talk about the things that could happen if Lizzie’s secret came out. Later Joel joined them too, he acted nicer then he usually did, even though it seemed a bit forced Pearl appreciated it. After a while It was getting late so Pearl went home, Joel offered to walk her home.

Pearl wanted to say no but it seemed rude, especially after how hard Joel had tried to be nice to her. So Pearl accepted and they left. The walk home was quiet, neither Joel nor Pearl knew what to say. When they came close to Pearl’s house Joel stopped, making Pearl stop too. “Something wrong?” she asked.

Joel spoke without looking at Pearl “If you tell anyone Lizzie’s secret, I will hurt you. I know that Lizzie is confident that you won’t tell anyone. Me on the other hand, I’m not convinced, I hope that this threat will make clear to you how serious this is”

“You can trust me, I won’t tell anyone. I understand how dangerous Lizzie’s situation is, I understand what can happen if her secret came out” Pearl said, she understood why Joel was telling her this but she wasn’t a child.

She could understand the dangers of this situation.

“You better” Joel said in a serious voice. Pearl could tell that he was trying to sound scary, he was trying to scare her into not telling anyone Lizzie’s secret. They continued walking in silence until they reached Pearl's house. "Joel, you can trust me with this. I know that we didn't get off on the right foot, but I do understand what could happen. I don't want Lizzie to get hurt either"

After that Pearl got into her house, closing the door behind her and a sigh leaving her. This certainly was a day, a day that Pearl had not expected. She had embarrassed herself at work again, discovered that Lizzie was a mer and she had finally seen the inside of the cabin.

Without thinking Pearl changed into her pajamas and went to bed. She couldn’t fall asleep though, her mind was racing with thoughts. After an hour of laying there Pearl gave up on trying to fall asleep, she put comfortable clothes on and went outside.

She started walking in a random direction, she wasn’t paying attention to where she was going. Her mind was too busy thinking about everything that she had discovered in the past day. No matter what she did she could not stop thinking about it.

About that and about what would happen if this secret came out.

Before Pearl knew it she had walked to the docks, usually she would drive but apparently she could walk there too. Pearl just went to the little beach and sat down in the sand, she started at the water.

There was a whole world in that water.

A whole world with people living there, people that nobody could know about. But Pearl did know about it, discovering Lizzie’s secret had only made it more clear to Pearl how dangerous this situation was.

Pearl laid down on the sand, using the cap of her hoody not to get any sand in her hair. She stared up at the stars, as she lay there her eyes started closing. Pearl tried to stop it, to stay awake, but eventually she fell asleep.

Chapter Text

Pearl woke up to someone shaking her, she groaned and turned onto her side trying to get away from whoever was trying to wake her up. She didn't want to wake up yet, she was tired. “Thank Poseidon, you’re alive” A voice said, relief in the voice.

While the person sounded relieved, Pearl began to panic. Her eyes shot open, there was someone in her room. Quickly turning onto her back she opened her eyes, when she did she realized that she wasn't in her bedroom at all. Calm morning wind was breezing past her, sand beneath her and the rising sun was shining a bright light into her eyes.

She was at the dock, laying on the little beach.

But if she was laying on the beach then who was the person who woke her up? Pearl turned her head towards where the voice had come from, squinting her eyes against the sun. It took a few seconds before Pearl was able to put together who was the figure next to her. Pearl realized that she was looking into the eyes of Gem.

Pearl sat up fully, she took in the situation. Gem was laying next to her, fully out of the water. Pearl had never seen Gem fully out of the water. “Sorry, I saw you here and got worried. You weren’t responding, I thought that there might be something wrong” Gem said, but Pearl wasn’t really paying attention.

The only thing Pearl could think of was how close they were to each other. Gem had always kept her distance from Pearl, but now they could practically touch each other. It took a few seconds before the words that Gem had spoken to make sense to Pearl.

Once they did Pearl realized that she hadn't replied yet “I- sorry, I’m fine. I was looking for a place to clear my thoughts yesterday evening, I ended up here and I uhm apparently fell asleep” Pearl admitted, it had been dangerous to just fall asleep like that.

She could have been kidnapped or killed or something worse could have happened.

But that hadn’t happened, instead Pearl was now waking up next to Gem. That certainly wasn't something bad. “What time is it?” Pearl asked, would people be appearing soon or did she have more time alone with Gem? Pearl really hoped it would be the second, she had a lot to tell Gem.

“Like 7am” Gem answered “Is there a reason you needed to clear your mind?”

Pearl laid down on the sand again, covering her face with her hands and sighing. “Yes, so much has happened yesterday. I don’t even know where to start”

Gem laid down next to her, her face turned towards Pearl “Why don’t you start at the beginning?”

And so Pearl started telling Gem everything, she told her about how Joel had a wife named Lizzie. She told her about meeting Lizzie and about the next day in the cafe, about how she had accidentally spilled water all over Lizzie. Gem had laughed until Pearl continued and told her about how she had found Lizzie in the restroom as a mer.

“But you said that she was a human” Gem interrupted as she sat up a bit so that she could see Pearl’s face. “She was! That’s the weirdest thing about this, she was a human. But when I entered the restroom she was laying on the ground with a tail, webbed hands, fangs and gills. You know the whole mer get up”

“How is that possible? I’ve never heard of something like that happening” Gem replied. “I’m not sure, but she told me that it was her mer ability” Pearl answered. “I- abilities can be strong but I’ve never heard of someone being able to shift between a human and a mer” Gem said, staring at Pearl with shock on her face.

“She lives in this lake, don’t you know her? She had a blue tale with some white if that helps” Pearl asked, she didn’t know how many people lived underwater but there was a chance that Gem knew mer Lizzie.

“I know a Lizzie, but she can’t be a human. There- there is no way” Gem said as she sat up “It can’t be her, I think” she tried to move around so that she could get back into the water, but she didn't get very far “Uhm I’ve actually never gotten out of the water before, could you maybe help me get back into the water?”

“Oh of course” Pearl said she took in the scene before her, trying to figure out how to help.

She ended up helping Gem further away from the water so that she could turn around by herself. Then Gem fell back into the water with a splash, Pearl’s clothes got soaked in the process but that didn’t matter to her. She watched Gem swim underwater a little before she turned and appeared above the surface again.

“Thank you, I’m gonna see if I can find my Lizzie. I think I need to have a conversation with her, uhm see you later today?” Gem asked, Pearl smiled and nodded. She would definitely be back tonight, she had to know more about Lizzie.

Pearl walked to the parking place at the docks, but her car wasn’t there. It confused her for a few seconds before she realized what happened and where her car was. Her car was at home, she had walked there, and now she had to walk back.

When Pearl finally got home she was about to open her door, she wanted nothing more than to take a shower. She wanted all the sand off of her. But she was hugged from behind before she could turn her key “There you are, we were getting worried” Tango's voice came from behind her. “What? Why?” Pearl asked, confused.

“We heard you get home late last night and then we heard your door close and saw you leave through the window. We never heard you return, this morning we came to check up on you but you weren’t there” Tango replied, he let go off Pearl so that she could turn around.

“Oh, yeah I just needed to clear my mind” Pearl answered.

“You have been doing that a lot lately, everything okay?” Tango asked, worry all over his face. Pearl wanted to say no I have befriended a mer but my friendship with her might be endangering her and I have just found out that there is a human who isn’t a human at all. And now I’m keeping both of their secrets and if I tell anyone both of them would be in great danger.

But she couldn’t tell him that, that was the whole problem.

“Yeah, just a little stressed thanks to the move” Pearl said instead.

“If you need help with anything we’re all here. Or if you just need a listening ear or if you need a friend” Tango assured her, Pearl got a smile on her face.

“Thank you” She almost whispered as she wrapped her arms around him. He hugged her back and it just made Pearl realise how hard she needed the hug. The two of them stayed like that for a few seconds before Pearl pulled away.

“Thank you really” She said one more time.

“It’s okay, wanna talk?” Tango asked, a sweet smile on his face. Pearl wanted to say yes but there was no way she could talk with him without revealing anything. So Pearl shook her head “No, but I could use some help distracting myself from the things on my mind” She said hoping that Tango had time.

“Okay we can totally do that, but let’s first let Skizz and Impulse know that you’re okay. They’re worried sick” Tango said as he pulled out his phone. “You told Impulse that I was gone?” She asked, she really hadn’t meant to worry anyone.

“We just asked Impulse if he knew where you were, he said he didn’t and asked why we wanted to know. We told him the truth, that you had left in the middle of the night and hadn’t returned yet. You can’t blame the guy for being worried” Tango said, typing on his phone as he spoke.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to worry anyone” Pearl said, feeling guilty.

“It’s alright, next time just answer your phone” Tango responded. Pearl had totally forgotten about her phone, it was still inside her house “I don’t have it with me, let me get it” She finally unlocked her door and walked inside. Inside she quickly spotted her phone and grabbed it.

23 new messages and 12 missed phone calls.

“Oh yeah you really tried to reach me” Pearl said once she was outside again. “Yeah, we gave up when we heard your ringtone coming from inside your house. Impulse and Skizz are in the town, wanna go there? We can show you the best way to distract yourself”

“Yeah, let’s go” Pearl answered, placing her phone into her pocket and closing her door behind her.

The two of them walked to the town and quickly saw Impulse and Skizz who ran up to hug Pearl. Pearl apologized to them too. Skizz turned to Tango after Pearl assured him and Impulse that she was fine asked “So how’s mister 'the person who waits at home never finds the missing person' doing?” he asked.

“Name me one movie in which the missing person just returns home?” Tango asked in return. “I can name plenty” Skizz answered “Movies in which the missing person wasn’t replaced by some kind of demon or possessed?” Tango said.

“This is real life, that wouldn’t happen” Skizz argued “Don’t you believe in mers?” Impulse asked “Mers and demons and ghosts are very different” Skizz argued back, crossing his arms over each other.

“Guys, we don't have time for this. We have a mission, Pearl needs a distraction. We need to show her the best places in hermittown” Tango said in a serious voice, interrupting the argument.

“Oh we could take her to the movie theater and then we can go to the arcade next to it” Impulse suggested “Good idea, we could also drive out of town and go to the empire, there is a circus over there at the moment” Skizz suggested.

“We need to be back tonight, I have work” Impulse said. “We can see what we have time for, we can start with the movie and figure stuff out from there. How does that sound Pearl?” Tango asked, turning towards her.

Pearl scanned the faces of her friends, all of them smiling. There wasno way that she could say no now, a smile came onto her own face. A distracting might be all that she needs and going to the movies sounded like a great distraction. “That sounds amazing”

“Yes, let’s go!” Tango said, he was already moving into the direction of the movie theatre. Pearl was pulled along since she had no idea where they were going. The four of them entered the movie theater and Pearl let Impulse, Tango and Skizz choose a movie.

Impulse, Tango and Skizz spent at least fifteen minutes arguing before they finally decided on a movie. The three of them brought enough popcorn for the entire town and some drinks before they actually went into the movieroom. The movie was a horror movie and it definitely took Pearl's mind off of her problems.

Skizz had his hand in front of his eyes for most of the movie

Impulse was screaming like a girl every jumpscare there was, and then claimed that it wasn’t him. Every time it happened Pearl tried to hold her laughter in.

Tango was trying to get Skizz to remove his hands off his face. He once succeeded but it was right at the moment a jumpscare happened. Skizz brought his hands back to his face and called Tango a traitor. He didn't remove his hands again until the end credits.

When the movie was over they left, in the hallway the three men said that they hadn’t been scared at all.

They walked to the arcade and played games for the rest of the afternoon. Together they got more than a thousand tickets, just enough for four keychains. They walked out, gringed as the sun hit their eyes and walked to the cafe together.

Impulse, Tango and Skizz were complaining about how expensive everything in the arcade was. Pearl wasn’t paying attention to them, she was admiring her keychain. Pearl got a little moon, fitting for her name Pearl moon.

Impulse had gotten a i out of the box with letter keychains, Tango had gotten a little flames and Skizz got a little tie.

The four of them came to the cafe “I still think that we should go to that circus one day” Skizz said. “We could do that in a few days, I can close the cafe for a day” Impulse suggested.

“That sounds fun, two days from now good? The circus won’t be there for long” Tango said. “Yeah, sounds great” Impulse said “Yup, what time should we leave?” Skizz asked. “I don’t know, we could go around like three. We’ll have enough time to drive there and back home before it gets dark” Impulse suggested.

“Sounds great, meet at our house at like 2?” Skiz asked.

“Yeah, what do you think Pearl?” Tango asked, getting Pearl’s attention. “Oh yeah, totally” She responded.
Impulse and Skizz went to work in their cafe while Tango and Pearl went home. “So, did I distract you enough?” Tango asked. “Yeah, thank you. Today was awesome” Pearl responded.

“Good, we are a little town but we can have fun” Tango responded. “I never doubted that” Pearl replied. They arrived home and Pearl went into her own house. She quickly took a shower, ate dinner and then left to go to the docks again.

This time she brought her phone with her.

She made sure to close her door silently, hoping that Tango wouldn’t hear. She couldn’t keep using the same excuse over and over again.

Pearl went to the little beach and sat down waiting for Gem to appear. Gem appeared not soon after pearl had arrived “So mer Lizzie is human Lizzie” She said. Pearl had thought about how betrayed Lizzie’s human friends would feel if they found out that she had lied to them.

But she hadn’t thought about Gem, Gem had also been lied to.

“Sorry, I- is everything okay between you two?” Pearl asked. “You don’t have to apologize, it wasn’t your fault. We’re okay, I’m just kinda surprised that Lizzie has a whole life outside of the water”

“I’ve only known Lizzie for three days and I was already shocked. I can’t imagine how you must be feeling” Pearl said, she didn’t really know what to do in this situation. “Yeah, but let’s not get too negative, there is a good thing about this. Lizzie told me that we can meet in her cabin, so that you won’t have to come here each time”

“Seriously?” Pearl asked

She didn’t mind coming here for Gem, but the cabin would be much closer. And there were no people around the cabin, she could visit Gem throughout the whole day, not just in the early morning or evening.

Pearl stayed with Gem for a few hours before going back home. She was exhausted, apparently sleeping on the sand wasn’t great for you.

Who knew?

Chapter Text

The next morning Gem woke up bright and early. She was about to leave her room when she looked into the mirror and noticed that she was still wearing the shirt she had put on. A smile came to her face as she realized this, but she knew that she had to take it off. So she took it off before leaving her room, but not before looking at herself in the mirror for a few more seconds.

She looked so… human.

When Gem walked out of her bedroom she was expecting her brothers to be waiting in her living room for her.

She prepared for a hard conversation but when she walked into her living room it was empty. It surprised her, her brothers stayed over at her house a lot and after the conversation that they had had the day before. It didn't happen often that they had an argument but Gem's family had always been a big fan of talking things out.

Whenever she and her brothers had had a fight, no matter what age they were, they would have to talk it out. Gem had been fully prepared to have to talk to them about her feelings and all, but they weren't there. Not really knowing how to feel about it Gem went outside.

She looked around, checking if they were anywhere there. But they weren't, had she done something that really crossed a line this time? They hadn't seemed angry anymore when they had arrived at Gem's house the day before.

Gem shrugged it off and swam up to the docks again, she could use a distraction. while she swam she kept looking behind her making sure that she wasn't being followed this time. She didn't see anyone following her, so she assumed that nobody was following her.

It was crazy that she had been followed the day before.

She hoped that Sausage and fwhip realized how creepy it had been to follow her. She was their sister but they were no her bosses. She was her own person. Now swimming all alone her mind kept repeating the conversation that they had had the night before. Gem really hoped that they were just giving her some space and not that they were angry at her.

Gem arrived at the little beach and looked around, checking if there were humans around. But her eyes landed on Pearl instead, Pearl was already there. But she wasn't sitting or standing up on the little beach like she usually was.

Pearl was laying on the little beach in the sand, not moving.

A tremel of fear went through Gem as she swam closer to the little beach "Pearl!" Gem called out, Pearl didn't move. Gem got worried, this was weird. Or was this some kind of human thing? Or was she dead? Gem couldn't hear her breathing from where she was in the water, she tried to get even closer but still couldn't hear anything.

"Pearl!" Gem screamed, hoping that she would hear her this time. But Pearl didn't move one bit, Gem felt helpless. Pearl needed help, something was wrong. But Gem was stuck in the water, or was she? Maybe she could find a way out of the water.

It would be risky, it could be dangerous. But at the moment Gem didn't care, all her thoughts about how she would be safe as long as she stayed in the water left her. The only thing that mattered right now was that Pearl was alright.

Gem swam back into the water before her brain could reason with her, she then shot forwards as fast as she could. She hoped that it would give her the boost that she needed to get on the little beach. Surprisingly, it worked. Gem ended up on the little beach, her tail still hanging half in the water.

She pulled herself up more, she could feel the raw sand under her as she moved over it. The sand was getting all over her but she didn't care. The feeling was weird and Gem wanted to inspect it more, but she had to check on Pearl first. It took some struggle but she eventually ended up getting fully out of the water, she was now fully on the land.

"Pearl" Gem asked again now that she was closer to Pearl but Pearl still didn't wake up. Gem managed to kinda sit up, she checked if Pearl was breathing. Dead silence around her, the only sound that Gem coud hear was her own heartbeat. Until suddenly, breathing. Pearl was breathing. A wave of relief hit Gem and she let out a sigh, Pearl was alive.

Gem shook Pearl's shoulders trying to wake her up.

Why was Pearl asleep here? Was she just asleep? Had something happened? Was she hurt? She didn't look hurt. Gem tried to be gentle but she couldn't help but shake Pearl a little bit wilder as these thoughts screamed at her in her head.

Pearl moved to lay on her side with a groan. “Oh good you’re alive” Gem said, she had heard Pearl's breathing but it was still different to actually see that Pearl was at least alive. Finally Pearl's eyes shot open and she moved so that she was face to face with Gem. Gem smiled shyly, she had never been this close to Pearl before.

“Sorry, I uhm saw you here and got worried. You weren’t responding, I thought that there might be something wrong” Gem explained, Pearl stayed silent for a couple of seconds before responding “I- sorry, I’m fine. I was looking for a place to clear my thoughts yesterday evening, I ended up here and I apparently fell asleep”

Gem and Pearl talked for a bit, Pearl had apparently had quite the day. Pearl had discovered that Joel's wife was a mer. A mer that could turn into a human,that surprised Gem enough but her mind was blown when Pearl told her the name of the mer.

Lizzie.

Gem's friend Lizzie, but it couldn't be Lizzie right? Lizzie wasn't married, Lizzie didn't even have a mer ability, Lizzie could not be a human. She just couldn't, she wouldn't have lied to Gem for all of those years, right? No, she wouldn't do that.

She needed to find out, she needed to be sure. But first she had to listen to more of what Pearl had to say, she talked about how she had discovered that this 'Lizzie' was a mer and about the mysterious cabin that she had told Gem about. After a while Pearl had to leave again.

Gem didn't have time to be disappointed about that though, she needed to find out the truth. Gem Swam back into the lake but stopped when she realized that Lizzie wouldn't be there. Lizzie was still away. She wouldn't be able to find Lizzie anywhere anyway.

An idea came to Gem, she left to go to Jimmy's, Jimmy had to know where Lizzie was. Gem swam there, her body moving about as fast as her thoughts were. She kept thinking back to every single time that Lizzie had left the lake, could she have actually turned into a human?

The second Gem arrived she started knocking on Jimmy's door, not caring about how early it still was, not caring that she might seem crazy.

Jimmy opened the door a few seconds later, he looked tired and a bit annoyed. His mouth opened to say something "Where is Lizzie?" Gem asked before Jimmy could get a word out. Jimmy's mouth closed again and he stayed silent for a couple of seconds before he eventually asked "W-what?" Before adding "she's exploring. You know this, we said goodbye to her a few day ago"

Gem shook her head "I want the truth Jimmy, does Lizzie really not have a mer ability?" Gem asked, Jimmy's confused face turned into a panicked one. He took Gem by her arm and pulled her into his house, closing the door behind him.

"What do you know?" Jimmy asked, his actions only confirming Gem's suspicions. Lizzie was a mer who could change into a human. "I know that her mer ability is to change into a human, I know that she is married to a human and I know that she has been hiding it from all of us" Gem said, she needed answers now that she knew that she was right.

"H-how do you know that, who else knows?" Jimmy asked in a panicked voice, he looked around the room as if there was someone there who could overhear them. At his panic Gem forced herself to calm down a little, Jimmy didn't have much to do with this. She shouldn't be angry at him.

"It doesn't matter how I know but no one else knows." Gem said, sure Pearl knew but Jimmy didn't need to know that. "But why didn't you tell me? You know that you could have trusted me" Gem said, feeling hurt. Two of her best friends had lied to her for years, Gem realized that she barely knew anything about Lizzie.

The woman was married, she had a whole second life that Gem didn't know a thing about.

"I- we didn't tell anyone. It's not exactly a good thing to be able to turn into a human, it's dangerous. Lizzie asked me to not tell anyone" Jimmy explained, he looked more serious than Gem had ever seen him "And I'm still not telling you anything. If you want to know anything you're going to have to ask Lizzie, not me"

"How do I contact Lizzie if she's on land?" Gem asked, she would have gone straight to Lizzie if she knew where Lizzie was. That was the whole problem.

"Come with me, we have a way of contacting her" Jimmy said he swam back to his front door but turned back to Gem before he opened the door "You can't tell anyone about this"

"I won't" Gem responded, if anyone knew the dangers about interacting with humans, it would be her. There were countless things that could happen to Lizzie if anyone found out. All things that appeared in Gem's worst nightmares, all things that she really did not want to think about.

"Good" Jimmy said, he opened the door and started swimming, Gem followed him. They swam all the way until the other side of the lake, into a cave. Inside the cave lay a little device, a phone Gem realised. She had seen Pearl use hers a few times but she had never used one before.

"Lizzie left this device here in case we would ever need to contact her, she taught me how to use it" Jimmy said proudly as he picked the phone up and started pressing some buttons on it. "I have no idea how it works but Lizzie can read whatever I write on this thing"

"Cool" Gem said as she took a closer look at the device. The phone looked different from the one that Pearl used, the screen was smaller and it had numbered buttons on it. Pearl's phone had only been a screen but it did have one button on the bottom of the screen.

"She's coming back here" Jimmy said, he put the phone back where he had found it and swam out of the cave. He stayed underwater but kept his eyes focussed on the land, Gem just followed him and did the same.

It didn't take long before someone came towards them, it was a human. It was a human with pink hair, with no gills, no webbed fingers, no fangs and no tail. Instead they had legs. It was definitely Lizzie, but she was fully human. "Hi Gem" Lizzie said nervously.

Gem was too stunned to respond, Lizzie looked around making sure that there were no other humans before jumping into the water. It only took a few seconds before mer Lizzie appeared in front of Gem. All traced of human Lizzie gone. "I- I really am sorry for not telling you Gem, but you have to understand why I didn't"

"I- I do understand but- how?" Gem asked, still shocked.

"When I turned sixteen my mer ability was revealed to me when I felt the urge to leave the water. I did and I just sat on the grass waiting for something to happen, I didn't even know what. But when I dried up my tail disappeared and I turned into a human" Lizzie started explaining.

"I was so excited and scared, but when I got back into the water I turned back into a mer. I swam back home and told the great news to Jimmy and my parents. But they told me to not tell anyone, they said that it wasn't a good ability and that I was never allowed to use it" Lizzie continued.

"Well you clearly used it anyway" Gem observed, she hadn't meant to say it out loud.

Lizzie chuckled "Yeah I did, I got curious and decided to explore the human lands. Long story short I fell in love and not just with my husband but also with the human lands. I didn't want to say goodbye to all of you but I wanted to keep going to the human lands, so I told people that I would go out exploring when I went to the human lands"

"How have you been able to lie about this for so many years?" Gem asked, Lizzie had this ability for years now. She had managed to marry a human during that time, how could she have kept it all a secret.

"Well with some help, my husband would tell people that I would be gone for business trips. We have this little cabin on our land, it has a hole in it that leads here, to the lake. I can leave and come whenever I like without anyone seeing me" Lizzie said.

"That- that actually sounds great" Gem said, she wished she had something like that. It was genius, actually.

She wished that she could turn into a human, she wished that she was able to live on both lands. She would even just want to be a human once, she wanted to explore a little. But she knew that she couldn't no matter how much she wanted it.

"Pearl told me that the two of you can only meet in the early morning or late at night at the docks. You're free to use the cabin whenever you want to talk to her. You are her secret mer friend, are you not?" Lizzie asked, a smile on her face.

"Y-yeah" Gem admitted, Lizzie was a human sometimes so she must see that humans could be kind and amazing. "WHAT? Who is Pearl?" Jimmy asked, Gem had totally forgotten that he was there. "She's a human Jimmy, she is the one who told Gem that I'm a human" Lizzie said, not seeing bothered by Jimmy knowing about Pearl.

"A friend huh?" Jimmy asked looking at Gem before turning back to Lizzie "Do I need to take care of her? Will she keep your secret?" Jimmy asked, he looked ready to kill someone. "Yeah, she won't tell anyone anything" Lizzie said.

"Good, now Gem let's have a little conversation about this Pearl huh" Jimmy said as he turned back to Gem with a smile on his face. "You can't tell anyone that I befriended a human" Gem said, but she knew that that wouldn't be what they would be talking about.

"Oh I won't tell anyone about that" Jimmy said.

"what is he talking about?" Lizzie asked confused "Gem named one of her sea turtles Pearl, and then she made fun of me because I named a sea turtle snowflake" Jimmy said making Lizzie laugh. "You have to admit that Pearl is still a better name for a sea turtle then snowflake" Pearl said.

"That is not what this is about" Jimmy said, but Lizzie said "She has a point"

Jimmy punched Lizzie on her shoulder, she looked at him and was about to punch hit back. But Jimmy swam away quickly, Lizzie followed him. Gem watched the two with a smile on her face, her smile only grew when Lizzie caught up to Jimmy and punched him.

"So where were we?" Lizzie asked as she swam back to Gem. Jimmy came back too, rubbing at his shoulder. "We were talking about how Gem obviously has a crush on Pearl"

"What no I don't" Gem said, but did she? She definitely like Pearl, but did she like Pearl like that? "Yes you do, you named a sea turtle after her, you don't name animals after friends. Or well unless they die, but she's alive so that must mean…" Jimmy said, a teasing smile on his face. "So you like Scott?" Gem asked.

"What no" Jimmy said way too quickly, the smile disappearing. "Then why did you name a sea turtle after him?" Gem asked, Lizzie laughed at that. "I- I didn't, I don't have any sea turtles names Scott"

"Oh please, snowflake is so Scott" Gem said.

The three of them talked, most of the conversation excited out of Jimmy denying his feelings and trying to change the subject. Eventually Lizzie had to get going again, she had to return to the human lands. Gem wished that she could come with her, she watched Lizzie get out of the water and change back into a human, she couldn't hide the jealousy that she was feeling.

Either Jimmy didn't notice or he didn't mention it, either way Gem appreciated it. She and Jimmy swam back to their home, chatting happily about something else. When they got home Gem went to the docks, she was sure that Pearl would be there tonight.

And just like Gem had predicted, Pearl was there waiting for her.

Gem told Pearl about what had happened and she told her about the cabin that they could now meet up at. Pearl had seemed happy about that. Pearl had also seemed tired, and so she left after a few hours. Gem was pretty tired too after the day that she had just had.

She went home and went to bed.

Chapter Text

A day passed and Pearl went to visit Gem in Lizzie’s cabin. For the very first time they spent the whole day chatting, for the very first day she they didn't have to keep looking around in case a human would arrive. Pearl had never been that happy, waves of worry left her thank to the new arrangement.

Gem met Joel, the two of them hitting it off better then Pearl and Joel had done.

Lizzie and Joel had joined Pearl and Lizzie in the evening, the four of them had chatted for a while. But eventually it got late and Gem had to leave, Pearl had looked at the time and realized how late it had actually been. Time seemed to fly by whenever Pearl was with Gem, even all those hours had felt like a few minutes.

She had gone home too, almost immediately going to bed.

Now it was the next day and Pearl was walking over to the cabin again. She made sure that no one was around before she entered again. She sat down on the bench and waited for Gem to show up once again. It was nice sitting in the cabin instead of on the beach.

It was often cold in the early morning and the sand wasn't too comfortable. Pearl didn't want to complain since there wasn't any better option at the time. But now, she was warm inside, she didn't have to worry about the temperature, weather or about other humans walking by and seeing Gem. A smile made it's way to Pearl's face, Lizzie really had helped her and Gem.

It didn’t take long before Gem showed up, Pearl smiled as she noticed the orange hair coming to the surface. “Hey, long time no see” Pearl said, subconsciously leaning forward to take a closer look at Gem. “Yeah, we really should meet up more often” Gem replied. The two of them started talking about the most random stuff until Gem said “I would love to see your house one day”

The two of them had talked about what it would be like to see each other's worlds often. They told each other about their worlds whenever they could. But of course seeing was different than just hearing someone talk about it. Unfortunately both Pearl and Gem knew that they wouldn't be able to ever see each other's worlds.

Humans would hurt mers and mers feared humans.

Pearl didn't really understand why Gem wanted to see the human world, she understood less why Gem wanted to see her boring house. “Really, Why? It's a normal house” Pearl asked, her house wasn’t anything special.

“Well I’m curious, you’ve told me so much about it while you were building the furniture and decorating. I would love to actually see it” Gem answered. “Would there be any way for me to somehow visit?”

“I- I don’t think so, there wouldn’t be a way to get you over there without anyone seeing you” Pearl said, she would love to show Gem around and to introduce her to everyone, but the risk was too big.

“Could we do it with Lizzie’s and Joel’s help?” Gem asked, her arms on the floor of the cabin as she looked at Pearl with hope. Pearl hated to break that hope, but you should see? Maybe Gem was right, maybe Lizzie and Joel could help them, maybe they did know a way. There would be no harm in asking.

“That could maybe work, maybe we could get you over there somehow." Pearl started, but she felt hesitant about the situation "But can we risk it, what if someone sees you?” Pearl asked, she didn’t want to do anything to possibly endanger Gem.

“It will be fine, we can figure out a way to do this save between the four of us” Gem said, the two of them kept talking about ways to show Gem around. The plane changed from just Pearl’s base to showing Gem the whole town.

Later that day Joel and Lizzie came into the cabin and Gem and Pearl told their idea to them. The plan was to get some sort of wheelchair for Gem, they could hide her tail inside of it and with a blanket. She could wear mittens to cover her webbed fingers and she just had to not talk to not show her sharp teeth.

“Is it really worth it?” Joel asked, Pearl was wondering the same thing.

Don’t get her wrong, she wanted to show Gem around. But she didn’t want anyone to find out about her being a mer. She didn’t want to risk Gem’s safety.

“We could first try to just bring her to my house, see how that goes?” Pearl suggested. The distance between Pearl and Lizzie and Joel’s house was small, if anything went wrong they could easily go back. That sounded better, not a lot of people would see Gem that way.

It would only be for a little while but Gem still would get to see a part of the human world. Yeah, Pearl could live with that.

There also wasn’t much space in between their houses, it would be one straight line. But Gem would still get to see some human territory. “That sounds smart” Lizzie commented, Pearl nodded in thanks. She knew that Lizzie would understand the want to see the human world.

But Lizzie also understood the dangers like no other, if she agreed it must mean something good. Yeah, this could be a good plan. This could actually work. Hopefully.

“Gem, what do you think about it?” Pearl asked, secretly hoping that she would say no. That she would decide to stay in the water where she was safe.

“I would be happy with anything, I just wanna see something above the water” Gem said, her tail moving behind her like she was a dog wagging its tail. The movement made small waves of water touch the floor of the cabin, Lizzie took a step back to avoid touching it. It seemed like Gem actually wanted to do this.

Why was that even a surprise to Pearl, she knew how badly Gem wanted to see the human lands.

“Let’s do it then,” Pearl said, trying to act happy for Gem even though she was terrified. Her heart beat a little faster at the thought of taking Gem out of the water, at the thought of taking her out of the place where she was safe.

Pearl looked over at Lizzie and Joel, hoping that they would protest. Joel didn't look too happy with this plan, but he kept his mouth shut. Lizzie on the other hand seemed to be just as excited as Gem was. THe two of them started grabbing some things that they could use to smuggle Gem to Pearl's house, Lizzie dragging Joel along with her.

First a plan was made, the three of them would take an old wheelchair and use it to transport Gem. It took a few hours but eventually they were done. The wheelchair now had a hidden compartment where they could hide Gem’s tail.

Pearl and Joel kneeled down in front of the hole in the floor where Gem was waiting. It seemed like there was no convincing Gem that this was a bad idea. And Pearl kind of didn't want to wipe the smile on Gem's face away, so she helped her instead. Everything would probably go right.

The two of them lifted Gem out of the water and into the chair. During this Lizzie stood in the corner of the room, a towel in front of her against the water coming from Gem. The last thing they wanted at the moment was two mers to fish out of the water.

It seemed like Joel had done this before though, he got Gem out carefully and placed her into the chair without a problem. Once she was seated her tail was hidden into the compartment, a blanket placed over the space where her legs were supposed to be.

Joel had given Gem his mintens and she put them on to hide her webbed fingers.

Once Gem's hair had dried her gills and pointed ears weren't a problem anymore. Her hair covered her mer traits pretty well. Lizzie gave Gem a shirt and jacket so that she wouldn’t stand out any more than she already did. Pearl took a step back, Gem looked… Human.

They had actually done it, confidence hit Pearl as she saw this. The plan may actually work.

“Are you comfortable? That doesn’t look comfortable” Joel asked, eyeing Gem from besides Pearl. Pearl had to agree with Joel but Hem just said. “Uhm not really, but I will be fine for a little bit” “Are you sure?” Pearl asked, she didn’t want Gem to be uncomfortable. “Yeah, yeah I’ll be fine. Let’s just go” Gem replied.

Pearl looked at Lizzie and Joel, both of them didn’t look too sure about this plan anymore. But they were excited to show Gem around. Lizzie remembered how exciting everything had been the first time she had gone to the human lands, she had told the group about it while they worked.

She wanted that for Gem.

They went outside and Gem started to look around, a smile appearing on her face as she took everything in. Pearl, Lizzie and Joel explained everything that Gem had questions about. Luckily they didn’t walk into any other people.

It was a small walk to Pearl house so it didn’t take long before they arrived.

Pearl opened the door and let Gem in. Lizzie and Joel left, not wanting to take up more space since maneuvering the wheelchair was already hard enough outside. Pearl showed Gem around the first floor as well as she could.

Gem was amazed by a lot of human inventions, the tv, the microwave, even the sink. "And you can get water from there, whenever?" Gem had asked, Pearl had nodded with a smile. Now that she thought about it, humans had a lot of technology. Pearl wanted to show Gem more but she couldn’t get Gem upstairs in the chair, Gem said that it didn’t matter and that she had seen a lot already.

But Pearl could see some disappointment hidden behind Gem's smile.

She wasn't sure if they would ever do this again, she didn't know if she would ever have the confidence to do this again. So she wanted to show Gem everything she was able to show, even the second floor. She did the only thing she could do and picked Gem up out of the chair, Gem yelped out of surprise and wrapped her arms around Pearl’s neck. Then she started laughing “Pearl”

Pearl started laughing too as she walked up the stairs with Gem in her arms. She started to show Gem the rest of her house, just as she had promised. When they got to Pearl's bedroom she put Gem down on her bed. Needing the rest before bringing Gem back down.

Gem lay against some pillows as she said “Your house is beautiful, I wish I could show you where I live” Pearl wished that too, but she doubted that she could hide her legs in some kind of wheelchair and go to the bottom of the sea. Pearl sat down on her desk chair, not wanting to make Gem uncomfortable. “I think we would need more than a wheelchair for that” Pearl replied, facing Gem.

The two of them stayed upstairs for a bit and just chatted.

They mostly talked about other human inventions, Pearl could see that Gem was amazed by everything. Now that they were far away from the water Pearl even dared to take her phone out. She showed Gem the device, handing it over to her.

"This doesn't look like Lizzie's phone though" Gem had commented, Pearl had never seen Lizzie's phone. "What does Lizzie's phone look like?" she asked curiously. "well it has buttons with numbers on them, and a smaller reflective screen" Gem explained, Pearl tried to imagine what she was talking about. "Like a mobile phone?" she asked.

Gem shrugged "I don't know, I'm just telling you what I saw" she responded, Pearl nodded "Probably an older model, I understand why these new phones break even if you drop them on a pillow. While those old phones could survive a hurricane" Pearl said, Gem was about to respond when the doorbell went off.

"What- what was that?" Gem whispered, Pearl looked towards her bedroom door as if she could see who was in front of her front door by looking at her bedroom door. "The doorbell, someone is in front of my door" she informed Gem. Pearl walked to her bathroom and looked out of her window, she could see Tango, Skizz and Impulse standing in front of her house.

They couldn’t see Gem, they couldn’t know.

Pearl walked back to her bedroom, poking her head into the door and she said “Stay here, my friends are here but I’ll send them away” Gem nodded and asked “Where am I supposed to go like this” with a smile on her face. It seemed like the tension had lessened a bit now that she knew that it was just Pearl's friends.

Pearl laughed, closed the door and walked downstairs.

She opened the door “Hey, Pearl are you ready to go?” Impulse asked, he looked excited. The man was holding a bag in his hand, the other two man seemed to be in the same mood.

“Go?” Pearl asked, where would she go? “Yeah the circus, remember?” No, she didn’t. she had totally forgotten that she said yes to that. She couldn’t leave now, she couldn’t leave Gem. Mostly now since Gem couldn’t go anywhere alone.

“I-” Pearl started “You didn’t forget, did you?” Tango asked.

“O- of course not, it’s just that” think Pearl, think! “I’m not feeling too well, I don’t think that I can come with you” Pearl said, she couldn’t go to the circus if she was feeling sick. Yeah, that was a great excuse.

“Oh, what’s wrong?” Skizz asked, his smile faded as his face turned into one of concern.

“I’m just a little under the weather” Pearl started “I think that it’s got something to do with how tired I’ve been feeling lately. You guys should go to the circus without me, have a good time, bye!” Pearl said, she was about to close her door but Tango blocked the door with his foot.

“We wouldn’t go without you, we can just go another time” Tango said, a sweet smile on his face.

Pearl smiled “Thank you, but Impulse already closed the cafe and everything. I really don’t mind you going, I don’t wanna be the reason that you guys have to miss out on the circus. You must be looking forward to it”

“Don’t worry about that Pearl, we can stay here and keep you company. You shouldn’t be alone while you’re sick” Tango said, why did they have to be such great friends?

“N-no I don’t wanna get you sick too. And it would be boring anyway, I’m just gonna go to sleep” Pearl said, they had to leave. She was risking too much already, they couldn’t know about Gem.

“Don’t worry about us, if you really don’t want us here we’ll leave. But if you’re just worrying about ruining our day or making us sick you don’t have to worry. We want to spend time with you, it doesn’t matter to us that you’re sick” Impulse said with a sweet smile.

Pearl almost wanted to invite them in, spending some time with the three of them sounded great actually. But now with Gem, Gem was more important. Pearl had to get Impulse, Tango and Skizz to leave, now. “I appreciate it, but I really prefer being alone while I’m sick” Pearl responded, really hoping that she didn’t sound rude.

Her Skizz, Impulse and Tango were, offering to skip the circus just so that Pearl wouldn't have to stay alone. And here was Pearl, trying to send them away. She felt awful.

“Okay, we’ll leave you be then. Get better soon” Skizz said.

The others wished her well too and left. Pearl let out a sigh of relief before closing her door. She walked back upstairs and opened the door to her bedroom, Gem was still there. She was staring up at Pearl’s ceiling.

“They’re gone, sorry that it took so long” Pearl said, but Gem didn’t respond. "I totally forgot that we were supposed to go to the circus today. Do- do you know what a circus is? Do they circulate underwater?" Pearl asked, but she didn't get an answer, Gem didn't even look into Pearl's direction.

“Gem?” Pearl asked, she walked closer to Gem. Something was definitely wrong “Are you okay?” it almost looked like… Gem couldn’t breathe. Pearl began to panic, she didn’t remember how long Gem could go without oxygen.

Pearl ran to her bathroom and started filling her bathtub with water, the tub filled painfully slowly. She ran back to her bedroom and picked Gem up, bringing her over to the bathroom and placing her in the bathtub.

She then waited for the water to at least reach Gem’s mouth. Gem barely fit in the bathtub, her tail hanging out. It took a few minutes but eventually bubbles started appearing in the water, she was breathing again.

Pearl let out a sigh of relief, a few minutes later Gem smiled up at Pearl.

“This was such a stupid idea, I’m so sorry” Pearl said once she could look into Gem's eyes again. She shouldn’t have stayed away from Gem for so long. She shouldn’t have taken her out of the water in the first place. Gem shook her head and pulled her hand out of the water, grabbing Pearl’s hand.

The mittens seemed to have disappeared, where to Pearl didn't know, she also didn't care. Pearl was scared to look into Gem's eyes. The few minutes that she had to wait for Gem to wake up were the worst few minutes in her life.

During all of it she had seen Gem in front of her, laying on the bed, unable to go anywhere, unable to breath. She was laying there, trying to move, screaming Pearl's name while Pearl was just downstairs talking to her friends. "Hey" Gem said, Pearl forced herself to look at Gem.

She was smiling.

“Don’t apologize, it wasn’t your fault” Gem said, but Pearl had a hard time believing her. Without Pearl Gem had never left the water, without Pearl Gem wouldn't have come as close to dying as she did.

“I’m the one who left you alone so long, you could have-” Pearl started, but she didn’t want to finish that sentence. “Once you're better I’m bringing you back to the water” Pearl said, leaving no room for arguments. She was expecting Gem to argue but Gem just smiled “Okay”

A few minutes later Gem said that she was well enough again to leave the bathtub. Pearl helped her out and brought her downstairs, placing her back into the chair. She gave Gem a dry shirt and the mittens that had been laying on the bed and they went outside again.

They walked back to Lizzie’s and Joel’s cabin and Pearl helped Gem back into the water. Once Gem was in the water Pearl let out another sigh of relief, she was never doing this again. “I guess next time you’ll just have to come into the water” Gem said, not seeming faced at all by the fact that she had just almost died.

“I guess so, but I can’t hold my breath underwater as long as you can above the water” Pearl said, swimming with Gem actually sounded great. She wished that the two of them could just hang out with each other without having to worry about one of them dying or getting hurt.

“I’ll keep that in mind, meet me back here tomorrow?” Gem asked.

Pearl nodded and they said goodbye. Pearl stared at the water for a few seconds, before getting up and walking home. She walked past Tango and Skizzes house and stopped when she saw them and Impulse through their window.

She did want company now, she didn’t want to be left alone with her thoughts.

Pearl knocked on their door and it didn’t take long before the door opened “Pearl?” Tango asked as he opened the door. “Hey, sorry I know that I said that I didn’t want company earlier but I- I kinda want it now”

Tango opened his mouth but Pearl started speaking again “It’s okay if you guys don’t want to but I thought that we could just watch a movie or something”

“Pearl” Tango said before Pearl could say anything else, Pearl looked up at him.

“Come inside before you get even sicker” Tango said with a smile on his face, he stepped to the side to let Pearl in. Pearl walked inside and was cheerfully greeted by Impulse and Skizz. The three of them watched a movie, Pearl fell asleep halfway through the movie.