The Lab Rat and the Fishtail (Pancakes + Zahara)

HappyPancakes

Edgepeasant
Original poster
LURKER MEMBER
FOLKLORE MEMBER
Writing Levels
  1. Adaptable
Name: Nadia Yung
Age & DOB: 4/27/1991, 27 years old
Looks: 5'7, with a pear shaped body and B cup breasts. She has golden, warm honey skin tone, with freckles. She has brown, upturned eyes, and wavy, shoulder length dark brown hair that frizzes easily. She also has a beak like nose and a big smile that she had to grow to love.


Nadia looked at the specimen in her hand before putting it in her petri dish. She noticed that even with the algae and bacteria clouding the tank, she could still see objects on the other side of the glass. She also noticed that even with her gloves on, seemingly protecting her hands, her fingers were still slightly pruned from last night, and the gloves weren't really doing their job. At least this water was cleaner than the dishwater she came home to last night. Dishwater that didn't have Ingoldian Fungi waiting to sprout, but forks covered in Chinese food leftovers. Naturally, her roommate Heather was probably too passed out to even touch them. And Steve - Heather dreamboat Tinder date gone right - was technically a 'guest' even if he practically lived here at this point.

Nadia glanced back at the tank as she washed her hands, the gloves long disposed of. If she didn't know better, she'd say that even bacteria in a tank had better hygiene than the people around her. But she figured, as she carefully placed part of the specimen under a slide and adjusted the lens on her microscope maybe this was the price of living away from her family. Every time she complained about Heather, or Steve, or even other roommates she'd had in the past, her mom would come up with one of three solutions: Marry a nice boy and she'd have everything paid for move back home, or go live with her extended family. None of those options seemed like something she would rather be doing right now.

The sun was in mid set by the time Nadia left the lab, notes of the specimen carefully crammed into one of her books. Her books were also lovingly shoved into her backpack, forgoing the office bag she was gifted by her aunt. Besides, she would walk easier with a backpack. Honestly, walking from her lab to the campus apartment was one of the best parts of the program. Maybe not in the morning, but definitely right now, with the coast not even two miles away .Definitely another perk of being away from home. The coast was something she loved, even when she was a girl. And Nadia wasn’t ready to uproot her life right now, even if it was for something as seemingly small as a sunset.

Besides, she was happy here. She was happy here. Even if this wasn’t the path she thought her Master’s program was going to take her, she was happy. She was happy, anyway
 
Name: Kai Bo
Age and DOB: 26/04/1438, 580 years old (they can die, it just takes a long time)
Looks:
fbb5d4699c22c0a3147819c5bc1271f7.jpg



Kai was so very old by this point, all of his joints ached and his tail was starting to dim in its color. He was almost surprised that he had lived this long though he knew that it was common to die around this age. He figured he had only a few more months left if he was going to make a guess based on how quickly he was losing his bright blue colored scales. He didn't like guessing but he knew it would be the only warning he would get. When merpeople died, it was often abrupt and you never really knew when it was coming.

He now spent his time swimming in circles listlessly near a coast, staying far enough out that the humans living above ground wouldn't see him but close enough that the water wasn't too cold for his old bones. The only real reason that he kept coming back to this coast when all of his people were further out into the ocean was that he had lost something here, he couldn't quite remember what but he knew he had lost something into these sands and that it was incredibly important to him. He wanted to at least find it before he died and he figured that he would know what it was when he saw it.

Other fish gave Kai a wide berth, as he was carrying his old trident from when he used to be strong enough to fight. Even though he couldn't wield it very effectively by this point he enjoyed the weight in his hands and the comforting feeling of not being by himself. His weapon had been imbued with a type of magic when he first received it, making it an almost sentient object with a few special abilities, this made him feel like he had a companion.

He had left his people years ago, they didn't truly accept him anymore and with his age and he didn't want to force anyone to deal with his death. His people had forsaken his search years ago so he isolated himself to continue searching for the lost object that plagued his every waking moment.

He didn't know what to do anymore, he was just hoping to find it before his life left him and he couldn't search anymore.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
Nadia let the water splash against her feet, chilling her even with her sweater. The sun had started dipping into the sea almost an hour ago, and the sky was starting to darken in proof. It was even colder than it was when she came out from the lab. As much as her body told her to go back in, she was telling herself even more to stay just a little longer. Like the snooze on an alarm clock, Nadia kept telling herself that she had time. Just five more minutes really. There was so much to do. There was the sunset to see. There were rocks and shells she could look at without having to dissect everything about them.

One would think that from all the time she had to look at water – the blues and greens of the algae, the shapes of the specimens in all their forms, the growing gold of the fungus that was finally starting to sprout – that she wouldn’t want to be anywhere near the water, and just go to bed instead. But right now, she wanted to just enjoy herself. She just needed to be. Away from the lab, the smell of every kind of sanitizer and preservation liquids, away from the silicon and test tubes and organisms the human eye shouldn’t have seen. Dipped in the moment. Just be.

The current grew stronger, the proof against the rolled and cuffed hems of her pants. Nadia looked over, the box holding her shoes starting to sway into the current. “Shit”, she thought, pacing over as the box toppled. She cursed herself for trying to pack two books in with the mass of her research, thinking it wouldn’t do too much damage on her back. The weight of her backpack threatened to topple her over as she reached for her shoes. It was no longer a threat, as she actually did topple, even if for a moment into the current.

As she brushed herself off, Nadia rubbed her eyes against any part of her that wasn’t drenched before looking back at the ocean floor. She swore she saw something, something written in a language she hadn’t learned yet, or hadn’t known written. She waited until the current died down some before bending down and looking more closely. It wasn’t Sanskrit, though it had the swirls like it. In fact, Nadia had the feeling that it wasn’t in any language she recognized. Ingrained in sea glass, Nadia thought she’d easily be able to pick it out.

But the more she tried to pull, the more she realized that there was something more beneath the sand. Nadia kept trying to pull, not noticing the glow growing stronger underneath her palms until it engulfed her, knocking her back and unconscious. She hadn’t known it then, but she’d been knocked further back than she expected, and wasn’t where she was supposed to be.
 
Time: 1500

Kai had just won a grand competition, winning the chance to try and court the highest born woman in his colony. A shining amulet was placed around his neck and he raised his trident in celebration, pulling cheers from the crowd who had been watching before he turned and swam out of the makeshift auditorium that was really only made out of a chasm in the sea floor. He grinned to himself as he made his way to his own home, he had been the youngest competitor even if he was 62 years old by this point. He was still young, essentially just out of his teenage years in comparison to how long his life would be. He entered his home, it had been dug out of the side of a coral reef, near the bottom so it didn't disturb the fish and dropped his new amulet on one of his little tables, turning his mind from it and towards his food.

He ate his meal quickly before grabbing the amulet in his hand and exiting his home, swimming towards the more shallow waters the would enable him to bask in the sunlight easier. He pulled himself up onto a rock cropping and place his amulet beside him, resting it on the rock so that he could relax and maybe get a bit of a tan in the sunlight. He didn't like how pale his skin was and was constantly trying to darken it so that he could seem a little different from the rest of the males in his colony and stand out a little bit.

It was here that he lost his amulet, only an hour or two after he had received it. It slipped into the water below him without him even noticing as he was fast asleep in the sunlight. He woke up at the sound of the splash and sat up quickly, turning to find his amulet gone. He dropped into the water after it and went searching, the water wasn't too deep but the current was quick enough that the amulet was truly swept away from him before he had the chance to find it again. He dejectedly pulled himself back up onto the rock cropping after an hour of searching and sighed, his chance of raising his status was now gone.
 
Nadia winced as she gained back her consciousness, her head still throbbing from where it hit the sand. She finally opened her eyes enough to see that the sun was much higher than it was before she passed out. She wondered if she had a concussion as she reached for her phone. She didn't think she hit the sand that hard, but if it was enough to make her pass out for as long as she had, she had the feeling it could have been a concussion. Nadia was glad she knew one of the neurology specialists on campus well enough for some recommendations and possibly a scan. All she would have to do was give him a call and she was sure he'd be more than happy to help her out.

Nadia remembered the schedule from when they spoke before, and knew he wasn't lecturing just yet, or doing any workshops this week. So she decided to give him a call as she looked for her shoes. "Damn things must've gone into the ocean. I can't even see them anymore" she frowned, tapping impatiently. Feeling in her pocket, she noticed that thing she reached for earlier somehow made it there. Nadia scanned it over, gingerly brushing her thumb against various parts of it. It was an amulet, definitely the most beautiful thing she'd ever seen left behind on this beach. But it was missing a string, and at closer glance, looked more corroded than she realized. That or it was painted like that, and really well to look real.

Putting the amulet back in her pocket, Nadia frowned down at her phone. Dr. Ming never took this long to answer before. In fact, it wasn't even ringing. "The hell?" she said, looking down at her phone. Sure enough, there were no bars on her phone; she had no service. "Shit, there better not be sand in this or something" She said, shaking the phone and trying to get it in shape. She even tried cycling it off and on with a hard restart. None the less, nothing Nadia tried, worked. "Maybe Heather might now about this," She said, looking in the direction of her apartment. At least, where her apartment should have been.

In fact, Nadia couldn't see anything: The campus, the apartments, the lifeguard station, even the new roads. They were all gone. This didn't make any sense! There was no way she could have been washed out to some remote part of the beach, and no way that nothing she tried worked. There weren't even people here! "Where am I?" She wondered, looking for the closest person she could find as the waves crashed against her legs, much more violently than the tides said this morning. Eventually, while the figure was a bit further than she expected, she saw a man perched on a rock, his legs probably in the water.

"Excuse me!" Nadia yelled out, "I was wondering if you could help me out!" she continued, wondering if she should swim over.
 
Kai had been sitting on his rock, wondering how he had let this chance slip out of his fingers so quickly when he heard a yell behind him. He turned around, seeing a woman standing in the water and yelling for his attention. He wondered what she was doing there, the current was strong enough that it would sweep her away with a strong wave. He had watched it happen with enough humans who weren't prepared for the strength of the ocean.

It seemed like she hadn't noticed his tail so he decided he would help, he wanted to at least get something good out of this day and helping people was always enough to make his day better. "I'll come to you, the current is really strong out here!" He yelled back to her, waiting for a motion of understanding before sliding into the water and turning towards her. He knew that most humans had no clue about his kind and he also knew that there were stories and rumors about them so he wasn't sure if she knew anything true about his kind.

He made his way through the waves, heading towards the woman standing at the edge of the water and stopped a few feet away. He stayed far enough out that the water would hide his tail a little bit, though it wasn't too difficult to see it if she truly looked. "What are you doing out here? The water is strong enough to sweep you out to the middle of the sea if you lose your footing," he asked her, truly concerned for her safety even though they weren't of the same kind.

He looked over the woman, noting that she was dressed incredibly different from the other humans he usually saw standing on the beach and not understanding why. He was vaguely aware of what year it was and knew that her clothes did not fit in at all from what he was used to seeing. "I'm Kai, you are?" He asked, trying his best to remain polite despite how confused he was.