Cloelia’s face lit up with a smile. Not so much because she wanted to give the shiny badge back -- she’d rather keep it, really -- but because she was engaging with a police-person who wasn’t all shouty and angry because she had just stolen something that someone else had left unattended. It was a new experience. Tucking her notebook under her arm, she began to rummage through her bag with her tongue sticking just a bit out the corner of her mouth. Everything seemed to get lost in this bag. She really didn’t understand how. There! With a delighted expression that, to other merfolk, would have spelled out “Found it!” she pulled the object of all this fuss out and held it up for clear view. It was quite clearly a badge. With the words ‘Michigan’ and ‘police’ on it. Surely it belonged here, if nowhere else?
Setting her notepad down on the nearest flat surface, she tried to write neatly at the bottom. Without all the capital letters that she used before, which made her handwriting look incredibly lazy.
‘it was in the river.’
And then, after a moment’s thought:
‘i can’t talk. sorry.’
It took a few more moments for the mermaid to stop staring at the page. She had used a different pen from the one she’d used to make her signs -- which was black. This one was red, sparkly ink. Her eyes widened significantly and her head tilted at the page before she remembered there was another person involved in the exchange.
‘they might be missing it.’
She would also acknowledge that they might be dead, but it wasn’t a very nice thing to just come out and say.