"I am, most of the time." Juliet kicked away to swim in broad circles around the other mermaid with powerful strokes of her tail, smiling. "It can be a pain sometimes not being able to change back, but I always loved the ocean. There are tunnels that go to pools at a few different places, so at least I can go visit family and friends rather than make them come all the way out here."
Maybe later she'd explain about how she used to be able to change back and forth, and what happened to her away, but that was a story for later.
She straightened and came back alongside Cora. "Cris's world was having a war between other mer, he was a soldier there. It hurts him sometimes to talk about it." It would have been wonderful to see what his world was like before the war broke out, and to see how merfolk lived in cities. "A city like he had back in his world arrived here a few months after he did, but there's no one else in it yet aside from us. It isn't more than half an hour's swim from here."
"The future is..a lot like now really, just better gadgets and more people."