alexis! (celebutante) wrote in valloic, @ 2020-06-01 14:09:00 |
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Entry tags: | !: action/thread/log, ₴ inactive: alexis rose, ₴ inactive: cleo sertori |
Who: Cleo & Alexis
What: Cleo shows off her awesome merm tail, during a picnic on the beach
When: Last Thursday
Where: ...the beach
Warnings: Nada nada limonada
Status: Complete
Cleo was nervous. She couldn’t help it. Back home being a mermaid was a secret. It was something that would get them forced into experimentation or maybe even the circus. It wasn’t something she could tell people. Not even her family knew and it was hard to keep something so huge from them. It was hard to let Sam in because that was just another person to keep a secret from and soon she’d be at university and have to keep it from even more people. The weight of a secret like that was a lot to bear, but she’d done it because there wasn’t an option that didn’t involve giving up her powers. She refused. She couldn’t give it up here anyway. She hugged her knees to her chest. She’d worn a bathing suit to the beach, wearing only a pair of shorts over it. She wasn’t self conscious about the bikini because she grew up at the ocean and she didn’t need to be. But she was going to have to show Alexis her tail and that was a lot more of a thing. “Thanks for the food,” she said after a moment. “Of course! Here, help yourself,” Alexis flipped open the top of the picnic basket with a flourish - as promised, no sashimi even if Cleo said her father had a fishing boat or whatever. Instead, she’d packed peanut butter and jelly sandwiches (handmade with love and care!), some chips and sodas. Not exactly the healthiest thing but it was tasty - and she really wasn’t the greatest at cooking anyway. Their whole family was notoriously bad at it - just ask about her mom and David’s enchiladas adventure. Fold in the cheese? What did that even mean? Anyway, she happily munched on a sandwich, wearing a breezy sundress and a straw hat that shielded her from the sun - she had delicate porcelain skin, okay, and her days of tanning booths were long gone. It was comfy out here, on the golden-hued sand and the cool water bubbling and fizzing like soda pop. “So people give you a hard time back home for being a mermaid?” she asked curiously. It was sad. The idea of them actually existing was so cool, and she couldn’t wait to see Cleo’s mermaid majesty. Cleo took the sandwich, not entirely sure why it was this over fish. She figured that it seemed like people stopped eating fish once they were part fish, but sometimes you just liked to eat fish. Not her pet fish, though. Those were different. “No one really knows,” she said after a moment of silence. “Lewis, Zane, and Will know, but that’s because they’ve dated one of us. Lewis is my boyfriend.” She smiled thinking about him before the realization that he wasn’t here settled in and she frowned. “Back when Emma was there, there was a marine biologist and she set up cameras and caught us on camera, so she knew we were mermaids. She tricked Lewis and held him prisoner on her boat. This was before Zane knew. They lured us to this special place we had and screwed a gate over the exit in order to try to force us to agree to let them experiment on us.” She didn’t really like the memory of it. “Luckily when Zane walked in and saw it was us, he got Lewis and they used a boat to pull the gate off and we got out. We had to fake give up our powers for twelve hours to get her to leave us alone. Only we didn’t know we were faking till later.” She shrugged. “So we’re really careful who we trust because people will either see us as something to experiment on or exploit.” She didn’t want to be seen as either. She took a bite of her sandwich, chewing quietly as she stared out at the water. “I can’t tell my parents and Kim’s already tried to expose us once, but I convinced her that she had the wrong idea about us.” That was so awful - Alexis gasped, especially at that point in the story where Cleo and her merm friends got trapped and threatened with experimentation. “Humans can be really mean,” she said, and it was no offense against her because, yeah, she may be one of them but she knew how terrible her kind could be. “They just saw you as disposable or something, like you don’t have feelings. No one would want to be experimented on.” Luckily that wasn’t what she had in mind - no, she just wanted to see if Disney was spot-on with their Ariel interpretation or if they made shit up. Plus, there was something whimsical about it, all these mythical creatures - fairytales and her childhood stories come to life, which was way awesome. Alexis clung to those moments of whimsy, because she’d been forced to grow up really quickly (flung into show biz at a young age) and it sucked. She unscrewed the top of a soda bottle, taking a drink. And wouldn’t think about the sugar content - today was a special treat. And she wanted something besides a kale smoothie or vitamin water. “So about this boyfriend - “ she grinned broadly, “...was it serious?” Cleo nodded at her words. Humans could be. If she’d been an ordinary girl, then she’d never have had to deal with most of the things that came with them. But part of her knew that she’d never give it up. It would be hard to give it up and now she wasn’t even sure if another moon could even take their powers. They’d been through losing them for twelve hours and Charlotte had tried to take all of their powers on the full moon that happened only every fifty years, but they’d won in the end and Charlotte lost her powers instead. Cleo forced her attention to the second conversation. Lewis. “Well, we’ve known each other for a long time. Since we were kids. He’s always been there for me no matter what. Especially when I needed help with science. We broke up once because I was dealing with a lot, but then we got back together.” She breathed in, letting it out. “Recently I had to let him go to America because he needed to fulfill his potential. He was going to give it up for me, but I talked to my step mom and she said we both need the chance to fulfill our potentials and be the people we need to be. We’re trying to make the long distance thing work for us. Hopefully when it’s over we’ll be back and better than ever. Either way, no matter what happens, we’ll be friends. I trust him completely.” Which was true. Lewis was the first one to know about their secret, the first to protect them from people. Sort of the reason Dr. Denman knew about them in the first place, but that was an accident and Cleo already forgave him. It was just that the distance was a lot more here. She couldn’t swim an entire ocean to him if she chose to. Long distance relationships were hard - Alexis knew that firsthand. She and Ted had tried to make it work, after that little snafu where he ended up in the Galapagos before she was meant to join him, and it just - well, it ended up not working out. They loved each other, but sometimes love wasn’t enough. Still, she wasn’t about to rain on the parade of young love. When everything was so sparkly like a babbling brook and just perfect, like nothing could touch you. “When you have a connection, that’ll always be there,” she said - because, yeah, she and Ted would still be friends. Probably. It was just that they wanted different things in life and those things weren’t compatible, which was fine. It happened on occasion. “I’m glad you found someone you can trust though. Gotta hang onto those rare gems in life.” There was a quick nod. She knew it might not work out, but she didn’t want to not try because it was scary. That wasn’t really how she did things. Well, not anymore anyway. If she could get over her fear of water, she could probably get over anything. Even if things felt like they’d changed a lot recently. “He’s really the best.” Finishing her sandwich, she took a small sip of the drink she’d been given, careful to wipe off any condensation beforehand. She knew, technically, that she was supposed to show off being a mermaid, but it was probably easier just to be in the water when it happened. Taking in a deep breath, she looked over at Alexis. “So...are you ready?” Was she ready? So ready, like, yesterday. “I’ve been waiting for this moment my whole life,” Alexis practically gushed, but come on, could you blame her? Mermaids were awesome and Cleo was like, adorable. This sweet little half-fish person that Alexis wanted to protect - not that she had a lot of ways of doing that, besides imparting valuable life skills (like how to negotiate in Arabic and how to free yourself if duct taped to a chair) and fashion sense. Noodle arms only went so far, she didn’t punch very hard, and had zero superpowers. Besides sheer determination, damnit. She set her soda down and brushed PB&J crumbs off her lap. “Let’s do this! And no pressure,” she added. “I’m like, super excited so I already think your tail is amazing.” Cleo fidgeted for a moment, but stood up. She’d never purposefully shown anyone this. Accidentally was the only experience she had. Or...after saving Rikki from a boat that was about to explode. She twisted the ends of her hair the closer that she got to the water, but she was okay. She was safe. No one was really close to them and she could always swim away quickly if she had to. She walked quickly into the water, diving in. There was really no going back after this. When she resurfaced, she swam a little closer to shore so that Alexis could see her tail easier. There weren’t any clams to be seen. She had a pretty good top covering that matched her tail. Glancing back at her tail, she guessed it did almost seem to sparkle a little. She hadn’t really thought about it as much before. But there was still that lingering uncertainty that curled around her and was evident on her face. It was hard to tell if people were okay with it or not. Sometimes they were over interested, too. With the mermaid part of you. From what Bella said. “Ooh!” Alexis shifted so she had a better view too, getting as close to the water as possible, standing there on the shore - it felt like squish on her feet, between her toes; when she was a little girl she and David used to make mud pies, but that was a long time ago. Still, she was brought back to the nostalgia of her youth, when she saw the shimmer of Cleo’s tail, sparkling like marquise-cut diamonds. You could practically see the elation in her jade eyes. “Cleo, you’re amazing!” she clapped her hands, because everything was so pretty and deserved a round of applause. Hopefully Alexis could ease her worry a little bit - though she understood why this might make the girl self-conscious. “You’re a strong, independent woman. And a mermaid. You’re beautiful.” Cleo was still awkward with taking compliments. She knew that she wasn’t exactly ugly, but it was weird to hear compliments from people who weren’t her dad or Lewis and her hand came up to tuck her hair behind her ear as if it actually needed the help since it was wet. But Alexis seemed pretty clearly excited about the whole thing, so she pushed forward a smile to trick her brain into thinking that she wasn’t still somewhat anxious. “It’ll take a while to dry off without Ri-” She halted, not sure if she should give away anyone’s identities in case they showed up and didn’t want to be comfortable with people knowing. Rikki could be very serious and intense about their secret. For good reason, but she didn’t want to get any of the girls in trouble or make them upset. “My friend. She can heat water.” She considered something for a moment before she moved her hand up, twisting it just slightly and lifting up a ball of sea water in the air. She focused for a moment, almost sad that Bella wasn’t here to make it a more permanent thing like they had with Rikki. She changed the shape of the ball of water, making it look more like a mermaid. After a moment, she let it go and the water rained down into the water. “I can also make wind, but I feel like that’s less...fun for the moment.” Okay, so the tall was way awesome, but seeing that water stuff was like icing on the cake. Alexis was pretty awed, making another sound of glee. “I’ll call you next time I need a windswept look for my hair,” she teased playfully. “That’s so cool though. Really.” She inched a little closer, trying to keep her hands to herself - she almost had to slap her own fingers because it was rude to just see what a mermaid tail felt like without asking permission. Cleo seemed anxious enough, so maybe next time - Alexis didn’t want to weird her out too much. “I know it’s like, a big deal to show someone. So thank you.” And she meant that, with every bit of her Prada-loving heart. Cleo figured she was okay since mostly Alexis just seemed to still be excited. And she wasn’t being super weird about the whole tail thing and asking her to do weird things for her. So that was something, but Cleo knew that she was going to need to get out of the water eventually, so she started to swim as close to shore as she could, feeling the sand under her tail. She dragged herself out of the water until she was just out of the water, turning over and propping herself up on her elbows. “Yeah. Thanks for not being weird about it. I’ll have to probably get used to people in general. Cause they’ll be...you know. People.” She wasn’t sure that explained anything exactly. “There’s a teen party at a quarry, which I looked up and there’s water and I don’t really know. I guess the chance of water mishaps is high. But it would be an easy way to make new friends around my age.” People are people surprisingly made a lot of sense. Alexis got it. And while she was perfectly happy to be Cleo’s friend and big sister type (neat!), she definitely agreed that having friends closer to her own age would be a good thing too. “You should totally go,” she encouraged, sloshing a bit in the water, looking down to see the seaweed and any little fishies that may swim by. Or sharks. Hopefully there weren’t any sharks out here. “I mean, yeah, people suck sometimes. But some are really good. You can give them a chance to prove that. Otherwise you could be missing out on a lot of fun.” Like, she didn’t know all those quarry kids but most seemed okay. Some were probably weird. Either way, it’d just be your typical teen party where they’d ‘rebel’ by drinking and doing dumb things - she’d been there. And had done that. Cleo had been around sharks but she hadn’t run into as many she had around Mako. At least not here. But there were a lot of beautiful fish. She’d considered starting a new fish tank, but she was still in the midst of learning about this place and what the people here considered endangered or protected species and she didn’t want to get in trouble. So she was going to make sure she knew the ins and outs of things here before she started something. “Yeah. Things here are a little different from home, I guess. People aren’t as...surprised by the fact that people have abilities, I guess.” And maybe she wouldn’t be too awkward. She’d probably still be awkward. “It seems like there’s a lot of people going.” She shrugged slightly. “If you want to sometime, we can go swimming together. I bet we could even find a dolphin to swim with.” “It feels like everyone has some kind of extra ability here,” Alexis snorted. She wasn’t mad about it though - she just found it amusing how quickly she’d adjusted to the idea. Maybe because her life had been far from ordinary, and she had plenty of wacky stories all on her own - or her bizarre wig-wearing mother prepared her for this. This, and therapy - Moira Rose meant well but she wasn’t always the best at doing the mom thing. Not like Alexis knew much about it, but she was pretty sure you were supposed to know your own child’s middle name. Moving on. “I’d love to go swimming!” she brightened. “With a dolphin especially. You’re on, girl.” Then she decided to get more comfortable, just plopping in the sand near where Cleo was resting. “I’ll just wait here with you in the meantime? Until your tail dries. Make sure nothing happens.” Hey, it was secluded and sunshiney - and Alexis had nowhere to be, so it seemed like a peaceful idea to her. Cleo smiled. It was nice to have someone to swim with when she was by herself. Though, later on, she was going to see if she couldn’t find any other mermaids around. It was possible that she had just missed them before. Or they were not used to her and she’d made them nervous accidentally. And so they hadn’t introduced themselves yet. If there were unicorns, there was a pretty good chance of other mermaids. Maybe they could help her. “It’ll take a little bit, but it’s not the worst.” And she appreciated her concern about making sure nothing happened. “If anything did, I could just blow sand in their eyes and get myself back to the water. And I can swim really fast.” She smiled. “But thank you for looking out for me. That’s really nice of you.” |