Chapter Text
It's not that Dave likes this pond, specifically, though he did find a cool dead frog here once. It now lives in a jar on his shelf. No, the real draw is that not a lot of people know about it, it's hidden in a stand of trees, and he's made up a nice little spot to sit and chill. You would never look at a guy as cool and awesome as Dave Strider and think that he needs a special spot to chill. One glance would tell you that this is the guy who invented cool. So cool, he's ice cold. And what's better than being cool? Ice cold.
But sometimes, even a cool guy needs to get away from everything and just disconnect.
He sits on the wooden freight palette he dragged out here, underneath the little tarp he set up for rainy days, and uses a stick to poke at the lily pads that float near the edge of the water. Not trying to do anything to them in particular, just watching them move, watching the water ripple around them. They're currently in bloom, beautiful pink blossoms that someone who's into that kind of shit would probably love. He's impassive about them, though; mostly, they give him something to focus on while he empties his mind and zones out for a while. It's nice to just not think for an hour or two.
Dave is used to occasional interruptions. After all, he's out in nature. A duck lands on the pond, a fish breaches the surface of the water to snap up a poor, unsuspecting bug. The odd splash he sees at the corner of his vision barely even registers. Nor does the second one. By the third, though, he's starting to get suspicious, and is unwillingly drawn back into the real world.
The thing about animals is that they're fairly predictable. Frogs make a big plop. Birds would be easily visible. And fish breaching the surface of the water... don't usually do so, then swim halfway across the pond in a matter of seconds and do it again. Crawling up to the edge of the water, he tries to peer in; he even takes his beloved shades off to try and get a better look under the water's surface. Pushing aside the lily pads, he squints, wondering if maybe he's found the Loch Ness Monster. Or Bigfoot. Bigfoot can swim, right?
The last thing he expects is a humanoid hand to reach out and boop his nose.
Pushing back from the edge, Dave takes a moment to gather himself, trying to convince himself that he wasn't actually scared, just startled. There's a difference. It's just some kid swimming around under there. Kid's got a good set of lungs, but they're going to have to surface eventually. So, he just sits back again and watches as the various breaches go around the pond, causing a whole mess of ripples that collide into little mini-waves. An ant would probably see that as an entire tsunami. And he waits.
15 seconds. 30 seconds. 60 seconds. A minute and a half. Two minutes.
...okay this is starting to get bizarre. He's definitely got an eye on the figure under the water, because he can see the vague shadow and the spots where they break the surface of the water. There's no way they snuck in a breath without him noticing. And yet they keep going. Since he's fairly sure there aren't any Navy SEALs doing diving drills in an unremarkable, small-town pond, he crawls over to the water's edge again, trying to get a better look.
He is rewarded with a face full of water.
"Hey!" He sputters and scrambles back. "What the fuck?!"
The only response is another splash, and that's when he spots her. Peeking out from underneath the lily pads is a pair of eyes and dark hair floating weightlessly in the water. From what he can see, she looks fairly human... except for the subtle pink glow to her eyes. And the shiny, elegant tail she kicks up behind her.
Dave's first thought is, why would a mermaid live in a pond, of all places? Don't they live in the ocean?
Dave's second thought is, holy fuck is that a real mermaid?!
No. No way. No how. She's gotta be one of those mermaid actresses, the ones with the really fancy latex tails that do shows for kids and stuff. He can't really explain the eyes... bioluminescent contact lenses? Do those exist? Whatever. This is just some strange girl, dressed up as a mermaid and punking on him, and suddenly he appreciates her antics a lot less.
"Look, whatever, you want to swim around in a dinky pond like a goldfish in a novelty cup from Margaritaville, you do you," he levels, unsure if she can even hear him. "Just don't do that again, aight?"
"But I don't want to swim around in a dinky pond! Especially not like a goldfish!"
Dave nearly jumps out of his skin as she pokes her head up over the surface of the water. One of the lily pads gets caught in the tangle of her dark, wet hair, which plasters itself to her forehead. Despite the fact that her hair seems to go on forever behind her, it's surprising that it's not her most striking feature. Nor is it her warm beige skin with the luster of a seashell and sparkling like the sand on the beach at sunrise. Or her vivid pink eyes, like a sunset over the ocean. The most notable features are the fins sticking out where ears should be, and from the way she flicks them, he's pretty sure those aren't fancy prosthetics.
"Wow, okay." It's not often that Dave Strider, cool guy extraordinaire, is lost for words. In fact, it's usually the opposite. His friends often complain of being unable to get him to stop talking. But now, his mouth feels dry, and every witty quip he tries to utter dies in his throat. "You're a mermaid."
Very eloquent. And probably obvious to everyone but him.
"We prefer the term merfolk," she corrects with a giggle. "But yes! You figured it out!"
Dave finds himself staring at her. His head tilts to the side, and so does hers. He shifts his head to the other side, and she follows suit. He scrunches up his face, and she mimics him. And when he sticks his tongue out, it's no surprise that she does the same.
"Okay. Okay, so. Okay." Pull it together, Strider. Think of some salient questions. "What? I mean. What? I mean... huh?"
This earns him another giggle, which would be annoying if it wasn't so cute. The sound, the way her eyes crinkle at the edges, the way her fins twitch...
"Hmm, let me help you out a bit here." She swims forward to where she can rest her arms on the shore, casual as anything. She takes the lily pad from her hair and snaps the flower off, sticking it behind her ear-fin. "Yes, I am merfolk. No, we do not normally live in freshwater ponds. Yes, I come from the ocean. No, I do not know how to get back. Does that cover it?"
"Woah, slow down there, Ariel." Dave holds up his hands in a placating gesture, even though... she's already said what she had to say. "Sorry, you lost me at the left turn before the mermai— merfolk thing."
"Okay, well, just so you know, my name is not Ariel. It's Feferi," she says with a little pout. "And I do not ap-perch-iate the stereotyping! Not all merfolk are like your human cartoons, you know!"
"Uh. Wait, how do you know about my human cartoons? Do you have like... underwater TVs? Underwater BluRay players? Huh. I guess BluRay is kind of an ocean sounding name, now that I think about it. Blue. Ray. But I don't mean the fish, I—"
"We are not dumb." Feferi rolls her eyes and starts toying with another nearby lily pad. "And we have ways of getting information about the human world. I've never seen a human cartoon, but I know the one you're talking about, because it's kind of a huge joke where I'm from!"
"So let me see if I got this straight," Dave says, still trying to wrap his mind around this. "Fae-Fieri, you're merfolk, and you know about The Little Mermaid— that's the title, don't shoot the messenger— and you come from the ocean, but you're lost so that's why you're hanging out and vibing in this pond here? Am I on track?"
"Yep! That's about it. It's Fe-fer-i though," she says, enunciating the syllables.
"And you're not worried that I'm gonna go back and call up Sea World? Have them put you in a fish tank for everyone to come and gawk at? Everyone pay us a $100 to come look at the pretty fish girl, never mind the fact that her tank is the size of a postage stamp, she's fine, we promise. Who the fuck is Shamu?"
While Dave is often prone to rambling, this is next level. There's usually some sort of logic, in his mind, about the things he's saying. But now he's just... saying words. For the sake of saying words. Because if he's not talking, then he has to sit in silence with the fact that mermaids are real.
"Aww, you think I'm pretty?" Feferi bats her eyes and wiggles her fins. Shit, Dave thinks. That's adorable as fuck. "But no. First of all, I wouldn't let them take me to that place. Especially that place, ugh. And second off, we're pretty good at hiding! I mean, you haven't ever seen another merfolk, have you?"
So, she knows what SeaWorld is. Dave thinks briefly about asking her how she knows that, and just as quickly decides against it. A whale probably told her or something. Or maybe they got intel on Blackfish down there. They have The Little Mermaid, so why not?
"Point," Dave concedes with a shrug. "But, and I dunno if you noticed this, this pond is pretty small. Not a lot of places to hide."
Feferi scoffs. "I don't need a place to hide, silly! Give me more credit than that!"
"Right, okay," Dave says, running his fingers through his hair. He's already on information overload, so why not keep piling it on? "So, you use some mystical magical merbullshit to hide yourself. You know what, I don't even want to know. I'm gonna assume that's the same reason you speak English and a whole bunch of stuff that I don't really want answers to. How the hell did you get lost, though?"
"That's shrimple," she sighs, resting her chin on her forearms. She looks sad, and Dave feels a little bad for asking. Was it really that rough? "I wanted to get away from home for a little while, so I just found a river and swam up it. And then I swam up different rivers until I found this pond! At that point I realized I didn't know how to get back so I decided to stay put, hoping someone would come to find me! But... they didn't, and then the river dried up, and now I'm stuck!"
"So... wait." Dave is doing the mental math. He knows what river she's talking about; it branches off a larger river and used to feed into the pond. After a period of unusually heavy rains, the water level was unusually high, but after subsequent months of summer drought, the water level had gone down at the source, and the river had reduced to barely a stream. Enough to get your feet wet, but not enough for a full-grown mermaid to swim down. "You've been here for two months? How come I've never seen you before, and why would you show yourself now?"
"Your months equate roughly to a lunar cycle, right? In which case, yes! I've only seen you out here two or three other times, though." Dave wants so badly to interrupt her and ask why she was watching him like some sort of creeper. Aquatic creeper. She keeps going before he can get a word in. "I think the other times, I must have been napping... there's not a lot to do out here. Which is also why I wanted to say hello! I'm getting pretty bored, actually."
"Got it..." Dave does not got it, but he's trying to digest all of this, like he stuffed himself silly at the crab bake. Wait, is that offensive?
"Hey! Do you have a name?"
The question snaps him out of his thoughts. "Oh. Yeah. It's Dave. So... what now? How do I get you out of here?"
The words leave his mouth before he can even properly consider them. Is he finally going off the deep end? Pun unintended, but acknowledged. Are the years of tolerating his Bro's weird-ass puppet fetish finally catching up to him, and now he's just doing whatever foolish thing comes to mind as a coping mechanism?
"You don't have to do anything!" Feferi says softly, tilting her head to the side. The way her skin glitters like she was dipped in a vat of body shimmer at Bath & Body Works is kind of mesmerizing.
"Yeah but... I want to." Fuck. He might actually mean it. "What am I gonna do, leave you here all bored and everything? Nah, we gonna get you back to the ocean, gillfrond."
"Heehee! Gillfrond, nice one!" Feferi looks elated at the fish pun for a moment, her smile reaching her fins and showing little dimples in her cheeks. In the next moment, though, she turns serious. "I don't even know which way the ocean is, though."
"Roughly that-a-way, maybe 30 or 40 miles? Don't ask me what that is in nautical miles or fathoms or whatever because I have no fuckin' clue."
"It sounds pretty far."
"Yeah... it is. We'd need a way to get you there. Wheelbarrow, maybe? That's a hella long walk though. Maybe I can rent an ATV and one of those little trailer attachments? Then your gills would dry out or whatever, but maybe I could bring a spray bottle or a water gun... but then how do we get you into it? I'd have to park the ATV back at the trailhead and I guess... carry you there? How much do you weigh? Wait, that's rude, fuck, I don't know..."
"I have a better idea!" Feferi swims away, causing the lily pads around her to rise and dip with the ripples she creates, and comes back with a waterlogged linen satchel, which she sets on the shore. It's not doing much to beat the Ariel allegations, but Dave keeps that to himself. She takes a decorative comb from inside, adorned with seashells and starfish, then lays the satchel out on the shore and sets the comb down on top. "What if you just... stole my comb?"
"It's a pretty sick comb, not gonna lie, but I'm not following how that helps."
"It's a curse that all merfolk bear!" Feferi explains, her eyes going wide as she gestures out dramatically. "Thousands and thousands of years ago, merfolk became too vain and greedy. They started tormenting humans who entered their waters. And so, a sea god decided to strike them down! You know those stories about Atlantis? Same thing! And as punishment, merfolk were cursed, that should any of their beloved personal belongings be stolen by a human, the merfolk will turn into a human themselves! And be made to walk around on land for as long as the human holds their item."
"Wait... really?" It does track with what Dave would have assumed, but Atlantis? Is she for real?
"Hahah, no, silly!" Feferi laughs and reaches over to pat Dave's knee. He doesn't move away, but he does look at her hand warily. "I was just pulling your fins. I mean, the turning human part is true, but I don't think anyone knows why anymore. I guess it's just more... how did you put it? Magical merbullshit?"
"Good answer." Dave can't argue with her turning his words back on him. "So... how does this work? Because it kind of looks like you're offering it up to me, I don't think that counts as stealing."
"Well..." Feferi pauses to think for a moment, her lips pursing together as she tries to puzzle out the logistics of this. "I would be pretty upset if someone took it, and I couldn't use it! This hair takes a lot of work to keep nice!"
"Yeah. But if you're watching me take it, and not stopping me, that's basically letting me take it."
"Hmm... okay! I've got it." Feferi nestles into the crook of her arm, head turned away from the satchel, and closes her eyes. "There. Now I'm resting and totally not paying attention!"
Okay then. Here goes nothing. Dave reaches over, grabbing the comb, and watches as... nothing happens. Nothing whatsoever. He's not sure how quickly it's supposed to work, but he gets the impression it's not supposed to take this long. She would have said something, right? So, he improvises, shoving the comb back in the satchel, and taking the whole thing, slinging the strap over his shoulder.
And then it happens.
Something under the water glows and then bubbles, and Feferi's head snaps upright as she gasps. She goes stiff, only tethered to the shore because her arms were already there. She looks like she's having some sort of medical episode. Does it hurt? Dave wonders if he should just give it back. He can figure something else out, and the last thing he wants to do is be responsible for the death of such a majestic sea creature. Imagine the havoc that would cause for merfolk/human diplomacy.
It feels like forever, but really only takes a few seconds before Feferi relaxes. Dave doesn't even have to ask if it worked, because she's already giggling madly and kicking her feet out of the water, just as soon as the transformation is complete. It's like watching a goddamn duckling going for a swim for the first time. He's happy to just sit there and let her splash around with her brand-new legs. He's not concerned in the least. Until she starts pulling herself out of the water.
She is... very, very naked.
Immediately, Dave turns his head away and shields his eyes. "Ooookay, fishter, you... have no clothes on."
"Um. Duh." Even though Dave can't see Feferi's face, he can hear her rolling her eyes. "I wasn't wearing clothes before, why would I be wearing them now?"
"'Kay, but you know I can't go parading you around town like this is the Emperor's New Clothes and I've bamboozled you into walking around naked like a damned fool. First of all, people would think I'm creepy, and they'd be right. Second of all, I'm not having you get arrested for public indecency. You don't even have ID, they'd probably try to deport you, but it's not like they can call up the government of the ocean and be like, hey, we got your fish girl here. Yeah, she has legs. Yeah, she's naked. Yeah, you wanna come get her? Cool, thanks."
Feferi is suspiciously quiet for a moment, and Dave wants nothing more than to turn back and see what's wrong.
"So, what do we do?" she finally says, sounding a little smaller than she did a moment ago.
Damn, that's heartbreaking.
Dave has to think of something, and while they're not super pressed for time, he doesn't really want to leave her sitting there in the buff, getting all cold and shit. Considering that he has few options, he does the only thing he can think to do: he starts taking off his shirt. He tosses it over his shoulder to her, and then starts wriggling his way out of his jeans. He's glad he wore the boxers with the fancy little button on the front today.
"Um? Dave?" Feferi asks softly, and he can hear some rustling, which sounds like she's doing something with his clothes. "I don't think you also getting naked instead is going to help? I am very flattered that you would go that far to help me, but—"
"Just put the pants on already, alright?" Dave snatches his shades from where they were sat on the wood palette and slips them on, keeping his back turned even as he stands. He's left in his undershirt and boxers, and is keen on getting the hard part of this over with. If he can get her home, then he has plenty of other clothes she can wear for now. Until they get her to the ocean. "—fuck, you'll need shoes, too. You dressed yet?"
"Yes!" Feferi chirps, and Dave can hear her standing up, so he turns around.
He expected to see her standing there, looking like she's drowning in his way-too-big shirt and jeans. What he did not expect was for her to look so...
Dave's not even sure. "Cute" doesn't cut it, and "hot" seems a little too lascivious, even if she was naked only a moment ago. There's something about her that Dave can't quite place. And now it's apparent all the other changes that came over her. Normal human ears, normal human skin. Legs, of course. Warm brown eyes. She may have lost some of that ethereal mermaid beauty, but she has a new charm now, one that Dave can relate to a little more.
"What was that about shoes?" Feferi leans in, wobbling a bit. Dave doesn't even think twice about putting his arms out to steady her. "Hahah, thanks, it's going to take some getting used to this legs thing!"
"Right. Shoes." Dave chooses not to think about the little flutter he gets in his chest when he first turns around and sees her, and instead kneels down to start unlacing his shoes. He pulls them off and holds them out one at a time. She seems to get the idea, balancing herself with her hands on his shoulders as she slips her feet in. He doubts she can tie them, so he laces them back up for her, which only feels a little bit awkward. "Your feet are gonna be all soft and shit, can't have those sweet new rides getting all burnt and cut up and shit."
"But what about your feet?" She's turning this way and that to get a look at the shoes, and tries taking an experimental step. It's like those videos of dogs wearing booties for the first time and not having any idea what to do with them. It is, once again, bizarrely cute. Is being supernaturally cute also a mermaid thing?
"My feet have been on this planet for 21 years," Dave offers casually with a shrug. "They stopped being baby-soft the minute I stopped being a baby. Which was almost just as long ago. So don't sweat it."
"Alright!" Feferi looks like she's finally getting her balance and turns her full attention back to Dave. "Lead the way, Mister I've Had Feet For 21 Years!"