Auratail Mermay 2022

Calypso settles herself in a little nest of woven kelp and attaches her paint pots around the entrance within easy reach. Her view, angle, lighting, everything was absolutely perfect. She smiled, pleased with her work. This was going to be her best painting of the Kelp Forest yet. Thankfully too, her patron was getting impatient, but she was nothing if not particularly detail oriented. Her patron was paying her good money for this painting and if that meant taking a little longer then she would make them understand.

She summoned her paintbrush (the most perfect of utensils) and pulled her canvas down in front of her, suspended between fronds of leafy green seaweed to hold it still. She took one last look out at her perfectly crafted scene ready to sketch, brush hovering above fabric when a strand of kelp swayed far out of place. Her concentration broke and her brush disappeared with a snap and pop of water filling the vacuum.

Calypso's eye twitched. Who would *dare* interrupt her. Move into her scene. Ruin her painting before she even had the chance to start!

Being a witch's daughter granted her some particular skills that, while she loathed to use them, boiled up in her with her rage and the seaweed around her reacted to this. A shiver went out through each stalk radiating out from where she was and soon the water was more disturbed as it tangled around whatever was the creature that imposed itself on her.

She couldn't help the smug feeling that grew inside her as the struggle of the creature grew more frantic. She decided that she would go and see what it was she had captured after all. Perhaps she'd find new gems to give her mother.

She swam out toward the thrashing water and there tangled, was another auratail, an aerial to be exact. It seemed she would have new gems after all. As she swam up closer the aerial looked up at her eyes full of fear, pleading desperate fear stared deep into her and her smug feeling drained out of her without any warning.

This auratail was beautiful. She didn't ever expect that a land-dweller could be this beautiful. The other girl struggled more at the fronds that gripped her legs tightly, her face changing with a green pallor that was most definitely not the lighting.

Calypso moved swiftly, automatically almost and without thinking was rushing the now nearly unconscious air breather back up to the surface. How could she have been so cruel? This woman had no idea what she was doing and she had almost let her die. No, she had almost killed her and for what?? A painting? Money?? What kind of person was she to have been smug about that?

She half threw the woman onto shore. Rolling, dragging both herself and the aerial up past the waves. The woman lay unmoving so in more of a blind panic then any kind of thought she starts trying to resuscitate her. She wasn't very sure of the proper process for someone that can only breathe air but she knew she had to get the water from her lungs as quickly as possible. She drew from her mother's collection of knowledge and found the sources she needed. She had to place her mouth against this beautiful woman's and as she looked her heart fluttered. She scoffed at herself, this woman was dying and she was getting giddy?? She shook her head to clear her mind of such silly thoughts then got to work. She soon had the other woman coughing up all the water she swallowed and taking shallow breaths.

Her eyes fluttered open making Calypso gasp as she looked into the most beautiful shade of green she'd ever seen. "You, you saved me." The woman said weakly before passing back out and leaving Calypso with the decision of how to fix this situation swirling through her mind.