Submerged

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Stella mentally noted that she would have to tone down the jokes. She nodded, and looked back at the cans she collected. " So, chicken with fish? " She said, as she stood up and wringed the water from her hair. " I'll get started. How about I make the fire down here? It'll save me from almost dropping you, and you don't have to be so close to the fire this time. "

Stella went over to collect the firewood. and she soon got some rocks that she had collected a week or two back. She wanted to see how the moss reacted to temperature change, and after taking notes, she just let them pile up. She used the rocks to control the fire, so that way it wouldn't set the place aflame.
 
"A good idea. Thank you."
Antheona watched Stella build a fire. This time she had more idea what to expect, and resolved to pay closer attention. It would also be much more pleasant to be able to submerge entirely every now and then, so none of her skin would become dry. As beautiful as she found fire, it was also a very, very disconcerting thought to be near it without Stella there. Since it dried her as fast as it did, she wasn't about to try to touch it, but something about it just spoke danger regardless. She was somehow sure that it could kill, and not even just by drying out. But that just made it even more beautiful, because it was strong.
"There is fire under the sea, I think," she said as she watched the wood catch on fire and the rocks heat up. It was the way fire made parts of the wood glow that reminded her of it; parts of stone also glowing. The seafloor broke open sometimes, and hot earth piled out, glowing like the wood, but even hotter, much steam rose and they couldn't go near for how hot the water became; then it cooled down and changed the landscape. She only saw it once, but the rememberers said it happened sometimes. "Lots of fire under the earth under the sea. That's where we get the black stone to make weapons from."
 
Submarine volcanoes? Here? Wow, this place just gets more and more fascinating. " We have those on land, but they're much more deadly. But... Almost in a pretty way. " Stella said, as she took the pans and began to cut open the soup cans with a little pocket knife she kept on her. " There is this place on a large portion of land- humans call it Italy. We gave it a nickname called Lo Stivale, or simply The Boot. " Stella said, as she began to pour the chicken into the pan. She talked further.

" There was an eruption, way before you were born, way before I was born, and way before the rememberers were born. " She said. " Mount Vesuvius erupted in one of the most catastrophic and famous eruptions Italy, and possibly most of the world have seen. When the mountain erupted, deadly clouds of stones, ash and gases came out of the hole. It shot fire into the sky, and it rained down on the people who lived under the mountains. " Stella continued, as she put the pot over the fire and then she began to take the scales off of the fish.

" The towns of Pompeii and Herculaneum were destroyed- those were places that people lived. 16,000 people died, and their bodies were covered in a layer of ash- it quite literally turned them to stone where they stood. "
 
"Eruption", Antheona guessed, "is when the fire comes out of the ground, isn't it?" She was fascinated in a somewhat morbid way. "This really happened, and it's not just a story, is it? It's..." Awe-inspiring, she wanted to say, but she didn't know the word. Apocalyptic, she would have said if she had had a concept of apocalypse, but that's what she was thinking of - that suddenly everything ceases to be what it is, humans and merpeople and whatever ensouled creatures are present are swept away like insignificant specks of sand, everything stops in its tracks and death in all its breathtaking glory takes its rightful place in a formidable explosion of smoke and fire. The very thought made her feel small. "It's frightening and wonderful. I wish I could see that."
"You know," she continued, "rememberers are called that because they have to remember everything, even before their time. By the time one of them dies, another has to know everything the dying rememberer ever knew. So no knowledge is ever lost. That's why we cannot let them all die at once. But I have never heard of this from them. Maybe no mermaid ever knew of it." Of course, why would they? It happened on land. But Antheona still somehow felt that they should, because it was magnificent, something worth knowing just because it deserved to be known and remembered forever.
 
Stella smiled. " I would love to do everything in my power to help you become a rememberer. I am sure that there is plenty of things on land and on sea that I could teach you, and I'm sure you could teach me just as much. " Stella used her knife to get the scales off, and as soon as she did that, she cut off some parts of the meat and placed it into the soup.

" Does your people worship a God? Or are the rememberers your Gods? " Did she even know what a God was?
 
Antheona thought about this last part for a long time. "I haven't heard 'worship' before, but I thought 'God' just meant that someone is angry or surprised, like 'fuck'. Is that the same thing?"
Still, she was touched by Stella's offer, even if her human friend didn't know very well how this worked. It was important to her that she wanted to help. "Rememberers... well, I no longer want to be one. You see, every so often one of us becomes a rememberer so that there are always at least three, and they hide in the inner part of the sleeping cave so nothing can ever hurt them. They don't do anything, they don't even hunt, we hunt for them. They only come out when we all talk. And whoever wants to ask them something or tell them something just goes in to them. We tell them everything important, and they help because they know much. Those who are weak sometimes become rememberers, so they can still be useful and so they don't die. And those who like thinking a lot and doing little else. Or sometimes when someone is very, very, very sad and will never be happy anymore, he or she becomes a rememberer because of that. If I became a rememberer, I would never come out to you anymore, because something could kill me and my knowledge would die with me." She smiled. "But I don't want to be one anymore. I like finding new places and I like hunting and I like being a warrior, even if something kills me one day. I just try to learn much and tell them all I learn. Even if I won't be one, I still like them and they are important."
 
Stella chuckled when Antheona asked about that. She had never really heard her say fuck before, but it was actually funny to hear. She didn't seem like a swearer. She really shouldn't take up that bad habit. It was one that Stella was still trying to kick. " Well, they are in a way, but they aren't in another way. People reserve a bundle of words for different moments, like you would use God if you were praising whomever your God is, or sometimes people said it when they were frustrated. " Stella said. She... really didn't want to tell her what the other one meant. Not now. She'll find a dictionary later for her.

" A God is someone who is worshiped. It's kind of what you do with the rememberers, but unlike them, there are many many more. Some people worship more than one God, and some put their faith in just one. They're like a king, in a way, depending on how you praise them. " Stella said. " As for me, I don't see myself being fit in any religion. I guess I'm my own person. "
 
"I still don't understand what worship is," Antheona said, increasingly befuddled. "And religion. But I know praise, it's when you tell others that they have done well, or that they are good at something. We often tell each other if we have done well, not just the rememberers. Are we all gods? Is that a good thing to be? And if it is, why do people say it when they are angry? Is that also a joke?"
And just when she thought she was getting to understand humans better and better. None of this seemed to make any sense. She knew what kings were, they were the humans other humans obeyed even when they had bad ideas. Which couldn't be, she thought, a very fruitful practice. But what did that have to do with everything? It was all more and more incomprehensible the more she thought about it.
 
" When someone worships someone, they give something- usually faith and trust, or they have ceremonies and prayers -into an object, a deity, or an idol. " Stella said, as she finished the last of the fish. Now, all she needed was to let them cook. " And a religion is... Is an organized collection of beliefs,. Or a cultural systems, or when the world- or a group of peoples views relate humanity to the supernatural, and to spirituality. " Stella said.

" Well, yes and no, " She answered her second question. " There are different types of praise. " Stella said, as she put the pocket knife to the side. " And yes, you can all be gods if you worship yourself, but I don't recommend it. Nasty people in the past have done that, and they never got very far. I'm not so sure why humans say it when they're angry or distressed. It's just always been apart of history and culture. "
 
So that was what worship was. Antheona didn't think Stella's explanation was a very good one, it was full of words she didn't understand, but she thought she understood the meaning of it, at least to a certain degree.
"So a god is when you think something is more than it looks like, and worship is when you think that and what you do because of that. Is that it?" She searched for an appropriate example. "Like the Moon. The Moon moves the sea in some way we don't understand, because it doesn't blow like the wind. It just looks like a white shape, but it changes. We don't really know why any of this happens, but it makes some of us think that the Moon is more than what it looks like and it can do even more. Is that it?" She smiled. "The rememberers are not more than what they look like. They are just really clever and not very strong."
 
Stella nodded. " You're right! " She said happily. " You know, I could tell you about the moon, and why it changes and why it moves the ways. " She said. She could tell her, but for some reason, that seemed like it would ruin how special it was to her people. It just seemed like that. It would probably be the equivalent of.... Well, of something along the lines of saying that the moon does that all in the name of science.
 
Stella knew that? But why didn't she say so before? Still, how should she have known that that was important? Well... Antheona had to admit to herself that she just didn't think of it. It was common knowledge, well, to a mercreature, of course.
"Then tell me. Some of us spend a lot of time trying to understand the Moon. We know a few things already. It goes a little slower than the Sun, so they become closer together and further apart. And the closer to the Sun it is, the narrower it is." She sunk into the hole to wet her skin, then came up again and continued. "The Sun is somehow important to the Moon, but we don't know how yet. We can never see when they meet, because when they are close enough, the Moon disappears completely, so we never know what happens then. We think that could be the important part somehow."
 
Stella smiled. She loved how she was so eager to learn about- well, everything! She was so helpful, aswell, it was as if she was a gatherer of information, and Stella was the deliverer. She felt important in all of this, but she also felt as if she was being somewhat traitorous. Like she was going against her race to help this new strange new one- they might as well be the enemy. But Antheona has shown her nothing but almost complete kindness, so she might as well expand the scientific community.

So, she did.

She droned about how the moon is pulled by the gravity of the sun, and how that gravity effects the one that Earth has- she then began to talk about how some scientists believe that there was- and probably is still water on the moon even today! She then told Antheona why the moon changes and what that means, and what each change is called and what they all mean. Full moon, half moon, quarter moon, the whole lot.

After she had talked Antheona's fins off, she decided that the food might as well be ready. " Here, I've been talking for far too long now, let me get you some chicken and fish soup. "
 
So that was how it was? Antheona couldn't help but wonder where Stella knew all of that from; it all sounded rather fantastical. An answer to most of her questions, of course, but still fantastical. So the Moon was a place...that was a new thought, and yet one she could picture well. It had to be a very beautiful place.
But there was especially one thing that took hold of her imagination.
"If there is water on the Moon, could there be merpeople too?" She imagined an entire tribe of Moon merpeople, their eyes dark, their skin ghostly pale and their fins silver, who could jump out of the water and seem to fly before they fell back, because, according to Stella, everything felt much lighter on the Moon. She imagined a sea with pure white sand at the bottom, so white that it glowed. "Do you think they can see us, when the Moon is above us?" Of course there was no way to see that far... after all, she couldn't see the Moon merpeople either. But maybe they had better eyes. Yes, it would be possible for them. Or at least, for some reason, she hoped so.
 
Stella wanted to come right out and tell the odd being that the very idea was highly improbable and completely unlikely to be true on any grounds, but then Stella thought. They could be real, right? She had thought that all her life that mermaids were fake, and the only one that had been popularized by anything was The Little Mermaid, but even that was a work of fiction. Some crazy nutheads even THOUGHT that there might be some other form of life, other than humans. So maybe there was mermaids on the moon. Stella had never been there! For all she knew, there was.

Stella chuckled warmly, and put her dry hand on the other's wet skin. " I bet there might be somewhere. If there is, I've never seen or heard of them. " She paused, but smiled with another chuckle. Just as warm as the last. " But then again, I never thought I would have a mermaid for a friend. " Not even in her wildest dreams had she ever thought that.
 
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