He didn’t want to worry about the people, but it would happen. However, if they really started to eat away at his patience he could easily scare them. But what if they had questions? Hundreds of questions? Was the discovery of a merman already spread? He’d seen people with bulky cameras in front of vans that said, in varying colors, “news”, and he knew that was what humans watched on their televisions when they wanted to know what was going on in the world, and especially around them.

Each time Camilia handed something down, he took it and put it in the right place. A crowning loop that went around his forehead at the hairline and allowed a drop stone of dark blue to cling to his forehead. A matching set of arm bracers. A flat gold-plate necklace which was laden with similar stones. A series of small gold chains that went around his waist. Small piercings of gold loops and a few especially thin chains that went in his ears. Finally, a loose gold loop that went around the end of his tail, where the chain had been. Every time he added, he felt his power return and wake him up a little at a time.

He shook the fog from his head that had lingered throughout the night, and smiled to himself. He felt more complete now that his power was back, but of course, he wouldn’t condemn Camilia now that she’d gone through what she had for him. He followed her around the edge of the tank until she got out of his sight, then returned to the bottom. Hopefully they would add to his tank. If he had to stay here, eventually convince Camilia or her superiors of someway to get out, perhaps even take on his human form, he should have something other than gawking faces to look at. Maybe some fish to keep him company.

Camilia spent the rest of her (admittedly short) lunch break making sure the exhibit was in good order. Then she reluctantly opened the doors again and the general public flooded in once again. A few people went to admire the corals and little fish, but the vast majority crowded around Leith's tank again, and Camilia could see plenty of new faces in this batch. She almost opened her mouth to tell this new crowd not to touch, but she was a bit too slow and was only half-way down to the ground level when a group of kids ran up to the glass and smooshed their faces against it, trying to get as close as they could. A few of the older ones made faces and rude noises as they did so, knocking on the glass and generally being as obnoxious as it was humanly possible to be. That kicked Camilia's inner rage to an entirely new level, partially because of the sheer rudeness factor of the kids and partly (she would admit) because she'd just Windexed that glass not ten minutes before.

Yeah, she still hated people and wondered why people wouldn't control their kids, and whose bright idea was it to bring a group of fourth graders to this part of the aquarium?!

Leith was content to hover about as it was quiet, but the hour passed terribly fast, and when the new faces appeared, including a lot of kids, the noise factor rose again. Leith stared as they gathered around three-fourths of the tank, and some of the kids hit their fists and fingers on the glass. He looked around for Camilia, but didn’t want to rely on her. He darted to the top of the tank and leaned over.

“Hey!” His voice was curt and cold. “Stop pounding on the glass! And what’s with the ugly faces, boys?” He glared at the older kids, whose expressions had taken on a glazed look. “Do you really want to make your entire race look like fools? Why don’t your parents take a step forward and make you show some respect to others!?”

It was terribly silent when his voice died down. In fact, it echoed slightly in the dead hush that fell over the crowd. But Leith was paying more attention to the offenders that had put prints all over Camilia’s work, disrespecting her and her job and acting as though Leith himself were no more than one of the careless fish in other tanks.

The silence was nearly deafening, but Camilia was oddly pleased. She was half-expecting someone to go "you just got schooled!" That was the kind of silence that happened in the wake of the verbal backhand, and she felt oddly smug. Oh yes, she approved.

"Next time," she said into the silence, "when there are signs to stay away from the glass, stay away from the glass." She watched as the entire group took a few steps back, and even the people just walking in fell under the uneasy silence. "Now, if you would kindly stop treating him like a carnival sideshow, you can continue on your tour in peace."

Leith kept his place, watching the viewers as closely as they watched him. He felt useful for the first time, having given Camilia a moment or two of silence. As she directed them on, however, the initial shock and awe began to wear thin by the curiosity of those present. One, a man, paused right under him and stared up. “How do you know how to speak like us?” He asked. “I mean... don’t you have your own language?”

Leith ran a hand through his hair with a sigh, drawing it in front of his face. The scent of the ocean had gone completely. But that was a secondary problem now. Perhaps he could entertain himself. “Oh, I have my own language.” He said. “I’m using a universal translator so you can understand me. It’s transmitted through thought so whatever I say, you can understand as if it’s common.”

The man, and the ones around him, looked amazed. It made a smile come to Leith’s face. “Really?” A woman asked with her mouth hanging open.

Leith grinned, and finally laughed aloud. “No! I can speak the same language as you humans!” He couldn’t quite speak through his laughter. “It depends on where we live if we speak certain languages. You people are so easily led!” He dove back underwater, unable to remain upright. His laughter was silenced from those outside the tank, but they could still see him.

Camilia had to bite her lower lip to keep from laughing at them all, and busied herself with her work to keep from snickering. Oh yes, it was amusing to watch Leith mess with people, but it would have been unprofessional to laugh at them. Already, she'd been less than professional in her interactions with the crowds, and she couldn't afford to do it too much if she wanted to keep her job. At least nobody else was being obnoxious or getting out of hand, that was something. Maybe the rest of the day would be more bearable because of that. Maybe hell would freeze over, too, but she could always hope. She rolled her eyes a bit when Leith started laughing at everyone, but went to make her rounds of the other tanks quickly. It seemed everything was under control for the moment.

Leith kept moving in circles again around the bottom of his tank, periodically going to the surface to answer questions. At least these weren’t as before, general wonderings such as where he came from, what kind of city he lived in, and if he’d ever been on the dry land. Indeed, he’d been on the dry land before, well over thousands of years ago. He couldn’t even recall where anymore. The language they’d spoken was a distant murmuring memory, and he’d forgotten how to speak it after his race descended back below the waves.

He was leaning against the top of the tank, watching the other tanks filled with fish, coral, and covered in fingerprints. Mostly, he stared at the people. One in particular looked terribly familiar. The he saw the girl with her. It was the same girl that had pounded on his tank when Camilia specifically told them to stop, and her mother, the one that did nothing to control the girl. He grinned, putting his hand in the water beside him and swirling it upward. It cooled the immediate area, but as it rose into the air, froze gently into small ice crystals. It kept its shape well, and Leith was able to make a nicely compacted snowball. Neither of them were looking his way, and he looked between them. Which one to hit?

He drew back, and let the ball fly, diving back into the water right before it connected with the back of the mother’s head. His laughter was silent to those outside, but it made small bubbles. That had better be a good enough trick for that little girl.

Camilia would admit that she was fascinated by Leith's answers. She hadn't felt it was appropriate to ask such questions herself, but letting other people ask and listening to the answers seemed like a good work-around. Of course, it surprised her to hear how old Leith seemed to be. She hadn't ever heard of any living thing being able to live thousands of years, nothing short of a tree, at least. It was amazing.

Thankfully, the day wound down and she was able to kick the last of the people out after the requisite hour after closing.

"Thank god that's over now," she sighed as she closed and locked the doors. Immediately, she reached for the bottle of Windex to start cleaning all the glass.

He hadn’t spoken so much in years. Question after question bombarded him and he felt compelled to answer. Leith dodged the question of his bloodline, worrying about their reaction if they discovered he was part of the royal family. But a while before closing time he became hoarse, and descended back below the water to curl up in the center of the tank, ignoring the faces pressing up and pestering him for attention.

When he realized everyone had gone, Leith returned to the surface. “That was degrading.” He muttered. “I’m like a circus sideshow, something on display in the freak tent.”

As he leaned on the top of the tank with a sigh, a door from the back busted open and two men and a woman entered. He dove back underneath the water and stared, copying the humans that had been plastering their faces flat to stare in at him. He couldn’t hear the words of the largest of the two men.

“Camilia!” He called. “News vans are here for its live broadcasting!” He stared around under a heavy, serious brow.

Camilia groaned and put her hand to her face. God, she'd forgotten about that.

"Can't we have it in the morning, Josh?" she asked pleadingly, looking at him. "Besides, the tank isn't done yet, it still needs things, and people were banging on the glass all day." She knew it was futile gesture, however, and checked her reflection in a nearby tank. At least with her hair pulled back all day, it still looked alright.

"You knew this was scheduled for today, Cam," Josh replied with a bit of a shrug. "Come on, buck up and get this done."

Camilia just rolled her eyes and straightened her shirt.

"Alright, fine, may as well..."

“Hold on, little lady.” The older woman spoke. She looked over middle-aged, possibly sixty, and her gold nameplate read ‘Yonnie’. “You’ve spent a good amount of time around here, so you know more than we do. The reporter might want you to answer some questions they’ve got regarding the new acquisition.”

“There’s a ten-minute wait period until we get to this story,” Josh added, “so you’ll have that much time to clean up the tank’s glass and...” He glanced at Leith, whose gaze was intently on the three that had just entered. “... and let him know what’s happening.”

“We’ll stick around.” The younger man next to Josh piped up. “They told us they’d be asking around with both the person in charge of the tank itself and the owners of the aquarium.” With that, they turned and went back the way they came, muttering amongst one another. By the look of it, that was where the cameras and field reporter would approach from.

Camilia sighed.

"I just want to get this overwith," she commented to the empty space as the two people went back out the door. She continued grumbling under her breath a little as she climbed back up to her little 'control tower,' as she'd started to affectionately refer to her little space with the control panel. Digging into her purse, she pulled out a little bitty travel brush and started to pull it through her hair quickly before tying it back again. Then she went over to the lip of the tank to see if Leith was interested in talking. She couldn't make him face the cameras, of course, but she still wanted to make sure he was okay with them being around.

Leith glanced around. Everything was quiet. Only Camilia was around, and she was up above the tank fixing her hair. He flew upward, making sure not to splash everywhere, and floated about with his face half out of the water as though it were otherwise opaque. "What were they talking to you about?" He asked as he pulled himself up a bit, a little more than half out of the water now. "You seem... flustered."

He was pretty good with emotions. Humans and merfolk weren't terribly different in that way. It didn't take a genius to figure out she wasn't too happy. And the fact that her mood really went south after the meeting with the others, older than her, definitely had something to do with it.

"I forgot that we had a news interview scheduled for today," Camilia replied as she yanked the brush through the ends of her curls. She didn't have quite the red hair of the rest of her family, but she was still Scottish enough to have inherited her ancestors' natural curls. Once she'd done what she could for her hair, she pulled it back again. "We have a few more minutes before they bring the news crew in here, and they're going to want to see you and ask questions. You don't have to answer any of them if you don't want to, but I figured I'd warn you all the same."

She sighed a bit again. "I hate being on camera... I'm not photogenic at all, I look terrible on camera..." Going into her bag again, she pulled out a mirror. She wore very little makeup, usually, but she at least wanted to make sure her foundation had held up. She knew she tended to look blotchy when it didn't.

News? Interviews? Leith stuck his tongue out. That was most unsavory to him. The fact that he’d be able to be seen by... countless people! It was borderline revolting. Perhaps he could lead the reporters on... Perhaps he would speak only in orca! Of course he could, but that would put Camilia in a tight spot... He drifted a bit, thinking. He could shift back to his natural state. It wasn’t as eye-catching as his general human appearance, though. Or with a good amount of power, he could become human! He’d done it before, his entire family had, all the city at one time, had been human. Of course, that was centuries ago, thousands of years. But now, that’d take a massive amount of power. He’d be very weak afterward.

He shook himself out of his thoughts and returned to reality as Camilia was speaking about her disdain toward being on camera. He moved back to where she was, flicking his tail a bit and catching her with a few drops of water. “I think you look fine. So you can’t look any different through a lense.” He said definitely. “And even if you do look different, we all know what you really look like! It’s not as if you’ll meet everyone that sees you, right?” He tilted his head to the side a bit, as if he were a curious dog.

"I don't look good on camera," Camilia insisted. "My skin is blotchy enough as it is without it being highlighted by the lights of the cameras. And I always look fat on camera or in pictures. I hate it." She wrinkled her nose a bit and stood up, brushing herself off. "Anyways, I need to get back down there. They're going to want to talk to me soon. I just wanted to let you know that they'll be asking questions about you, but you don't have to answer any of them. They will want to film you, though, so it might be a good idea to at least give them that." She glanced down at the rest of the room for a moment, trying to gauge just how much time they had left before the interview started. Not long, she estimated. Just enough time to Windex the glass one more time. That in mind, she climbed back down to get the smudges off the glass before the reporters came back inside to start asking their questions.

Leith followed Camilia as she got down from her perch and began to clean the glass almost obsessively. But it was best, he supposed. Glass tended to get very dirty rather quickly. However, he couldn’t quite stop thinking about what she said. Did her image warp that much? He hadn’t seen many human photos, but in comparison, the general appearance of the human looked about the same. Perhaps it was the person’s own self image. Still, he leaned over the side of the tank and dropped something down in front of her, hanging from a strangely solid string of water.

“This is my ring.” He said, hanging it in front of Camilia’s face. Its band was gold, and the gem was dark blue, veined with light blue and white. “Rub the gem on your face and you’ll have a radiant glow about you that makes your skin look flawless, even on a camera. It’s got a power that helps the merfolk of the oceans look like I do, rather than take on their survival-esque look, which is rather ugly in comparison.” His appearance, like everyone else’s, was a bit limited. They were all given the same adaptations long, long ago, their ancestors taking on light-and-dark blue colors in uniform, like a dolphin. Their eyes, large and reflective, their bodies rather flat. Because of their newest adaptation, however, living among bright fish and coral gardens, their colors changed, and they became more flashy.

"I'll answer their questions, by the way." Leith added as an afterthought. "Just signal when you want me to come up from the water."

Camilia blinked when the ring was lowered down to her, and just stared for a moment even as she held out one hand to catch it. Her weirdness-meter had officially been tripped.

"Wait a second, wait a second," she said, holding up her other hand. She was still holding the bottle of Windex, but she didn't care. She used her fingers to gesture to the ring. "Explain to me exactly what you just did. In small words that even an idiot could understand. And don't skip any steps." Because, even ignoring what the ring was supposed to do for the time being, she was pretty sure water wasn't supposed to be manipulated like that and, in fact, couldn't be manipulated like that. And she wanted to know exactly how he managed to make it so. "And then explain exactly how this thing is supposed to help. Again, in small words and without skipping any details."

Leith raised a brow, but couldn’t contain a small smile. He wasn’t still at home, and he tended to forget that humans didn’t really have the same power over semi-solid mediums as they did. “I... er... made the water solid. But I didn’t make it ice.” He gestured to it. “I wove the water together. Like a rope.”

He flipped the rope of water and the ring bounced a bit. “The ring. It’s supposed to clear your skin. It gives you an even glow. But it won’t help your warped body image.” He added a little hesitantly. “Take the ring. And rub the gem over your face or any necessary exposed skin. Then hand it back up, it’s part of my collection.” He indicated the gold accessories that gave Leith his power.

He didn’t quite know how long they still had before the cameras busted in. “But hurry up! Your time might be running pretty low.” He shook the ring again.

Camilia looked at the ring uncertainly for a moment. She wasn't sure whether or not to trust what Leith said, but she made a snap decision and did as he said. And without a moment to spare, either; as soon as she handed the ring back, she heard the door opening again and she glanced over. It wasn't the reporters yet, but it was her supervisor coming back in.

"Everything ready, Cam?" he asked brusquely, looking around.

"As ready as I can get it," Camilia replied, scrubbing away the last of the smudges on the glass. "Some kids left face prints on the tank earlier." She wrinkled her nose. "Obnoxious little shits." She shook her head and put the glass cleaner away.

"Well, the interview should be soon," Josh replied. He glanced at Camilia and did a double-take. "You look good. Keep it up."

Camilia blinked and nodded.

As Leith slipped the ring back on his right pinky, someone came in. Without knowing who it was, he dove back under the water and swirled about, making a miniature whirlpool that kept him moving for a moment. Whoever it was, they didn’t have a camera. He paused and studied them, but couldn’t hear them. When the man left, Leith almost went back to the surface, but decided to get as much underwater time as he could before he felt obliged to answer stupid questions.

When Camilia looked back, he pressed his face against the glass on his side and stuck his tongue out. He felt it was a perfect representation of the children that had passed through not long ago.

Camilia happened to glance back at the glass, and she had to smother a snort. She wasn't able to hold back the giggles, though, and covered her mouth a little with her hand. She had to nod, though; the impression of the obnoxious little kids was spot-on. It had lightened her mood enough that she wasn't dreading the interview anymore, and she went over to the door to see what was going on outside. She only cracked the door open and peeked out, though, so that she wouldn't interrupt whatever was going on on the other side. She didn't know if another news interview was going on outside or anything, after all.

((I apologize for it being so short!))

((It's fine, mine is too!))

Leith moved back and around the edge of the tank again and stared at Camilia as she went off across the room. Were they coming? What should he do? Play dead? He laid down on the hard ground of the tank, but couldn’t keep still enough. He moved around to float in the middle of the tank as the door next to Camilia opened and a series of camera and reporters entered, and a few unidentified others.

Leith did his best not to glare. Everyone began setting their cameras up and grabbing equipment Leith couldn’t identify. Someone went to Camilia, possibly to tell her what was happening, or where to stand, or how to behave. Leith desperately wished he could read lips, especially since most faces were turned right toward him.

As soon as people started to filter in, Camilia climbed half-way up to the control tower to stay out of the way and keep an eye on everything. She was in charge of all of the tanks in the room, after all, and even the fish in the reef-tanks would be upset by too much light and noise in the room. She stayed hanging half-way up the ladder until it was time for the interview to start. She was in a better mood, but she still didn't like being the center of attention. She wasn't good with people.

Leith watched the people move about, conversing curtly with one another, fixing each other’s clothes and hair, doting over little detail. He didn’t quite want to come up yet. He lowered himself to the tank’s floor and watched intently.

“Camilia!” A female reporter waved to her. “We’re starting in thirty seconds! Would you mind coming down so we can have a few questions? If we need to know anything about the...” She nodded to the tank and to Leith.

Leith stared at the camera lenses. In a matter of minutes, perhaps moments, he’d be seen by countless eyes. He shoved away a bit of stagefright. He’d had to do so many times when he accompanied his father and mother in their city wanderings or speeches. This was just another one of those, just... different.