Ipo sighed in relief. The merperson didn't swim away right off and even more surprising than that was that she came closer to him. He tried not to move around too much so she could look at him. He really must look strange to her. Ha! Who was he kidding. He'd look strange to anyone. His own mother would have stayed away from him if, well, if she wasn't his own mother. He didn't really look anything like her.

"I don't really think that I look like a plant, apart from my hair that kind of looks like sea weed but I don't have very much of it so it doesn't give me camouflage, not like you. You're incredible. You're definitely a merperson, I can tell, but you're not any kind of merperson I've ever seen before. The ones from where I lived were a lot more, how can I put this kindly, boring? Well, I guess maybe that's just compared to me and to my mom."

Ipo turned to look at her. He took his spear into his left hand again and asked her, "So if you're the only one here, why are you here?"