Then she remembered her voice.
“Your pie was delicious. I will think over your words. Have a nice day.”
The pie maker waved over his shoulder: not upset, just busy. He was speaking his mind to a customer who would listen and held nothing against her.
Ariel wandered away with mixed feelings. On the one hand, everything the baker said was troubling.
On the other hand, she was exploring a whole new world—successfully—by herself. She was getting to observe a completely different way of life, and it wasn’t just about breathing air; it was how families and people worked, and how food was made, and customs and actions and habits, and it was all fascinating.
Of course she knew that a ruler’s actions had an effect on the people—but up until now, she had thought only of the direct effect. She wouldn’t send merguards to storm Eric’s castle, for instance, because she didn’t want to put their lives at risk. But…would she have thought of how sending soldiers into battle might impact bakers, down the line? Was this something her father understood, and which had tempered his own decisions?
Father.
She hadn’t forgotten her quest; she had just become distracted for a moment.
She ate her pie and made her way back through town, heading once again toward the beach. She passed the cart with the puppet show she had rudely interrupted years ago; sitting in the back was the man who made the puppets, carefully painting a lush set of eyelashes onto one of his manikins. Fascinating.
Of course merfolk had plays and costumes and costume balls, and dolls and temple figurines that boys and girls played with, making them “talk.” But nothing was as rehearsed and polished as what the human did. Why didn’t the mer have that art? Were the two peoples so different?
For there were obvious similarities between them that could not be denied. The tendency toward ridiculous monuments that commemorated unlikely events, for instance. The mer had a mural the size of a reef illustrating the division of the two worlds, embedded with gems and bright coral that hurt the eyes to look at. The Tirulians had an ugly fountain in the square where she and Eric had once danced. Neptune was carved into the face of the bowl, along with some utterly unrealistic dolphins. The Tirulians believed that the sea god had a fight with Minerva over who would be the patron god of Tirulia, and that he had won by creating this font of undrinkable salt water that was somehow channeled up from the sea.
（All wrong, as the mute Ariel couldn’t explain to Eric at the time. Neptune had lost the fight, because he’d made a useless salt spring while Minerva/Athena had made the olive tree. Oh, and it took place in Athens, because, well—Athena.）
Besides monumental art and kings and queens, humans were very recognizably similar to mer in their normal, everyday lives. The women over there, heads bent together, were obviously gossiping. The men over there, heads bent together, were obviously discussing something they thought was very important and that they had great influence over—but which, of course, was also just gossip. A mother breastfed her baby, a beautiful fat-faced thing with the cutest feet.
How many other races were there on Gaia, more similar than different? Who would get along if just introduced properly? All they needed was a voice: the right voice, an understanding voice, a voice of reason that spoke everyone’s language.
Ariel felt she had something there, the wisp of an idea, when something caught her eye and distracted her. Like a flash of sunlight that somehow manages to make its way, unobstructed and successful, to the seafloor and sparkles on a glistening white structure there.
Apples.
A tower of them. Bright red, red like blood, red like precious coral. Shining in the light. Some were half-green, which was both disappointing and yet more entrancing: did they taste different?
She would buy enough for all her sisters. Wouldn’t that be a treat! Several for herself now, and a sack to present upon her return.
Not even realizing she was salivating, Ariel approached. The vendor was old enough to be a great-granny, but large and strong-limbed, and her black eyes sparkled, full of intelligence and interest in the world around her.
“I would like those, please,” Ariel said, pointing to the apples.
“‘Those’？ Which ones?”
“All of them, please.”
The woman laughed. “All of ’em? That’s a pretty penny, girl. I’m expecting that poncy little buyer from the castle over here in a moment—I’m going to haggle her up good. What could you offer me?”
Wordlessly Ariel pulled out her little satchel again and poured its contents into her hand. This time she let the pearls and gems spill out with the golden coins: surely treasure enough to buy all the fruit.