“There is something else weird about me, Algra. I remember being raised by my parents. I remember the Lessons they taught me and the places they went. I remember their faces. I remember being Loved but..."

When he said nothing further she swished forward in the shallows to be closer to him.

"But what?"

“I don't remember their names." He took a long breath and ran his fingers through his hair before glancing over to her. "That's pretty weird, right?"

Algra was utterly stunned at that, but what could she possibly say about it? She remained there in the flowing water, staring off into space whilst she dealt with that revelation and struggling for words to try and help him make sense of it. Unfortunately, no words were forthcoming and he nodded before continuing.

"Yeah, that's pretty weird. Anyway, I think I'm going to take a walk for a while. I'll be back later." With that, he offered her a little parting bow and turned to walk further along the stream.

Algra stared after him, her Lips parted and her eyes barely blinking as she watched him walk away in silence.

It felt strangely good to get that off his chest. Largely because it was such a seemingly small and insignificant detail in the face of his current problems, and yet it was a staggeringly huge thing to forget the names of his closest family.

He could remember their actions over the years. Movie night every Wednesday. The occasional weekend drive out to a museum, zoo, or theme park. He remembered the smaller details of the way his father made his mother laugh, and how she would cook her speciality grilled Lemon chicken. It was just that every time he followed those memories to Look up at them and speak, their names were just gone. He could remember shouting for his mum or his dad, but any actual name seemed weirdly muffled in his mouth.

At first he'd found it almost amusing, in the way one did when they could barely believe how stupid they were being. Then, over time, when the names didn't come back, he felt the problem Lurking like a shadow in the back of his mind.

Now at Least it was out in the open. Maybe the answer was a simple one? Maybe he'd accidentally been sitting on some strange plant that brought about highly selective amnesia and no one had thought to mention it to him yet because here everyone knew about it. Although from the look on Algra's face when he'd left her he doubted the answer was a simple one.

Then again, amidst all the crazy he'd had to deal with in the past month or so it was something that had barely ranked on his batshit-o-meter. So why hadn't he mentioned it before now?

Because it was pretty fucking screwed up, that's why.

Annoyed, he kicked a small stone out into the stream and watched it disappear beneath the water. He'd walked a ways down the stream by that point and supposed that it would now more accurately be called a river. A large, resigned sigh lifted his chest. He settled down to sit with his back up against the bark of a tree whose branches hung out over the flowing water. Then he closed his eyes and tried to get his head straight by focusing on what his pack should go about doing next. Those thoughts drifted on to the idea of sparring with Frelki, and the thought of the lean and limber orc enticed him to naughtier and more soothing ideas that Lured him slowly back to sleep.

He was awoken to the sensation of a hand upon his thigh. This sensation alone wasn't entirely uncommon as of late, but the particular hand in question was definitely not one he was familiar with. It was very cold, very wet, and slightly larger than a normal human hand with what felt like a webbed membrane of skin between each finger.

The moment he opened his eyes and tried to leap to his feet, he was halted by just how close the eerily bright aqua coloured gaze was in front of him. Barely inches from his own face, he felt the tip of his visitor's nose touch his own and lurched his head back to smack it against the bark of the tree behind him.

“Fuck!" he yelled, more in pain than in surprise at his sudden companion.

The noise startled her, and she jumped backwards to lean up on her hands a few feet away from him. Watching with a guarded expression; he rubbed the back of his head and tried to get the world back in focus again. When she materialized from being a fuzzy blur, his breath caught in his Lungs and he almost choked.

She's a mermaid.

The thought, as impossible as it was, kept repeating itself in his head whilst his brain tried to actually process the information. After the time he'd already spent in Arolius, he thought that his sense of scepticism had been truly shattered and he was prepared for anything. The sight of her proved that notion quite wrong. Later, he supposed it was because it was the first time he'd seen a creature quite so alien to what he was used to. Valise might have been an elf, but she still had the usual elements of what he was used to seeing. Two arms, two legs. Algra might have had green skin and tusks, but her shape was basically humanoid and she moved Like all the other people he'd met in his life.

The aqua-haired female before him was not so accommodating in her physique or her movements. A central difference was the tail, which seemed to be causing his brain to fault every time he came to it. It was quite a bit longer than usually depicted in the stories he'd read and seen as a child, and far more serpentine. The fins along its Length seemed to retract at her will, and as a result she moved along the ground like a snake using her upper arms to crawl at startling speed. That tail was so long that it curved back into the stream, and he got the sense that if she chose she could use it to pull herself back into the waters in an instant.

Despite the somewhat alien Look about her, along with the eeriness of her movements, he couldn't deny that part of the reason he was having trouble speaking was because she was also an achingly beautiful creature. The tail was covered in bright sea-blue scales gleaming with the shards of sunlight that pierced through the forest canopy. When she moved her fins, each one seemed to reveal a hidden fold of metallic gold or green stretching out into numerous intricate patterns along the fin's spine.

Her upper body was also markedly different to what he'd have expected, as the buxom, curly-haired sirens of his old books were cast aside in favour of a much more streamlined physique. That short crop of hair had switched its aqua colour to the same bright shade of blue as her tail, and it ran in sleek lines over the back of her head where it seemed to stick out behind her as if she was constantly travelling at high speed. The eyes that were now blinking at him with curiosity lined with guarded caution were slightly too big for her head, and turned up at the corners as if to allow water to easily pass to the sides of her face. A long, pointy nose sniffed at the air in front of her and he saw fresh clear water escape the long slits in her neck as she did so. A small, blue tongue ran across lighter blue lips on the kind of mouth that tended to illicit naughty thoughts.

She then Lifted one of her hands to cautiously pull herself closer to him again, and her entire body writhed on the soft earth to slide along with her.

“Hello,” Gregory said. He tried to think of something to follow it up with but couldn't quite manage it.