Chapter Text
Belle’s first day in the very tiny sea was very strange. The big glass house she was in was nothing like the ocean or the glass sea she was in before. She could see tall plants that sprung out from the ground like coral, but were big and green like seaweed. She wondered if they tasted as good as seaweed, but wasn’t sure if it would be right to ask to try one. Bae had stayed with her while Gold had made arrangements for their dinner.
Bae had taken off his clothes and was wearing odd colored shorts with fish on them. He eagerly sat down in the tiny sea with her. He took a little black stick and pointed it at a black box on the wall. “Want to watch some TV while papa gets the pizza?”
“What is tee-vee?” she asked.
“Oh it’s the best!” he declared, “It’s like…well it’s basically…” he scrunched up his face and then shrugged, “I don’t know how to describe it. I’ll just show you.”
He pushed something on the stick and the black box suddenly went very bright. Belle gasped when she saw humans appear in the box. They were so little, like clown fish and guppies, but they functioned like everyone else.
“Who are they?” Belle asked. She tried to move closer to see better, but that jarred her tail and she winced at the flash of pain.
“Oh, that’s Obi Wan Kenobi,” Bae said, “He’s a Jedi Master, and that is Anakin Skywalker. Right now he’s a Jedi Knight, but later he’s going to be a Sith Lord and kill everyone.”
Belle blinked at him, surprised by the nonchalant way he talked about a mass murderer, though how she knew this Anakin person was going to kill people she had no idea. Then the oddest creature she ever saw appeared in the box. The person sounded like a woman, but Belle couldn’t be sure because she had no hair. Instead she had two tentacles on her head, similar to an octopus. However, she was brightly colored like a cuttle fish, all blues, whites, and orangey-red. “What sort of human is that?”
“Oh, that’s Ahsoka Tano,” Bae told her, “She’s a Togruta actually.”
“What is that?”
“An alien.”
Belle stared back at the screen. “Al-ee-on? I don’t understand? And why are they so flat?”
“Oh, because this is a cartoon.”
“What is that?” she asked. Apparently there was a lot more to tee-vee than she had originally thought.
“Well it’s not with real people. They are fake.”
“Fake people?” Belle asked, “Like plastic?”
“Uh…well…”
“And how do they get into the box? Are they comfortable in there?”
“Um…” Bae looked up when the door opened. “Papa! You’re here! Can you explain TV to Belle for me?”
“I never understood the attraction for it like you have, Bae,” Gold said. The big man with the shiny head had two flat boxes with words on them, but Belle didn’t understand PIZZA what meant. Still, whatever it was, it smelt good. Gold had a tray and she saw that it was heaped with clams, seaweed, and even shrimp. “I, uh, thought you might be hungry too,” Gold said.
“Yes I am,” she said.
Bae climbed out of the tiny sea, scampering over to get some pizza from the shiny man. Gold carefully set the tray of her food beside her. She also noticed that the shiny man had a basket under one arm that had plastic bottles inside of it. Some of the bottles had water, but others had strange dark liquid inside. Bae eagerly took one of those bottles and twisted the top. There was a strange hiss that emitted from the bottle, something similar to the sound of lava seeping out from a fissure in the ocean.
“What is that?” she asked Gold.
“Just a soda,” he told her, “Normally I insist he have something healthier, but I figured today was a special occasion.”
“Soda?” Belle looked at it as Bae settled back beside her with his pizza on a paper disk and the bottle of the brown beverage. The color wasn’t particularly appealing, but she could see it was full of bubbles, which was very perplexing. Bae grinned and held up the bottle for her. “You want to try it?”
She’d always been fascinated by human food, though the pizza looked better than this. However, she rationalized that if it was a treat for Bae, it could hardly be harmful for her. She took the bottle, surprised by how wet and cold it was and gingerly took a sip. The liquid was cold and the way it moved across her tongue was very odd. The bubbles were pleasant though and it had a strange sweetness to it. It was strange, but not in a bad way. Another sip satisfied her that it was quite delicious.
She enjoyed the food Gold had brought for her. He’d even been thoughtful enough to crack open the clamshells. Neither of them were interested in trying her food, but Bae offered her a bite of his pizza. The white stuff on top was something called “cheese” while the round red things were “pepperoni”. Gold’s pizza had even more things on top of it, but Bae said they were gross. The pizza wasn’t bad, but it was so hot it burnt her mouth. The water helped in that regard.
Bae was absolutely fascinated by the TV, but Belle couldn’t understand any of it. The strange humans and aliens were utterly perplexing, not to mention the strange boats they used that flew like birds but looked nothing like the planes she had seen. The colorful sticks they used to attack one another was beyond comprehension.
“I suppose this doesn't make much sense to you,” Gold said to her, waving in the direction of the TV.
She took another clam and shook her head. “What do you do for play?” she asked.
“Fun you mean?” she nodded in response. “I’m afraid I’m not nearly as sociable or active as my son. I find reading far more pleasurable.”
“Reading?”
“Books,” he told her, “stories or writings that are made up or based on true events.”
Belle’s eyes lit up. “Oh! Like conchs!”
Gold frowned at her. “What?”
“We capture our stories in conchs. Then we listen to them. We have some wonderful tellers under the sea. They tell our history, or even just adventures of our legends.”
He smiled at her. “I understand. That sounds fascinating. Perhaps I can find you some audio books so you can enjoy some of our stories.”
Belle nodded eagerly. “I would enjoy very much.”
Gold helped Dove clean things up, leaving her alone with Bae again and this “Clone Wars” show he was so interested in. Belle watched Gold limp away with the empty bottles and her tray. She remembered seeing him wounded, blood leaking out of his ankle, the water turning red because of it. He never seemed bothered by the injury, but she saw how much little Bae scampered around. It couldn’t be easy.
“Does your father…okay with his leg?” she asked.
“Does it bother him?” Bae asked and she nodded. He shrugged. “No, not really. I mean, he said that he was lucky to be alive, so there was no point in being upset that he escaped with a bad ankle.”
Belle smiled over that. She was glad Gold wasn’t sad that he couldn’t run or walk the way he used too. As Belle looked over at her bandaged tail, she couldn’t help but wonder if she could accept her lot in life so easily if she could never swim again.
“Thank you for saving him,” Bae said.
“You thank me before,” Belle reminded him.
“Yeah, but you did more than save his life. You made him…better,” Bae said. She frowned at him, not sure how nearly drowning would be good for anyone. “Before the accident, he was always working. I just wanted to spend time with him, but he was too busy. But then…I don’t know, he just changed when he got back. He left his job and actually spent more time with me.”
Bae then moved over and put his arms around her, pressing his face into her shoulder. Belle stared down into his hair for a moment. Merfolk were affectionate, but she didn’t know humans would do this as well. Her father had always said humans were cold and never cared about any species but themselves. Carefully, she put her arms around him as well, pulling him tightly to her slowly. Bae didn’t mind though. He just hugged her back more.
“Thanks for giving me my papa back,” he said.
Belle smiled into her hair, blinking back the tears in her eyes. It was strange, but she wished her father could see this right now. Maybe he could finally make peace with what happened to her mother and why they had both hoped for more than solitude in the sea.