Aliénor's Song

The Start of a Language

She went slightly pale under the water. That was definitely impressive given her nearly translucent Scottish complexion. We were going to have to find a way to talk to each other without making noise. After all, there were only two of us. Who knew how many things in the ocean there were that could be dangerous for us.

I had an idea. We needed a way to communicate without using sound. We could use our bodies to send messages to one another in complete silence. I decided to voice my idea to Mairi.

"Let's try to use some type of body language to communicate!"

Mairi looked skeptical at first, so I decided to demonstrate what I was talking about. I took a few second to think. What were some things I would need to tell someone without talking to them? I thought about the fact that Atargatis had hinted we would have more sisters joining us eventually. I needed something that would tell them that we were their friends.

I turned myself to face Mairi and opened my arms and faced my palms out to her. "Welcome friend."

Mairi caught on to what I was doing and mimicked my action. Good. We could practice this together so that hopefully, we could talk to new mermaids if we found one.

I lifted my chin and showed her my throat with my palms still facing out and moved my arms further away from my sides leaving my gills exposed. I'm not entirely certain why I exposed my throat, it was almost by instinct, but the gesture didn't need much explanation. I was making myself vulnerable to her in a clear sign of submission. She nodded. She knew exactly what that meant. She again copied what I did. Although I noticed she looked around first to make sure nothing else was close by before she exposed her gills.

Mairi tucked her chin and clenched her fists with her arms close to her sides. "Danger" she said.

I copied her movements. It was good. If exposing our gills and throats showed that we were vulnerable, protecting those same areas would mean something nearby could hurt us.

Our tails would make good directional tools and we could use our hands to beckon someone to follow us or to point at something we wanted the other to look at.

It would take time to perfect, but we apparently had very long lives ahead of us to work on it.

I put my hands together and laid my head on them, closing my eyes. Then I used my hand in a beckoning motion. Mairi understood and followed me. We headed back to our ancient shipwreck to retire for the night.

☆☆☆

When we got to the ship I decided to try something else new. I pulled my body upright in the water and raised my hand.

"Stop, wait."

Mairi again copied my movements. It was definitely helpful to see the movements as well so I knew what to look for.

I placed my hand palm down over my eyes as if shielding them from the sun and pointed at the wreck.

"You'll scope it out?"

I nodded.

I doubted there was anything dangerous in the old wreck I had come to think of as our home, but we had to look out for each other. I looked over my shoulder before swimming into the old shipwreck. Mairi had her back to me, clearly looking around the area to watch my back. I appreciated the fact that she was taking our safety seriously. After all, who knows what lurks in the depths of the oceans? This is the end of the map. There could be monsters here.

I had only seen a few maps in my father's study, but most of them showed some form of large serpent creature in the water. I thought of the words inscribed under the creature on my father's maps Hic Svnt Dracones. I had asked him once what it meant, "here be dragons". It was safe to assume Mairi and I weren't the scariest creatures here.