A Weapon’s Serenade

Melody posed in front of Anne in her new diving suit.

Anne let her eyes wander along the gentle curves of her girlfriend. “Who knew that you would look incredible in… what is this? It’s not neoprene.”

“I have no idea what these are made from. Some sort of demon-made synthetic fibre I would guess.”

“It certainly hugs your ass nicely.”

“Well, then you need to show me yours next.”

“Alright, I’ll put the suit on, give me a moment.”

After more posing and flirting, the two girls finally left the tent set up on the shore of Tehom. This was one of multiple tents that Famine had setup here, two of them for changing and one to keep some equipment in and potentially stay dry in case of a storm.

Famine waved the girls over, she was just about the explain to Serena and Kuria how the breathing device worked.

“This device will project a transparent shield about a centimetre away from your face. This will protect your eyes and allow you to breathe the air the device constantly refreshes. You can spend an indefinite amount of time underwater with it but I recommend removing the device every few hours. It can irritate your skin with prolonged use.” Famine held up what looked like a bent metal bracket. She pulled it apart into two separate halves. “Put one on each side of your face to activate it. There is a small blue light on each side to show others that it is working. If any of you see anyone without the light turned on, teleport them to shore immediately. Melody, Anne, we have added a marker in the main tent for your tools to teleport to. Any questions?”

Serena had one. “I can’t teleport, what do I do if someone needs help?”

“Yell for someone to assist. You will not be alone down there without someone who can both teleport you and survive without a breathing device. I have asked Rhea, who designed these devices, to devise an emergency teleport device as well. That will sadly take some time to be created. Any further questions?”

There were no questions.

Famine nodded happily. “Good, then let us join Isha.”

Isha was watching her legged friends slowly descend towards her. She wasn’t waiting very deep under water, just a little more than ten metres, enough for her to easily move around without breaking the surface.

“Can you still understand me?”

Serena nodded. “And you can still understand us?”

“You sound a little funny but I can, yes. You can breathe just fine now, right?”

“Yea, it’s super nice.”

“Good. Just be careful when surfacing again, I don’t want you to get hurt. I remember that humans can’t withstand the pressure change very well.”

“If we don’t head too much deeper, we should be okay. But we will be careful.”

Famine spoke up. “The pressure change might be a problem in case of an emergency. I will adjust the enchantment on the tent to compensate during emergency teleports and return shortly.” She teleported away.

Isha smiled. “The demons are so considerate, it’s so sweet.”

“They really are…”

“I spoke to the artificial one earlier. Nemesis, I believe. She happily told me how supportive everyone had been since she was implanted into that vessel. And I have experienced nothing less, all the demons have I met were wonderful.”

“I can only say the same, I am so lucky to have met them.”

“I feel the same way. How are you feeling anyway?”

“I’m good, super happy to be here and just… float with you. It’s incredible!”

Melody concurred. “Barely slept out of excitement, this is awesome.”

Anne nodded. “Same. Kuria complained this morning that I was just tossing and turning trying to sleep but how could I? We get to be in your world now and that is incredible.”

Isha smiled. “It’s not quite my world, it’s still the demons’ world.”

Kuria shook her head. “But you already decided to move here permanently, haven’t you?”

“I did, yes. It feels wrong to call this home just yet thought.”

“I suppose that’s fair.”

“It will be home soon enough, for now I am just giddy to have you all here with me. I can hug you, carry you around, just swim with you, I love it!”

“We are not as fast as you though.” Melody smiled warmly. “We all are a bit clumsier under water than on solid ground.”

“I will hopefully be able to join you up there eventually, I really want to see how you live and all the amazing things the demons have created.”

“That will be an amazing day, just like this is an amazing day. I do have a mechanical question though, more a biological one I guess.”

“Always ask.”

“If I understood things correctly in school, fish take in water through their mouths and then filter it through the gills to get oxygen. That needs them to move for the water to flow. But you are just floating there, not moving at all.”

“Not all fish need to move to breathe, many actually suck in water just like we do. Our respiratory system is actually really weird and allows us to breathe both in water and in air, you have seen that already.”

“We did, yea. Right when we met you. How does that work?”

“I breathe directly through the gills right now, I pull in water through my mouth and the gills on my neck extract oxygen, return carbon dioxide and expel the water again. I can also take a deep breath that fills my lungs with water and take in more oxygen beyond the limit of my gills. That feels really weird since I go from breathing continuously to breathing in bursts. When I am breathing air, I breathe like you, also in bursts filling my lungs and expelling the air through my gills again, but since they are further up in my body, I need to push the air up. That’s also why I can’t really speak above water, I can make sounds but not the ones used for language. My vocal cords are made to create sound in water.”

“Our lungs work pretty much like yours do, just without being able to breathe in water. But you are speaking out of your mouth, right? It’s not something where talking is part of the normal water flow.

“You do need to expel air from your mouth to talk, don’t you? I guess I speak in reverse then. I make a sound when inhaling water, the shape of my mouth and the shape of my vocal cords above my gills create the reverberations in the expelled water. That means I talk through the gills.”

“That makes sense why your voice doesn’t really work in air then, it behaves too differently compared to water and if you are making continuous sounds while you breathe, that doesn’t work with lungs like that either.”

“That is fascinating and I wonder how that will adapt when I become a demon. I am imagining that I would mostly stay the same under water but I get a little demon form I shapeshift into to walk on land. I hope it works that way.”

Melody turned to look at Kuria. “I was about to dash your hopes but I think it sort of does work that way? Demons can make themselves look like humans and the few demons who were once human that I know basically turn back into their human selves when disguising themselves. Azazel even uses her human form far more often than her demonic one. I assume there is nothing stopping you from switching back and forth, just that you keep all the fancy demon abilities when in siren form.”

Isha tilted her head and rolled slightly to the side in thought. “Does that also mean I can disguise myself as human when I become a demon? Can demons show themselves as sirens?”

“We should ask Famine when she returns.”

“I absolutely will!”

“While we are talking about the biology…” Serena was blushing. “Uhm…”

“Go ahead.” Isha smiled.

“You have boobs but you don’t, like, breastfeed, right?”

“Do what?”

“Oh… so, uh, humans are mammals, right? We produce milk to feed to our newborns, they don’t grow up in eggs. Human breasts contain mammary glands that produce that milk. But you lay eggs and apparently don’t produce milk, why do you have breasts then?”

Isha looked at her own boobs. “They are mostly fat but under them is a set of redundant swim bladders.”

“That’s neat. I love how so much of our anatomy is so similar yet so different.”

Anne looked back and forth between Kuria and Isha. “That brings up another question. Many actually. First, well, why do demons have boobs? They also laid eggs when they were still able to reproduce. In general, why are we all so similar? Humans, demons, angels, sirens… we are all so similar in shape. We are also somewhat compatible, we can all become demons, even angels can fall. If it was just humans and sirens I would suspect a common ancestor or convergent evolution but four species across three separate worlds? Worlds that weren’t travelled between until a few ten thousand years ago? That is too unlikely.”

Isha looked at the amber sky shimmering through the surface of the ocean. “Why is there an ocean of water here? A breathable atmosphere? Why are the two worlds connected to ours so similar? Do you think Famine will have some answers?”

“Maybe but I doubt she has all of them. Some mysteries are beyond even the demons.”

“Maybe it’s better to not know… but I guess we can’t even know that until we know the answers. I am certainly willing to ask.”

“I am too.”