Two days. Nearly two days without sleep, and yet Ochako felt - fine? A little snippy, sure, and her head felt as if it had filled with cotton, but otherwise she felt fine. Of course, the last two days had been quite eventful after all. In fact, the last few hours alone had changed the foundation of her reality. The mythical creatures that starred in her mother's cautionary tales were not actually mythical at all. Instead, they were very much real and apparently very, very attractive - at least the singular one she had met had been attractive. Ochako couldn't quite speak for the entire race.

Ever since she had arrived back at her house, Ochako had not been able to stop thinking about her very peculiar experience. In her mind's eye she kept replaying pictures of blonde hair and sharp teeth. Large, full hips and thighs littered with silvery pale stretch marks had grabbed her attention for the miniscule amount of time that they had been on display, covered in blood that had dried and flaked away in the cool night breeze. The first thing that Ochako had noticed when she had initially happened upon the selkie - Himiko, she had said her name was - was her startlingly yellow eyes, which had made direct eye contact with Ochako's own brown ones. She couldn't get them off of her mind, no matter how hard she tried.

Mini moons, nestled between pale lashes.

How many stars had happened to align - Ochako wondered - for that event to occur. For her to have been walking along that particular stretch of shoreline just as Himiko had appeared, surely an entire galaxy must have come together.

As Ochako splashed water from her ceramic basin onto her face, she wondered what had driven her to go on a walk that late anyway.

She made eye contact with herself in the mirror, and her stomach dropped to her feet.

"Oh. Right."

How in all the gods' names had she forgotten something so upsetting? Ochako remembered why she had been out walking now. She had felt numb as she had walked along in the sand, cradling her hands to her chest to keep semi-warm. Now, alone in her bedroom, she remembered the thought that had drifted through her mind as she had glanced out along the ocean - dark and foamy and ominous.

How will they survive?

How will I survive if they don't?

That had shaken Ochako to her core. The ocean was full of nasty, unforgiving things. Her friends, so kind and full of love, would have to fight tooth and nail to make it out alive.

Ochako violently splashed her face with more water to snap herself out of it. They didn't leave until the first of next week, afterall. She still had plenty of time to spend with Izuku and Tsuyu, load them up with gifts and mourn later.

It was fine. She was fine.

Her face in the mirror was wan, almost like a stretched piece of canvas on a frame. The bruises under her eyes were a yellowish-purple, and her hair was still a mess from yesterday's tossing and turning and the night air from hours ago.

"You need a walk," she said to herself, choosing to ignore the fact that she had just come back from a walk. "To clear your head."

She changed into something decent this time instead of wandering around in her nightie (which smelled like the ocean and was now stained with splotches of blood from the gifted fish). As she was slipping shoes onto her feet, she happened to look over at her window and made direct eye contact with the fish. The room was silent for an uncomfortable amount of moments before her stomach growled and she made her decision.

"Alright. You're coming with me."

Ochako grabbed the fish by the gill and tromped down the steps and out of the house.

~*~

The forest, Ochako realized, was both very similar to the ocean and not at all similar at the same time. The deeper one went into the maze of trees, the more bizarre the sights became. In all the years that she had lived between the two shores - the seashore and the forest shore - she had seen some pretty bizarre sights, but none of them quite topped this one.

There had been one time - during the autumn months a few years ago - that Ochako had been traipsing through the forest, and a flash of green had caught her eye from between the trees. It had been a blur - a quick flashing blink. She knew that her curiosity would not be satisfied until she found the source.

She had chased the green blur for what seemed like hours, weaving through trees and crawling through underbrush to keep up. Finally, the blur stilled in a small clearing and Ochako at last caught a full glance at what it was.

It had been a creature - that's what it must have been - that looked so similar to Tsuyu (who at the time, Ochako had just recently met) that Ochako had blanched. It could have been Tsuyu, for it looked almost exactly like her, except for its feet. Its feet were jointed almost exactly like a frog, and were webbed between the toes. When Ochako got the nerve to look up, she saw that the creature's tongue stuck out of its mouth grotesquely.

Ochako had been frozen where she stood. The creature made eye contact with her, made a small hurt noise, and then hopped away. Ochako had never been able to forget that day, and for the first few days after that she hadn't been able to look Tsuyu in the eye.

Now, as Ochako wandered through the forest deep in contemplation, another blink of color caught her eye.

It was silver this time, instead of green, and much lower than Ochako remembered the green one being. Much slower, as well, as Ochako was able to catch up to the silver flash in a few strides.

The tiny silver flash turned out to be a tiny silver child. A little girl, barely ten years old it seemed, with big red eyes that took up much of her face. Her long silver (silver! What an odd color for a little girl) hair hung in snarls down her back, and her clothes were in dirty rags.

The oddest thing (though this encounter was already incredibly odd) was that there was a small horn protruding from the right side of her forehead.