Elena and Marisa have a beachside picnic of sirena foods and come to a confusing realization about a particular cultural difference. Prompt: picnic.

It started with a sunny afternoon on the coast of Nueva Vista, a blanket unrolled across the sand, a pair of princesses sprawled out on it, and a satchel of sirena delicacies unpacked between them. The centerpiece of the spread was a platter of kelp tacos, which to Elena, looked an awful lot like hard corn tortillas filled with varying colors of soggy lettuce and about as far from appetizing as something could get, but Marisa had been so excited about sharing some of her favorite foods that Elena knew there was no way to politely pass them up.

Besides, part of the point of restoring unity between the humans and the sirenas was building up trust between them, and even if she didn't quite trust the unusually chunky green strands of ocean plants, she did trust Marisa wholeheartedly. With that thought, she steeled herself and took a bite of her first taco, and began to dutifully chew her way through, only to be struck by how it defied her expectations at every turn. It definitely didn't taste like a traditional Avaloran taco in any way, but it was a far cry from tasting like the damp green strings it resembled. The shell was still crunchy, somehow, despite having been in the water, and the filling was sweet, with an almost fruit-like aftertaste to it that she couldn't quite place.

Marisa was watching her intently, her temporary legs crossed beneath her and her eyes flickering over Elena's expression as she chewed. She frowned at the contemplative set of Elena's face, tugging at the end of her braid.

"You don't like it," she said, sounding disappointed.

Elena felt her eyebrows shoot up and tried a muffled protest through a mouthful of kelp before hastily swallowing it down. "No, no, it's actually really good!" She stared down at the remainder of the taco in her hand with a look of wonder. "I just can't figure out how you got the kelp to taste like…"

She popped a loose strand into her mouth and let it sit on her tongue. Definitely sweet, almost floral, a bit of tartness behind it. "Mango?" she tried. "Is this mango kelp?"

Marisa shrugged, looking far less tense now that Elena had given the unfamiliar food a stamp of approval. "I've never had mango, so I couldn't tell you." She reached out for her own taco and took a bite, settling back on the blanket. "Out of curiosity, how did you expect it to taste?"

"Kinda briny, I guess?" Elena ate some more, half-wondering if she'd imagined the flavor and it would suddenly start tasting like the ocean on a second bite. Nope, still sweet—her mind hadn't been playing tricks on her. "I guess I just thought it would taste like seaweed."

"Sure," Marisa said, nodding, "but what type of seaweed?"

"There's more than one?"

The two stared at each other over the remaining halves of their tacos, with the ocean breeze and crash of the waves filling the silence.

"Do… do humans only use one type of seaweed?" Marisa asked hesitantly, an almost horrified edge to her voice. Elena's baffled expression must have answered for her, because Marisa's eyes widened and she pressed her fingers to her lips, her expression hovering somewhere between aghast and amused. "This explains so much—I, um," she looked contrite, her mouth starting to curl up into an apologetic smile, "I didn't want to say anything at the unity feast the other week, since you were hosting and I didn't want to be rude…"

"Oh, no," Elena started, feeling a mortified heat creeping up her spine and into her face as she realized where this was going.

"But the kelp and seaweed dishes your cooks prepared were, um… They weren't the best…"

"We only had two ingredients to work with!" Elena protested. "I—we—!"

Marisa was laughing now, a quiet giggle that made her eyes shine. "I'm sorry—it didn't occur to me that 'seaweed and kelp' would mean something different to humans than it does to us. For sirenas, 'kelp' alone refers to almost—" she bit her lip and counted briefly on her free hand, "—fifty different foods."

Elena finally set her taco down so she could properly bury her face in her hands, letting a distressed sound out through her fingers. "Ugh, the other sirenas probably think that Avalorans can't cook!" She peeked back up, still embarrassed. "How can you have that many different things you call 'kelp'?"

"It's just kind of a catch-all for a lot of our food," Marisa explained. "I think it all started as 'human' kelp, but then we started growing different types with sirena magic…" She polished off the rest of her taco and picked up a fibrous, green package from the food spread, which she began to carefully unwrap like a seaweed tamal. "I could show you around one of our kelp forests some time, if you wanted," she went on. "Papá has been having Marzel and I studying with some of our aquaculture experts ever since the royal retreat, and I'm sure our instructor would let me give you a tour."

Her curiosity piqued and slowly winning out over her embarrassment, Elena smiled. "Sounds like fun!" And then, more playfully, "So, is King Pescoro hoping you or your brother will pick up farming as a backup career in case the crown doesn't work out?"

Marisa laughed. "Oh, no, he said he wanted us to have a better understanding of Coronado's supply chains. Although, I think he's mostly just hoping that we'll have fewer—" she grimaced, raising one hand to make air quotes, "—'incidents' with the milagra if we know more about how our plants are grown."

Elena's smile softened, and she reached over to thread her fingers with Marisa's raised hand. "Hey, I'd hardly call saving my life an 'incident.'"

Marisa met her eyes, her own glowing smile stretching across her face. "I wouldn't either."

They shared a comfortable quiet for a few minutes, enjoying the food and salty sea breeze together. Elena knew she'd gotten lucky a dozen times over as far as her relationship with the sirena princess was concerned—lucky that the Turners hadn't shot her when she'd appeared by their ship, lucky she'd decided to save Elena when she did, lucky the milagra had worked, and that was just for starters—but right now the luckiest thing of all to her was that Marisa had invited her out to this private lunch. It was a shame that she'd only be in Nueva Vista for a scant few weeks. They had to figure out a way to stay in contact once Elena went back to Avalor City, but for now, she was content to just try and spend as much time together as possible.

With that in mind, Elena finally spoke up again. "I'll definitely take you up on that tour offer, though—I know I'll need it if I want to host a proper feast for the sirenas someday."

"I'm sure Avaloran cooking tastes fine when you're actually cooking Avaloran food." Marisa said. "I'm actually a bit sad I passed it up at the unity feast. I wouldn't mind trying some of it."

"I thought you couldn't eat human food?"

"Well, you can eat sirena food," Marisa pointed out. "And Marzel said that he tried some human food at the royal retreat, and he's still fine." She smirked. "You know, aside from still being Marzel."

Elena snorted, and then clapped her hands together with a gasp. "You know what we need?"

Marisa skimmed her eyes over the remaining food selection. "More desserts?"

"Another picnic!" Pressing her fingers to her chest, Elena straightened up, feeling proud of her idea. "I can bring some traditional Avaloran food, and you can bring some more sirena dishes, and we can compare tastes and see which ones are similar. And then when we're done, we can go exploring in the kelp forests!"

"Do humans normally schedule their second date when they're still only halfway through their first?" Marisa asked, sounding amused.

"If the first is going well enough! And seaweed-related misunderstandings aside," Elena reached across the blanket to take both of Marisa's hands in hers, now, "I am having a lot of fun."

Marisa gave a firm nod, her mock serious expression betrayed by the excited glint in her eyes. "I knew the kelp tacos would do the trick."

Three days later found the girls relaxing on another blanket at a nearby cove. Spread out in front of them were their respective satchels' worth of snacks and finger foods, and a basket of fruit for good measure, from which Elena had plucked a ripe mango. She sliced it up and handed several sizable chunks over to Marisa, who raised one piece with a laugh, like she was toasting with it, before popping it into her mouth. She chewed through thoughtfully, puzzling through the flavors, before announcing, "You know what? This tastes just like sweet kelp!"

Sirena culture is one of those things that's way more developed in my head than it is in the show. Namely, I refuse to believe that a sapient humanoid species that has a presumably comparable degree of cultural development as humans eats two foods and two foods only. I mean, even if we assume they can meet all their caloric and nutritional needs just from seaweed and kelp, there are only so many ways you can prepare exactly two things, especially underwater, and food (and food variety) kinda tends to be a big deal in human cultures. I don't know, *maybe* sirenas just have very refined pallets that allow them to taste minute differences between the 30-ish varieties of kelp that exist in the real world, but even then, not all of those are going to grow in the same climates, and- Look, after a certain point, magic kelp just seemed more realistic.

Oh, right, the ship.

Marisa is a really fun and really underutilized character - I can't believe the show gave us a mermaid princess with the same "screw the rules I'm doing what's right" attitude as Elena and then only used her for like two episodes. I mean, I can, because time and budget constraints, but just think of the adventures! Think of the worldbuilding! Think of how many more cute hand-holding moments we would've gotten! (Because oh my god Elena and Marisa just cannot stop touching each other.)