Ebb Tide

One rock, precariously balanced on top of another, slid out from under her foot the moment she put her weight on it. Arms flailing, Meiru stumbled, splashing in the water as she took several frantic steps forward in a desperate bid to regain her balance.

It worked. (Barely.) Straightening up, she reached back to grab her bucket.

"You okay?"

"Yeah, thanks," she replied. Seconds later Meiru realized with a start that she hadn't seen anyone else around the tide pool…

…and the voice she heard was very robotic sounding.

Cautiously, she worked her way over to where the stranger was, and grinned. "Um, hi!"

Sure enough, it was a mernavi.

Not just a navi, either, another girl! Or… at least… Meiru thought they were probably a girl. They looked like one, pink all over with long blonde 'hair' and golden ribbon-like streamers from her helm. Well… pink for girls and blue for boys was a human thing, and even then boys could wear pink, too, just like she often wore blue, so that really didn't mean anything…

Her eyebrows knit together as she focused. She just had a feeling about it, that was all.

The navi looked a little surprised, too.

"H-hi there!"

"I'm Meiru. Nice to meet you!"

"My name's Roll." The mernavi smiled, somewhat hesitant. "I've never met a human kid before!"

"Me too! Wait— I mean—"

Roll laughed, but it was a good-natured, not a mocking laugh, and Meiru couldn't help but join in. "I know what you meant. What are you up to?"

"Collecting shells and urchins and, um, starfish."

"Oh, so am I! Just shells, though." Roll gave her a curious look. "What will you do with the starfish? They can't live out of water very long, they'll get dried up."

Meiru waded deeper into the shallows, and found an outcropping of stones that she could sit on. "Yeah, I know. I got an aquarium at home. I like to collect them for a couple days and, and, make notes in my journal and, study them. And take pictures. Then I let them go back where I found them. Our teacher said it's important to put them back in their, um, native habitat."

"Oh, cool. I wish I had a pet."

"They're not really pets," Meiru said. "But I do have some pet hermit crabs." They were actually her mother's hermit crabs, 'rescued' from tourist kiosks years before Meiru was born. The oldest one was at least fifteen years and bigger than Meiru's fist. "Are you a girl?" She blurted out. "It's just, you're really pretty and you look like a girl…"

This earned another laugh. "Yes. Sort of. We're a little different from you guys, but my frame type is what you'd call a girl." Between the shows and movies she'd watched with Saito and Netto, and having spent enough time around dolphins, Roll knew more about those differences than Meiru did.

"Oh, okay." There was a half second pause. "What's a frame type?"

"Ummmm… it's like… how our… body is?" Roll faltered, she'd never had to explain this to anyone, and wasn't quite sure how to put it into words. "I'm a repair type, so are my parents. And my best friend is a combat type, his brother is a, um, a worker type that you'd call a boy, and their parents are a worker boy kind and a worker girl kind, and…"

She saw that Meiru's eyes had glazed as all of this went right over her head.

"It's— um, I'm not explaining it very well. Sorry."

"That's okay." Then she grinned. "How old are you? I'm eight!"

"I just turned twenty seven."

Meiru nearly fell over in surprise. "Wow. But you're still a kid!"

"Yeah, we don't grow up the same way." Roll tried to do the math in her head, but she couldn't remember exactly how the numbers compared. "I… I think we're around the same age. Maybe I'm a little older," she gave her a wink, "but you'll catch up quick."

Meiru was silent for a moment, her mind working. Then she scrambled to her feet. "Hang on, I'll be right back."

She headed towards the shore and grabbed the forgotten bucket of shells (and other found treasures). Returning moments later, she dug out a particularly lovely murex shell and offered it to Roll.

"Here! So you can remember when we met."

"Thank you," Roll replied graciously, clutching the shell to her chest. "Do you have an email address, Meiru?"

"Uhhh…. yes. But I'm not supposed to give it out."

Thinking it over, Roll nodded in understanding. "That's probably a good idea. Maybe you can ask your parents, and let me know next time…"

Meiru lit up at the words 'next time'. "Yeah! Um, here?"

"Sure!"

They made the arrangements, promising to meet at the same place in a few days, and went their separate ways.

"Did you catch up to the latest episode of High Sea Musical?"

"Not yet. But my mom and I went to see the new Spider-Verse movie."

"Lucky," Roll said. "It'll be a few months before it's available for download here." Then she gave Meiru a sly look. "Legally, that is."

With a playful laugh, Meiru placed a hand on her chest in mock offense. "You would never pirate files, would you?" She asked teasingly.

"I wouldn't dream it," she replied with a giggle. Normally Roll dealt honestly, and really wouldn't illegally download movies and shows, but she wasn't sure she could wait long enough for the latest Spider-Verse sequel to work its way through the proper channels.

She would pay for the authorized copy later, of course.

…probably.

"Don't tell me any spoilers before then!" Roll warned. Not that Meiru would do it on purpose, but it was hard to keep the excitement to herself. It was challenging enough as it was avoiding spoilers online. Not wanting to tempt fate, she changed the subject. "You said you were working on a new song?"

Meiru grabbed the personal terminal hanging from the lanyard around her neck. Her parents had gotten her a case, but it was only water resistant— good for rainy days or splash from the faucet when she left her P.E.T. on the edge of the sink to wash her hands. She'd had to save up to buy a truly waterproof case, one that could survive a trip with her in the water, or an accidental drop into the sea (thus the lanyard). It took a lot of discipline to save enough, her parents didn't believe in allowances, but it was also the best investment she'd made in her young life.

"Oh, yeah. It's still a work in progress, so don't judge too harshly."

The boogie board bobbed under her as she shifted her weight.

Digital messaging was easier, but both girls preferred face-to-face communication. Sometimes they met at the tide pools— their 'stomping grounds' over the past couple years— other times they hung out at the pier closest to Meiru's home, or, like today, she would take a boogie board out into the shallows and meet Roll there.

She played the first segment, a snatch of music from a larger, decidedly incomplete music composition. "And here's a part from the middle," she said as she cued up another short clip.

"That's really good!"

It wasn't. Not really. But Meiru was getting better, each song showed adjustments and improvements over the one before, even if they were only small changes. In the meantime, it allowed her to flex her creative muscles, and more importantly, it was fun.

Roll was very supportive, offering encouragement and sometimes suggestions. She hummed part of the tune, repeating it a few times. "Do you have any ideas how to bridge the two parts?"

"Nuh uh." Meiru shook her head 'no'.

"Well, maybe something like…" She hummed a few notes, then 'da da da'd through the parts she hadn't figured out yet, then continued to hum.

It took focus to listen to the musical notes and not the actual sound that Roll was making. It was more of a buzzing noise than anything, somewhere between 'insect' and the whine of 'electrical feedback'. Needless to say, the gulf between human and mernavi music was almost as wide as the one between human and mernavi language. Meiru didn't care for the sound at all, but she was grateful for the help, and had learned to parse what she needed from Roll's demonstrations.

She just needed to focus.

It was easier when Roll came up with lyrics instead, but that could be a mixed bag at times. The navi was just as inclined to write serious, heartfelt, romantic lyrics as she was to write goofy pun-filled parody songs. It reminded Meiru of her mother's habit of bursting out into spontaneous cheesy little songs.

"I think that could work." She whistled back the tune Roll had given her, then mulled it over for a moment. "Yeah… I think it'll work." Whistling it again, she wove the tune into her own pieces, adding to it as she went along.

"Nice!"

"Yeah." Meiru flashed Roll a mischievous grin. "We make a great team, just like Miles and Gwen did when they got together to defeat—"

"Nooo! No spoilers!" Roll cried.

A/N: When they first meet, Roll is around ten - eleven in "human years".

Bonus mernavi show ideas:

Sura: DuckTales = DolphinTales.

Jixie: Shell-Ra. Sturgeon Universe. One Punch Man-o'-War. My Little Seahorse. Jojo's Baleen Adventure. High Sea Musical. Atlantic Time. SpongeBob SquarePants, which is exactly the same as it is in our world, no changes.