(Current) Name: Merida (Merfolk name), Merida Carcoll (last name made up in a whim on her first time on land), Marie Day Carcoll (1800′s), Daisy Coll (1700s) Nicknames: Mer, Riddie (by her sisters) Age: 27 (appears), actually about 312 years. Date of birth: Unknown Place of birth: Unknown/tba Sexual orientation: Odd question for her, but bisexual Gender: Female, in strange, possibly changing terms. The labels aren’t from her own species, so she just - goes with it.

Present:

It has been a long time since Merida has been around, at the very least ten or fifteen years. Once upon a time, however, she used to come into town every year around the same time in company of her family, following the seasonal events of the changing of tides to arrive ashore into warmth. It was the season of emerging, and her mother had been a very adamant believer of not losing the habit of blending amongst humans, “be it someday we need it and we can’t adapt anymore”. The dangers always existed, but adaptation was a necessary evil for a species such as theirs.

Merida doesn’t know her birth date, or where it was. Not in human terms, at least, hence the information is rendered not only useless, but also impossible to understand. She knows it’s been a long time, at least three centuries in human terms, because she’s seen them, gone through them. The changing times like tides that come and go and collision one against the other. This shore isn’t the only one they emerge to, but one of the places where her and her family have found more respite.

Now, she’s decided to rejoin the old tradition, mostly nudged by her sisters that don’t want to see her knotted up in a sailor’s net, and insist that the human society has changed too much for her not to see it at least for a few weeks. So she arrived by the usual salmon-like roads to the lake, and look lodge in the local Manor, which serves more as a -- deposit of random and estranged things for her to use while she’s on land, while she mostly returns into the lake during the nights (WANTED CONNECTION FOR WHERE SHE’S STAYING).

She has no phone, no instagram facebook, anything, and is really just getting the gist of the new era, much to her surprise. For this reason, she’s mostly been rather quiet and measuring of people, with her nose buried in a book, or working at The Rumblin’ and trying to gauge out what the hell is the music they’re playing. At least, waitressing is always the same.

Latest brush with tragedy:

The year 2006 was, however, more risqué than others, at least for Merida. Somewhere along the shore of the South American continent, she lost the thread. She’d always had a defiant bone, but never in so many years alive had she dared to actually go against her mother’s wishes and defy what she declared once she did so - except that time. It’s a cliché, the story always goes the same: she was beautiful, rowing the little boat trying to get ashore in a complicated night. So Merida helped her from below, without her knowing she led the wide-eyed, frightened woman to safety and away from the protruding rocks that her weak, human eyes couldn’t make out in the thick of the stormy, moonless night. The woman passed out inside the sanded rowboat, and Merida remained guarding it from further dangers until sunrise came. Her features were wonderfully carved out, like chiseled out of her dreams, with long lashes and sweet cheeks that made her out to be a cherub. The shipwreck? Well --- it was hunting season, as it usually was, and her and her family were on the lookout for a cruise like that.

Merida stayed around to see her whenever she came to the beach. Somedays, with extravagant hats and flowy dresses, others with just the skin of her shoulders to keep her shelter from the abrassive sun. One day, the human woman ventured off to sea again in a little kayak, and Merida followed - as she did (her sisters were becoming increasingly worried, but it wasn’t like this was the first time it’d happened. Before, with a man, and another time too, when she’d decided the ship they were trying to board was the wooden coffin of her most beloved). Forgetting her own nature, the mermaid emerged slowly, like a nervous child, to make herself known, and revealed herself to the eyes of the mesmerized woman, whose mouth gaped and eyes widened and she was suddenly stuck between horror and awe. Miles from the shore, she was suddenly awestruck when Merida spoke, leaned over to her when she drew closer and arms brushed sunkissed skin.

The rest is a tragedy. In reaching for her, Merida forgot the weak nature of human and their collapsible lungs, and the woman met her maker under clear waters and shining sun. Merida didn’t feed on her, that wasn’t the point. She was suddenly left with a cadaver of her idealized beloved, and her sisters dragged her by the arms and tail back down to the murky depths of the open graveyard they called home.

After that episode, Merida retreated to the depths, where she’d always preferred to be nonetheless. Her legs forgotten, her hair lost the last human dye she’d put on it not long after. She dismissed the orders from her mother to go back on land for the season and became more solitaire than she’d previously been, only joining her family for the moments of hunt, and sometimes not even then: scuba divers were just as susceptible as any other in a boat.

Past eras:

Humans are more susceptible to time, this she knows. She’s had to bury her fair amount of acquaintances. Because of this, she’s gone with a few names through the ages, when she can’t afford to go with Merida Carcoll, be it because she made something of herself in the last fifteen years and it would rise suspicious eyebrows, or because times have changed. Somewhere, there’s a few portraits of her, scattered through time and space. Same big eyes, same deep gaze and cutting cheekbones, different hair lengths and colours to vary, different dress codes for different eras.

She’s been known as Mary Day Carcoll, Daisy Coll, and probably a few more (was it ever Colette Mayday?). Once upon a time she was merely a passing lady with her sisters, employed as nothing, dwelling in the sun all day, dancing and drinking champagne for the best of the nights; other time, she was employed in the apothecary, alleged distant cousin of the late owner, then a school teacher as Miss Daisy.

//

(Basically, this was all very vague and gay and I’ll probably expand as things happen. I’d love to get some connections for her from when she was previously here through the ages, as well as any other kind of connection: old friends, new friends, enemies, predators, possible food -not-, infatuations, creatures she’s known in her other identities, that recognize her from some type of portrait that they somehow have of her, whatever honestly, etc. She’s rather feral as of now, after twenty-so years in the depths.)

Personality traits:

Curious

Charming

Quick-witted

Sarcastic

Reserved

Poetic

Intense

Adamant

Stubborn

Intelligent

Manipulative

Adaptive