#fishgutsau

The "story" as it were, kicks off when Gem finally gets fed up with another fisherman in the area, Grian, over continued conflict about ownership of fishing grounds in the mouth of the bay.

She orchestrates his death (with the eager assistance of Scott and Impulse) out at sea and passes it off as a tragic accident in the winter swells with her being the unfortunate finder of his remains.

And it works.

See the thing is: Gem has a history of causing disappearances. It started with some accidents with out-of-town poachers. She would chase these people off and one or two would just slip overboard and happen to drown. It wasn’t her fault and besides they deserve it. But things start to escalate from there. Poachers become outsiders become fellow townspeople. Grian is someone Gem’s known for years, whose friends are tangentially her friends or acquaintances. His death is a cold-blooded murder driven by hatred and frustration. This time something is different about what she's done and Gem knows it.

But Gem is a reputable and well-known person. Her prices are fair, she drives poachers out of the bay and maintains order around the pragmatic fishing ground policy that undoubtedly helps everyone to survive.

She is the type of person to look to for guidance when things get difficult because she can make those hard choices. So how on earth could it be her fault?

No one is wiser until Grian's funeral brings an old friend into town who is more than a little suspicious about the circumstances of his death.

Scar was one of Grian's crewmates when they did trawling much further south. They split when Scar took up (illegal) whaling and Grian moved into the bay.

As an outsider, Scar isn't so swayed by the goodwill the town has around Gem's name. He's no detective but for the sake of an old friend, he might as well try.

In this AU, mermaids are social mammals part of the Hominidae family that went back into the ocean similar to Cetaceans. They live in matrilineal family groups or in any other female-led organization of pods and have a very "survival-oriented" global culture (with regional variation).

Pearl is a lone mermaid whose pod lived in the bay until they were starved out by the collapsing fisheries. PNW mermaids are more territorial than other ecotypes and value strength over anything else. Pearl's inability (read: unwillingness) to oust other pods for better fishing grounds and the loss of one of her pod members summarily lead the other two to abandon her.

Without a pod to help her, hunting enough in her dwindling territory has been difficult and lonely, leading her to slowly starve just as the humans in the bay have begun to.

She took to trailing fishing boats to steal from their catch, which is how she met Gem who was mid-throwing some unfortunate soul overboard.

They have an interesting relationship.

Gem is enamored with Pearl at the halfway point between a person and a large apex predator. She loves the way Pearl needs her to live and the way Pearl, as a social creature with no pod, craves her attention. It's thrilling to have a predator at her beck and call like this and, in turn, to be so desperately needed. She also loves the way Pearl doesn't look at her like she's dangerous (the way Scott and Impulse have begun to when they think she doesn't see them). Her interest in Pearl seems to be leaching into something more than just wildlife admiration. She's begun to learn the mermaid language just to talk to her. For what? Who really knows. Meanwhile, Pearl is hungry enough to eat just about anything Gem throws her (including human bodies) and desperate enough that she lets Gem get much closer than many humans in this area have ever been to a mermaid. (They even touch, scandalous for mermaids.)

It's skewed for sure. From Gem's perspective, they've got something special going on. From Pearl's... not so much.

This being Secret-Life based, you can imagine how this story ends...

Bonus piece: Pearl and her old pod.

You are right on the nose with the lighthouse. Gem is kind of an untouchable sort of figure, Scott and Impulse are like her PR team. They engage with people in positions that would have reason to suspect something is wrong. This whole murder thing is quite a production.

Post-Grian’s murder, Jimmy (who is one of the lighthouse keepers) is a wreck because he has a full view of the bay. He really should have seen something was off with Grian that night. Thank goodness Scott is so understanding. He’s right. Life is hard here and some things are just really out of his control.

To answer your ask: Pearl pretty much just follows Gem’s boat around at a distance near 24/7 after Gem started feeding her. She’s memorized the sound and rhythm of the motor.

The townsfolk have even seen her napping on the dock or in the water next to the boat in the early morning/late afternoon. Everyone is pretty much aware that there are mermaids in the bay and others do try to help Pearl from time to time but no one gets as close as Gem does.

Mermaids, like seals, sense movement in the water through wakes but lack the highly developed sense of underwater hearing that seals have due to being a rather recent evolution in the Hominid family tree (this necessitates team-hunting in their feeding strategies because they aren’t specialized enough to work it solo under most circumstances).

To this effect, Pearl just kinda keeps a passive tab on the wake of Gem’s ship and when Gem needs her she splashes at the water a lot to indicate she’s got dinner. Gem does use a whistle to “call” her, but it’s more an intimidation/theatric tactic than an actual effective way to get Pearl’s attention.