Carpet-Bound

by Trismegistus Shandy

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Dominique sat at a two-person table in the café, sipping her tea slowly and wondering when Perla would get there. And how. The message had been a bit vague, just giving the time and place, a café they used to meet at pretty often before…

Just then, there was a bit of a commotion. Everyone was turning to look at the front door, where someone seemed to be having trouble getting it open. One of the waiters went to the door and opened it, letting in a mermaid reclining on a flying carpet.

“Thanks,” she said to the waiter. “I’m with her,” pointing at Dominique, and floated over toward her table.

“Hey,” Dominique said, getting up and awkwardly offering a hug.

“Sure you want a hug? I’m a bit damp. Got to keep the gills wet,” Perla said.

“I haven’t seen you in two years,” Dominique said. “When you decided to become a mermaid, I thought I might never see you again. Of course I’ll take getting a little damp if that’s what it takes to hug you.”

So they hugged, a little awkwardly with Dominique standing and Perla reclining on her carpet. Perla was a little damp around the collar of her peach-colored blouse, which went well with the blue scales of her tail.

“You’re so beautiful,” Dominique said. “I never saw you after your transformation; when we said goodbye, the mermaids just took you underwater and we had to take it on faith that they’d transform you and you wouldn’t drown.”

“Yeah, it was pretty scary for a few moments, but the transformation started with my gills, seconds after I submerged. And I had to stay underwater for a good while after transforming; it took a while for things to even out so I could breathe air too. And then, well, I was kept busy, and even if I found free time to visit the shore, I had no way of contacting you and making sure you’d be there when I visited. Or any kind of clock or calendar to tell me when to come. At first I wasn’t sure whether to be worried you’d forgotten about me or worried you were too sick to come, but I realized we were probably just missing each other.”

“I went to the beach where we said goodbye to you on all my off days for a while after you left,” Dominique said. “But when you kept not showing up, and I realized I was losing touch with my other friends because I always wanted to to go the beach, whatever the weather, I stopped coming as often.”

They sat down and waited for the waiter to finish up with some other customers and take Perla’s order.

“So,” Dominique began, “I see you’ve got a way to get around on land.”

“Yeah,” Perla said. “I took some things from a sunken ship to a guy I know who works on the wharf, and asked him to buy me a flying carpet with the money from the stuff I recovered. It took a while; most of the cargo was ruined by being underwater, and the stuff that wasn’t ruined was too heavy to carry much of it on one trip, but after a few weeks I managed to pay for it.”

“Great. But you know, you could have asked your friend on the wharf to send me a message, and I could meet you on the shore or wharf somewhere.”

Perla nodded. “Yeah, I probably should have done that. I was just focused on getting the carpet so I could leave the ocean. And a little extra money for other expenses.”

“Leave? Like, you’re planning to live on land again?”

“Yeah. Maybe I can eventually save up enough money to pay a sorcerer to transform me into a human or elf, something with legs anyway. But for now I’m okay with being carpet-bound and having to moisten my gills every hour or so.”

“Where are you staying?”

“That’s one of the things I wanted to talk to you about. Do you have space for a roommate? Or is anyone you know looking for a roommate?”

“Well, that’s the thing,” Dominique said. “You aren’t the only one who’s had a lot going on in the last couple of years.”

“Dominique,” Perla said, looking very serious. “What did you do?”

“I joined a commune.”

“Okay…”

“Which is kind of run by a religion?”

“Starting to sound pretty bad.”

“No, it’s not. They’re cool with trans people and really supportive of disabled people, and you don’t have to belong to the religion to live in the commune, but I’m thinking of joining. And, well, there’s a waiting list to join the commune, but we also have some guest rooms. They’re mainly meant for friends and relatives of members who are visiting from a distance, and you kind of qualify. You can stay with us a while and see how you like it and then couch-surf with our other friends until your place on the waiting list comes up.”

“Tell me about it.”

“Well, we live in an older apartment building in the Silversmiths District. The roof and all the south-facing rooms are used to grow things – vegetables to eat and sell, and flowers to sell in the florist shop on the ground floor. And we have a couple of floors devoted to an eco-friendly factory – that’s where I’ve been working. We make messager accessories – cases and lanyards and some other stuff. There’s also like a chapel and a library and a gym and they’re talking about putting in a pool, but that’s tricky to add to an existing building. And the rest of the rooms are used for people to live or cook and eat or whatever. They’re working on knocking out some non-load-bearing walls to build more communal spaces, like a big dining room, but that’s still in progress.”

“And tell me about the rules. There’s got to be rules for living in a place like that.”

“Well, the goal is to have everyone working in the commune itself, either the gardens or the factory or the stores where we sell our stuff, or just maintaining the building and all the plumbing and wiring and so forth. We’re not quite there yet, a few of us have to work outside jobs and bring money in that way, but we’re getting close. And in addition to actual jobs, there are like chores you’re assigned, usually stuff like cleaning or sorting the recycling or stuff like that. And there are floor meetings where we talk about stuff like what needs repairing or how somebody isn’t doing their chores, but also how we’re feeling and what we need help with, kind of like group therapy combined with business meetings.”

“That sounds like it would work terribly.”

“It works better than it sounds!” Dominique said defensively.

“Well, I won’t rule it out just yet, but for reasons I’ll get into in a bit, I don’t think it would suit me. Do any of our other friends have room for me right now, do you think?”

“Oh, yeah, I just remembered. Summer and Annabel said they were looking for a roommate.”

Perla stared at her. “Why didn’t you lead with that?”

Dominique shrugged.

“Well… could you send them a message and let them know I’m looking for a roommate situation too?”

“Sure. Why can’t you send it directly?”

“I gave up most of my possessions when I became a mermaid. Including my messager. I asked my friend at the wharf to send you that message about meeting here. I’ll buy a new one when I can afford it, but for now I think most of my money is going to have to go to rent, until I find a job on land.”

“So why are you leaving the ocean, anyway?”

“Mermaid culture sucks. The little we see of it from shore or ships seems exotic and romantic. But after living with them for two years, I realized that it’s as rigid and custom-bound as Hakishan culture used to be before the Revolution. You’re only allowed to sing in certain keys depending on your caste, for instance, there’s no sex allowed outside of formally recognized triads, and worst of all is their attitude to tech and magic. I knew going in that a lot of tech and magic doesn’t work when it’s inundated by salt water, but mermaid law doesn’t allow a lot of the tech and magic that does

work underwater.”

“That does sound kind of bad.”

“Yeah. I love Loraia and Hiheia, but everything else about living in the ocean just sucks, and I missed my friends on land more and more with time, not less and less. And I missed a lot of other things you can only get on land, like cooked food.”

Just then, the overworked waiter finally got around to taking their orders. Perla ordered a large coffee and a selection of several pastries.

“See, you can’t get coffee or pastry underwater. It’s always raw kelp, raw fish, raw shellfish, raw cephalopods. The mermaid nation I lived with doesn’t allow eating marine mammals, but some in the Eastern Ocean do, and guess what! They’re raw too.”

“They didn’t have any magic to heat up the food? That seems pretty basic. Even most humans can manage that.”

“It doesn’t work that well when you’ve got the entire ocean as a heat sink. And anything more advanced is outlawed, like I said.”

The waiter brought Perla’s order, and smiled at Perla’s obvious pleasure in biting into her first pastry in two years. Conversation slowed down as Perla focused on eating. After she’d eaten three pastries of different kinds, and drank most of her coffee, she said, “So, tell me what our friends have been doing for the last couple of years. Did Summer and Annabel ever admit they were dating or are they still ‘just roommates’?”

“Still just roommates, last I heard. They’ve moved into a larger apartment now that Summer’s making more money from her art. She got some big jobs illustrating children’s books, I think?”

“Oh, good for her. What about Annabel?”

“Still working for the parks department as a tree whisperer…”

They talked about mutual friends for a while as Perla slowly finished off the rest of her coffee and pastries.

Earlier, Dominique had sent a message to Summer, telling her: “Hey, Perla’s back and she’s looking for place to live.” When Perla had finished the last of her pastries and they were gossiping about Elyssa’s terrible luck with boyfriends, there was a chime from Dominique’s messager.

“Hey, Summer says she’ll be home from her errands in half an hour and wants to meet you. You want to head over toward her and Annabel’s apartment?”

“Yes, of course. You’re the one I missed the most, but I’m dying to see Summer and Annabel again, too, among others.”

So they paid for their coffee and pastries, and left the café. Dominique said, “I haven’t been to their new place yet – let me check if they gave me the address or just said it was in the Clocktower district.”

She looked through the history on her messager and found the address. Then: “It’s a pretty long walk, and I don’t know if you’d have issues going on the subway. Do you mind if we swing by the commune and let me check out a bike? I walked here, because it was close enough and I’m trying to walk at least a mile a day, but Summer and Annabel’s apartment will be a bit far to walk.”

“That’s fine. Or…” Perla looked down. “You could ride my carpet? It’s designed for one person and a bit of cargo, like if you’re carrying a week’s worth of groceries or something, and I know I’m bigger than a human, but I think you could fit.”

“Yeah, let’s try it.”

So Perla shifted toward one side, and Dominique climbed on, sitting cross-legged next to Perla’s hips. “So where is it, exactly?” Perla asked.

Dominique read out the address, and Perla nodded. “Okay. Let’s see.” She touched some of the control runes on the edge of the carpet, and it rose higher, above the rooftops, and headed at an exhilarating pace toward the Alinda Clocktower. Dominique clapped a hand over her hat to keep it from blowing off. Once they neared the tower, Perla slowed down and descended to where she could make out the street signs, then made their way toward Summer and Annabel’s apartment like a land-bound vehicle, just a few cubits higher.

“This is it,” Dominique said, pointing. “Brantley Apartments.” The carpet descended to sidewalk level and stopped just in front of the double doors of the building.

“Could you get off and open the door for us?” Perla asked. “I’m having some trouble with certain types of door. When I try to push on one of those heavy doors that automatically swing shut when you let them go, I just push my carpet away from it, and when I pull, I just bring my carpet closer. Supposedly there’s a trick to it, but I haven’t worked out yet.”

“Of course.”

Brantley Apartments wasn’t quite fancy enough to have a doorman, though it looked nice, with no defaced or damaged walls or windows. Dominique opened the door, holding it open until Perla’s carpet was all the way into the lobby, and then checked her watch.

“Summer should be here pretty soon,” she said. “Let’s wait here – there probably aren’t any chairs in the hall outside their apartment.”

So Dominique sat in one of the chairs and Perla moved her carpet to hover beside her. They resumed their conversation about mutual friends as Perla took out a spray bottle and spritzed her gills, but the conversation soon turned to serials that Perla was two years behind on, and new serials and novellas that she hadn’t heard of. “I must visit a bookshop once I have a job and some income,” she lamented. “There’s so much I’ve missed.”

“Do mermaids have serials or anything like them?”

“It’s all songs with them; all their literature is combined with music. Probably more than half their songs tell stories, and some of them are pretty long, but not as long as our longest serials, I don’t think. They have a form of writing, which is etched on seashell, but it takes so long and since they don’t have anything like printing, they only use to record the most important songs.”

They continued talking about mermaid culture, both the more enjoyable aspects and the rigid customs that had finally induced Perla to leave, until Summer walked in the door.

“Dominique, hi. Perla, is that you?”

“All eight feet of me.”

“I don’t see any feet,” Summer joked. “But you’re amazingly beautiful. The mermaid magic was great for you.”

“Not so great overall,” Perla said. “I’ll tell you the details later. But what about if we go upstairs?”

“Sure, hang on a second.” Summer took a small silvery cylinder from the pocket of her skirt and waved it at the icon beside the elevator. The elevator’s indicator chimed, and a minute later the door opened.

It was a bit of a squeeze to get all three of them into the elevator, but they managed it, and Summer touched the icon for the seventh floor. A minute later, she let them into her and Annabel’s apartment, waving the same cylinder at the door.

“Pretty nice, huh? It’s forty drachmas a month, which currently Summer and I are dividing evenly. The water, electricity and thaum average about five drachmas. If you take the third bedroom, we’ll divide it all three ways.”

“Let’s see.” They were currently in the living room, which had no wall dividing it from the dining area and kitchen. There was a big window at the opposite end from the outer door, and there were several doors along the left-hand wall, the middle one closed and the other two ajar.

Summer led the way toward the first of the three doors. Perla had to lift her carpet a couple of cubits or so to avoid some of the furniture. “This one we haven’t really done anything with yet,” she said as she opened the door. It contained a few stacks of boxes, but nothing else. “Sorry, those are posters that just came from the printer and I haven’t sent to my customers yet. I should have them cleared out in a few more days… actually I can just squeeze them into my bedroom somewhere until I ship them all.”

“No hurry,” Perla said, “I don’t have any furniture yet, and probably won’t buy much until I find a job.”

“The other two are mine and Annabel’s bedrooms. Oh, and she should be home from work in a couple of hours.”

“I don’t have any stuff to move in, really,” Perla said. “Just about everything I own is on the carpet here.” She gestured at a bag about the size of a galra ball. “I’ve got some money I earned from salvaging wrecks, so I’ll probably buy a kiddie pool to sleep in, and give you the rest toward my initial share of rent. I’ll be looking for a job on land soon.”

“So why are you coming back to land? Not that I’m not glad to see you,” Summer hastily amended.

Perla told her about her problems with the rigidity of mermaid culture. Dominique tuned out the monologue she’d already heard, and looked around the apartment at the way Summer and Annabel had started to decorate it. In between the bookshelves, crammed with novellas and serial chapters, there were several posters in frames, some advertising popular serials, others operettas or plays, plus several pieces of Summer’s art. There were also some potted plants on a low shelf by the big window, lushly thriving and putting out thickly clustered leaves and flowers; that was Annabel’s work, Dominique knew.

Callie, Summer’s calico cat, came wandering out of her bedroom. She rubbed against Summer’s legs, and then deigned to let Dominique pet her, but didn’t respond to Dominique’s coaxing to hop into her lap. Instead, she stopped beside Perla’s carpet, looking up at it with a puzzled expression, and then hopped up onto it.

“…So yeah, that’s why I decided to come back to land,” Perla concluded, looking pleased and started to stroke Callie’s fur.

“So how does mermaidification rate as as transition technique?” Summer asked. “I’ve just been using ordinary alchemy, a feminizing potion taken every month on the full moon, and I’ve gotten decent results, but nothing like your amazing looks.”

“I love my body,” Perla said. “My tits are like 80% better than what I had after three years of alchemical feminization, not to mention my face. And swimming is better than ever. But no, I wouldn’t recommend becoming a mermaid to other trans girls. Maybe if you have nobody on land you’d miss, but even then it’s iffy. Of course, you have to make friends with some mermaids first, and not everybody can do that.”

Callie had begun to lick Perla’s scales. She liked the fishy taste, apparently.

“I heard that Erlene is trying to get a vampire to turn her,” Summer said. “Supposedly you get changed to your ideal body when you turn. But the disadvantages are pretty bad, if not as bad as being a mermaid.”

“I looked into that,” Perla said. “The vampires are really selective about who they turn, and only the highest-ranking vampires are allowed to turn anybody. It’s part of their treaty agreement with the Republic, to keep their numbers from growing any faster than the general population. I decided I liked sushi better than blood pudding. But if Erlene doesn’t mind losing the daylight, and playing court to centuries-old curmudgeons, I wish her luck.”

“I was making do with glamours,” Dominique said, “but the commune funds alchemical amelioration for all its trans members. The steering committee is trying to figure out how to cost-effectively get sorcerous transformations for us, like maybe buying a transformative artifact everyone can use, or better yet recruiting a sorcerer with the right spells for the commune, but so far no dice.”

“Do y’all want something to eat?” Summer asked.

“I just ate at the café,” Perla said. “I wouldn’t mind some soda or juice, though.”

“Yeah, soda or juice if you’ve got it,” Dominique said. She had eaten just before she got Perla’s message.

So Summer poured glasses of mango soda for both of them, and they continued talking until Annabel got home from work.

“Hey, Annabel!” Summer said. “Meet our new roommate!”

Annabel was the token cis member of their friend group, one of the few dryads who liked living in the city rather than the forest. She’d only be able to live in the city for a couple more decades; like certain trees, dryads kept growing as long as they lived, and eventually she’d be too tall to fit in human-designed buildings. She was only about four and a half cubits tall as yet, not that much taller than the trans girls she hung out with.

“A mermaid? Nice to meet you.”

“No, you know her already, she’s Perla.”

“Oh! You’re so pretty, I didn’t recognize you at first!”

Perla blushed and took a sip of her soda to hide her face.

Annabel put away her handbag in her bedroom and came back to sit down in the living room. “So tell me what you’ve been doing for the past two years?”

Perla did. Dominique zoned out during part of it, but perked up when Perla mentioned some details of mermaid society that she hadn’t brought up before.

“Did you date anybody while you were living under the sea?” Annabel asked.

“I was in a triad with Loraia and Hiheia,” Perla said. “The same ones who I met when I worked on a fishing boat, and who agreed to turn me into a mermaid. Mermaids are kind of what we’d call poly, but in a very rigid way: you have to have three partners in a marriage to start with, although when one partner dies the widows are still considered married and allowed to have sex with each other, and may or may not bring another partner in.”

“Huh, that seems like a funhouse mirror version of the marriage laws before the Revolution,” Summer said.

“Yeah, pretty much. Anyway, once I was transformed, Loraia and Hiheia took me to their home, and a few days later we were married. They’d been looking for a third so they could form a triad when they met me. I didn’t know exactly what I was getting into at first, but after some initial shock, I was pretty cool with it. I didn’t love them as deeply as I loved Anya, back before…” She was silent for a few moments, and nobody else spoke either, not wanting to bring up bad memories about that horrible breakup that had sent ripples through their whole friend group. “But yeah, I cared a lot for them. It was a hard decision, coming back; I cared for Loraia and Hiheia, but everything else about mermaid society grated on me more and more as time went on. I was assigned the same caste as the mermaids who transformed me, and that affected everything I did or was allowed to do…”

The sun was setting, the orange orb and strangely colored clouds clearly visible through the big west-facing window. Summer got up and turned on a couple of lights as Perla continued talking.

“…So once I’d brought up enough salvage to pay for the carpet, and what I’d guess was a month or so of rent in a cheap apartment, I left the ocean and I don’t think I’ll go back. Not for good, I mean; I’ll probably go swimming pretty often. But I intend to live on land and work on land.”

“Or maybe on the shore?” Summer suggested. “You could work as a lifeguard at the beach.”

“That’s seasonal work, and the warm weather’s almost over for the year,” Dominique pointed out. “Helping out at the docks in some way, maybe? Cleaning barnacles off the sides of ships?”

“That’s possible. I’ll talk with my friend Watson who helped me sell my salvage and buy the carpet, see if he knows anyone who’s hiring. But I’d rather not have a job where I have to get on and off my carpet frequently. Getting on or off is kind of difficult, especially if I’m boarding it from the water.”

“Oh, yeah, I hadn’t thought of that,” Dominique said. “I knew a kid who was carpet-bound in grammar school, but haven’t known anyone who used one since, not closely.”

After some more talk about jobs that mermaids were uniquely suited for, or would have some advantages in doing, Summer and Annabel got down to business.

“You can have the third bedroom free of charge until you find a job,” Summer said. “At that point we’ll want you to pay a third of the rent and utilities, so about fifteen drachmas.”

“That seems reasonable,” Perla said. She glanced at the window, where one could see a few stars and the lights of nearby buildings. “I guess it’s too late to buy a small pool to sleep in. Could I use the bathtub for tonight?”

“Sure,” Annabel said. “But do you think you’ll fit?”

“No, but it’s better than the sofa. Keep my gills from drying out and waking me up feeling parched.”

They continued talking for another hour. Annabel got up and started fixing supper, a large pot of borscht. She served it out and they all ate. Finally Dominique decided she’d better be leaving.

“Message me as soon as you have a messager,” she said, hugging Perla again and getting her blouse damp again.

“Of course. It was so good to see you again. And let me know if you hear of anyone who’s hiring.”

“Yes, I will. Good evening.”

Dominique left the apartment and went home.