The tail is back moments later; people frown less at her for sitting around naked at the riverside if she's not got feet. (It's silly, she thinks, but it is what it is.) A little self-conscious in the face of that reaction - she can understand it, she thinks, because he shouldn't have to worry about drowning of all fucking things and it isn't fair - she tucks it back toward the water, resting her hands in her lap like some prim little thing.

"I didn't know what I was," she says, "for years-- because my bloodline was mixed with humans, and I couldn't do as many things as I was meant to, until the storm came and changed my world, and gave me everything I was meant to have. And I never had a river of my own until here, so I'm...not used to everything yet."

The storm had been a wrong thing, but she can't quite regret it happening for what it gave her; she's what she should be, now, what she could always feel the lack of before.

"Where did you come from? --I'm Ilde."