Yapping with the merfolk at the lake was not something that I really wanted to do. Messing up by promising things that could not be followed through would be bad. I did not want to step on toes. I could ask them some simple questions about things though. When we went back to the lake the next day, the diplomat swam directly to us. "Is it time for diplomacy?" he asked. I shook my head. "No. We asked our leaders. They will send people here for the diplomacy to take place. It will take a while though." I said. He nodded his head sagely. "In the meantime, I have some questions for you about the area and what we've seen." His eyes gained a curious shine to them. "Oh. I can answer questions." he said. I decided to get our main objective out of the way first. "Where do you get the shiny stones? I see you guys trade them around. What are they for and can you show us where they are?" I asked politely. He nodded his head. "They allow us to socialize with members of other tribes. We like examining them. It is usually placed down over there at the end of a social time." he pointed.
I was led to the place they discarded the gemstones. It was 2 hours away along the edge of the lake. True to his word, they were just discarded on the river bed. I did not have a basket to bring them all back. That would have to be for later. "Our people find stones like these very valuable. How do you mine them and where can we find the deposit?" I asked. His head tilted to the side. The merman was confused now. "I don't know what that means. We get them from here. What is 'mine'?" he said. I tried my best to explain it. "Oh. I think black scales get them for us." he said. He did not sound too sure about it. I had some more questions for him. "Hey, we've never seen each other eat before. What do your people eat?" I asked calmly. They were carnivorous. They ate the fish in the river and lake when they got hungry. He then asked us the same. I pointed at our head. "We get a lot of our energy from the sun, but we can eat crops and fruit and meat." I told him. He looked so perplexed. "Can we speak your language!?" Corey asked. The merman said "If you take in my essences."
Zipping through my mind was a lewd thought. I was not going to vocalize it out loud though. "Since that is the case, we might do it later. For now, we can all just talk like this." I said. I was deeply uncomfortable with that. Even if I was okay, I could see both of them were not having it. Even though they were gay, they were tops. Even if they could fuck the merman, they would not. They did not like aliens. It was xenophobia, pure and simple. It was probably time to go back to exploring the plain again. All their instincts would probably scream for them to attack if they did anything sexual at all. Especially if the merman tried to take the lead in a more dominant way. Being a submissive alien would probably bring up more disgust than horniness. Nothing here would change until the diplomat and missionary got here. "Bye bye. We'll see you later." I said. We then left the area on our own. We did not need him as he had been hugging the rim of the lake the whole time. We went to the plains to check it out and talk amongst themselves. We all agreed that the merman wanted action.
