Facial Hair and Comprehension

There was a rocky beach, waves crashing over the edges of the slightly sloped surface and a half-human, half-fish being enjoying the feeling of being out of the ocean depths and mingling with a man… but this wasn't a clip from a certain animated movie that also contained singing crabs and an annoying seagull (for one thing, the only annoying seagull in this realm had been shot by a Pirate) and there were definitely no seashell adornments on the mer-person's chest.

The man was technically royalty though.

"You know, you don't look like a king," the young male mer-person mentioned. Not that the boy had ever crossed paths with royalty before, even when he had two legs like the man before him rather than fins and a tail.

Russell looked at the stack of empty clam shells and lamented that he'd have to cook just fish again for the evening meal, before sighing; "and what exactly is a King supposed to look like?"

"Hmmm, well, I dunno," Oscar confessed tapping his lip with his long, slender fingers. "But not like the beggar I tripped over in the port town before getting on the boat. Although admittedly, that beggar had more facial hair than you. And the man on the coin, who my big brother said was the King of our home country, also had a lot of facial hair."

"What does facial hair have to do with anything," Russell pouted. "I have some, look!" He pointed to his chin where a few soft hairs decorated the gentle curved point of his lower jaw.

Oscar squinted and pushed himself up higher with his upper arms before suddenly snickering. "My big brother has more hair on his big toe!"

Although he considered defending the breath of whiskers on his chin, he had to admit defeat at the comparison. Pirates seemed to be naturally hairy. Even the women.

He latched onto a different point, something the System had brought up not so long ago. "Hey," he tapped the rodent on the head to catch its attention. "If Oscar and his big brother both came from the same world, why did you say that Oscar was a part of this one rather than not?"

"It's simple your Majesty," The mouse stood on its haunches and spoke with familiar confidence. "This world is in a constant state of flux centring around the original island as its core. The edges of the world are the most volatile and subject to change, which is comprehendible considering that it is the edges of the world that expand as the world grows and becomes more tangible. When the pirate ship sank into the waves, it was near the edges of the world and thus the people within the ship, with the exception of those who escaped its fate, instead of altering their state from living to dead, instead were influenced by the developing oceans and became subject to them, therefore becoming subject to this world!"

…..

"Honestly, you lost me at 'comprehendible,'" Russell admitted after a pause.

"Really? I blanked out at 'constant state of flux!'" Oscar giggled.

Sustained Mental Damage, -10 H.P.

"Your Majesty!" The small mouse gave a defeated look that tugged the heart strings and caused Russell to retract his teasing. Really, he didn't understand most of what the System was attempting to say, but he'd guessed from the last sentence the gist of it.

"He became a mermaid…"

"Mer-person."

"Mer-person and at that point became part of this world. Is that about it?" Russell asked the System.

"That's a highly simplified way of saying it which doesn't really grasp the fundamentals…"

"Sorry?"

The system lost many more Hit Points and had to cease his attempts in raising his King's I.Q. "Yes…"

"There you are, dog!"

Russell flinched and heavily sighed, before glancing upward at the one who spoke, the Self-Proclaimed Prankster… his pirate name was something along the lines of Cuticle...Cuttlefish…

"Cutlass!" Oscar grinned and waved as the pirate, who just happened to have a trimmed moustache and beaded chin with a healthy amount of shadow over the rest of his jaw. In fact, seeing as there was a lack of hygiene products, Russell had to wonder how he kept it so neat over these several days.

The pirate paused, his formally arrogant swagger stuttering to a halt, before he massively paled and shrieked at the top of his lungs. "Ghost!" He fled back down the beach like there truly was a spectre grasping at his ankles.

"Um, that was unexpected," Russell said aloud after a few minutes.

Oscar sighed, "there's nothing more superstitious than a pirate."

"Really? Why pillage, plunder and murder then? You know, if you're afraid of vengeful ghosts?"

"For money, for shits and giggles. After all, there's nothing more scary to a Pirate than honest working," Oscar told him.

"I see."