The old fisherman kicked open the strong wooden door and stood still, gaping wide-eyed around the next room and trying to keep his breathing as silent as possible. This room looked comfortable and safe enough, but looks were frequently deceiving in this place. A large, pillowy bed, completely circular, sat in the very center. A ceiling fixture with five thin blades whirled steadily overhead. The man had seen this device before and determined it harmless, so he turned his attention to the figure on the center of the bed, lying still.
"Hey," he called, still refusing to go in. "You there! You alive or not?" he asked callously, gripping his gutting knife tightly in his trembling hand.
That the figure was female was obvious as she was generally, and generously, of a normal human shape. As she turned abruptly however, she was clearly not human, or at least not entirely.
Her skin shone with a pale blue radiance and was patterned in swirls of sea-green. Long emerald hair sparkled in the dim light and seemed to float around her angular face as if alive. Large eyes widened even further at the sight of a stranger in her room, and it was these eyes that confirmed to the fisherman that she was not what he had first thought. With no discernable iris or pupil each eye was a solid globe of sapphire, both staring back at the intruder with a mixture of bewilderment and fear.
As the fisherman's mouth opened to speak a door in the opposite wall burst open with a crack and a third figure stepped boldly into the room. The newcomer ignored the bed and its occupant and looked directly across at the fisherman.
The fisherman’s mouth remained hanging open as his mirror image sighed and said simply, "not again..."
