“Hey Dawn, want to go swimming with us again?” asked Tara.

Her kimono turned dark blue, then faded in patchy blotches here and there.  One of them paled to become a word balloon, and inside it Dawn formed words.  “No thanks.  The chlorine messed up my colors for a week.”

“Brightview wasn’t too happy with that either.  Swimming as a mermaid was fun, though.”

“Get Rachel to turn you into one with the ball,” wrote Dawn.  The blue paled to the colour of their condo complex’s swimming pool, and a pretty mermaid with Tara’s upper half cavorted within it.

“That’d work, if I can figure out how to get down to the pool like that.  Rachel might get tired of carrying me.”

“Never!”

Tara giggled.  “Okay, fine.”  She stripped out of her kimono, and hung it up on a rack that gave it a view out the living room windows.  “Dawn.  Why do I have scales instead of skin?”

The mermaid cavorting over the kimono’s surface grinned and made shooing motions.  By the time Tara and Rachel had made it to the