She peered into the girl's body, examining her with senses that went beyond human medical understanding. The organs, the blood flow, the energy meridians that doctors didn't even know existed, she catalogued them all with ancient knowledge.
And then she saw it.
"Cold poison," she whispered, genuine surprise coloring her voice for the first time.
The girl's body was saturated with it, an insidious poison that existed only in the deepest parts of the ocean, created by certain species of jellyfish that lived in eternal darkness. It worked slowly, freezing the body's natural energies from the inside out, putting victims into a state of suspended animation that mimicked death.
But this was impossible. This poison existed only in her world, in the mermaid realm. How could a human girl on the surface have been exposed to such cold poison?
Unless...
