Michelle: Difference between revisions

The [[Hero (Dragon Quest XI)|Luminary]] and company first encounter Michelle shortly after departing from [[Puerto Valor]], having run aground on a large sandbank hidden in an eternal fog known as [[The Strand]]. The party investigates their surroundings, with [[Jade]] inspecting a large tidal pool in the center of the bank. Upon placing her finger tips in the water, Michelle surfaces and confuses the Luminary for her betrothed [[Kai]]. After a brief scolding from [[Veronica (Dragon Quest XI)|Veronica]], Michelle surfaces completely and apologizes for shocking the group. She explains that Kai is a fisherman from the coastal village of [[Lonalulu]], and that they had made a promise to rendezvous on The Strand, and she has been waiting for him ever since that day. When Veronica expresses her doubts that a human and mermaid could ever be together, Michelle states that she to thought their romance would flounder--that the curse known as the ''mermaid's burden'', which turns all women of the sea into foam the moment they become wet again after living on land, would sink their relationship.

Upon arriving, the group finds that the fishermen are busy working out at sea and instead find Kai's mother performing a picture show for children. The tale is a warning against the mingling of humans and mermaids, stating that the village's greatest fisherman had sold his soul to a wicked mermaid in order to save his life after a storm capsized his boat. The fisherman was the pride of Lonalulu, having caught more fish and gathered more pearls than any other, and was engaged to the daughter of the village elder. Having been gone for days after the typhonic storm, the villagers set a funeral for the fisherman on the beach when he returned in his damaged vessel. The villagers were overjoyed to have their hero back home but quickly noticed a drastic change had overtaken him, as he now spent all his time staring out at the ocean and muttering that he must return to the mermaid that saved his life. Shunning all others, even his fiance, the elder banished him to Saikiki beach and had bis boat burned. Kai's grandmother ends the story there for the day, and the party question her on the whereabouts of Kai. The old woman corrects them, stating her son's name is [[Kainui]] and that all the village's men have sailed west to slay a [[Tentacular|monster]] that had stalked their usual fishing waters. turning the leviathan into calamari, the heroes escort the sailors back home and participate in the victory feast held that night.  

It is here that they meet with Kainui, whom Veronica accuses of leaving Michelle high and dry. The young sailor explains that the Kai they are looking for was Kainoa, his grandfather. Brushing off Veronica's accusations, Kainui states that the picture show his mother tells the village children is a true story and took place fifty years ago. Picking up where his mother ended her show, he continues that a decade after Kainoa was chased from the village his ex-fiance married another man and bore a son. A monsoon struck the seas near Lonalulu soon after this, taking the lives of the village elder and his son-in-law. The villagers went to tell the elder's daughter of the tragedy, but she and her son were nowhere to be found--the superstitious seafarers believe it was the mermaid's curse, claiming all four lives in revenge for being unable to have Kainoa to herself. They stormed to Saikiki beach to interrogate Kainoa, but were terrified to see him standing there with a soaking wet baby in his arms. Veronica interjects and asks if this means Kainui's mother was half-mermaid, but the man shouts that his mother and he are fully human and that she was raised by Kainoa after being found stranded on the beach after the monsoon.

Kainui then states that if the mermaid is still waiting for his grandfather then he has something for the group to give her. Meeting at Saikiki beach, he hands the Luminary a wedding veil made by Kainoa and tells him to inform Michelle of the truth. Kainui explains that he hates Michelle for what she has put his family through, not realizing her blissful ignorance to the situation, and goes on to say that the villagers still whisper rumors about him and his mother behind their backs. He as only just now been allowed to sail with the other fishermen, and does not want the mermaid to reenter their lives when her "curse" is so close to being put to an end.