#it is quite a bit easier for bellanda who doesnt understand why miranda does this

[rxttenfish]

definitely going to try to describe this scene as best as possible, but also i dont know if this specific fact is going to make it into caecilian, so im posting it here for my peace of mind.

miranda's above-water bedroom has a lot of natural stone in it and water features and generally looks startlingly naturalistic compared to the rest of her castle. her bed is also within one of those little special nooks that really big aquariums have sometimes where it's just a sitting area with the glass above you so it feels like you're underwater, like a shark tunnel. her bed itself is entirely dry but it looks really very much like a themed area in an aquarium for how much it focuses on trying to emulate the sense of being underwater.

the reason for this is because a lot of merfolk circadian rhythm isn't really tied to light per se, but rather has to do with small changes in currents and the water column to help them manage their sleep/wake cycles.

as you can imagine, miranda isn't getting any of these small changes on land. they only really exist in the ocean, and she has some pretty severe insomnia relating to how hard it is to get her brain to "turn off" when it's supposed to, ie, at night when she's supposed to sleep with the rest of the landfolk. this is compounded even further with the lack of any other natural "tells" for where she's lived her entire life and where she feels instinctively comfortable, so she even moreso ends up staying wide awake because she doesn't feel like she's in the right place to fall asleep or rest.

the merkingdom has two solutions to this. the first is a chain of what's basically fairy lights installed around her bed, which are designed to blink in a dull blue light in very specific patterns. it's only really specific to miranda because she's an abyssal, as these fairy lights are made to closely mimic the bioluminescence of other abyssal merfolk, blinking in the particular pattern for "this is a safe place, you are safe, you have someone watching over you, you can relax."

the second is trying to make the places where miranda sleeps above-water look as close to the ocean as possible and to try and trick miranda's subconscious into thinking she's underwater. it's a bit like the mental effect of sticking a human in a space shuttle - if there's just metal and plastic and no plants or sunlight around, human psychology tends to get a lot stir-crazy and have a hard time relaxing. if miranda feels like she's underwater, even when she's not, then her brain has an easier time relaxing and letting her go to sleep and lessens the prolonged psychological effects she gets from staying inland too long.