Welcome to Gaia! ::

Mac followed the others calmly, and he didn't speak. Gale kept herself perched as he walked. Watching the man in bed didn't seem to phase him much, and he stood close by the others.

The instant the door closed behind the orderly, however, the man's eyes opened. "Is..." he rasped, then shook his head slightly as though to clear it. After a dry, ragged cough, he continued, his voice sounding stronger. "Is he gone?" The deep green eyes locked on Tianara - he didn't seem to realize that the others were there.

Tianara was by his bedside without any hesitation, speaking quickly in the bubbly language of the merfolk. He responded in kind. After a moment, she glanced back at the others. "He says he made it feel worse than it was," she said quietly. "To us and to the doctors. He felt me searching for others, and was calling us." Returning her attention to the man, she continued speaking to him in their language, hands clasped and eyes wide and solemn. "There was something in the woods, he says - he wanted to get us out."

She smiled a bit as the man murmured something. "He really was hurt in the alley, though. A lot of the wounds were real - he didn't fake it entirely." Gently, she rested a hand over the stranger's in an expression of solidarity.

The man's gaze - coolly inquiring, but not quite hiding the fact that the pain was still dulling his senses - passed over them. "Kiro," he murmured. A faint smile touched his lips. "I'm Kiro. I apologize for the deception - but had you been much longer in the woods, I don't know what might have happened to you. And you had my sister with you." Tianara's little smile warmed. Apparently they understood one another.

((OOC: There you are, Mac. You can have another monster, if you want. Just don't send it into town, that's all I ask.))

Tianara blinked, but Kiro merely laughed. His laughter was soft, but managed to be somehow rich at the same time - perhaps a side product of that accent. "Hello, Joshua. We are not blood siblings as normal humans would consider it," he replied, still smiling. "But we come from the same clan. We have the same mother, and share the same kin. It is close enough."

He glanced at Tianara, who smiled at the others and shrugged apologetically. "I knew my mother had taken in others before," she explained, "but I didn't know who they were or where they had gone from here. I only realized Kiro was my brother when we found him." The amusement in her gaze was enough to suggest she found a great deal to laugh about in all this, now that she knew her brother was all right. "I doubt any parent would be careless enough to lose two children overboard," she said lightly. There was an undertone of bitterness in the words, barely audible to anyone who didn't know her.

Mac walked up to Kiro slowly, and Gale fluttered about near Mac's head. "My name is Mac" he said first, "Did something happen in the woods?" he asked quietly and yet confidently.

Mac looked down, "Hmmm, a negative being..." he pondered. He knew things were going to get serious soon. "These things aren't normal creatures...they attack with no reason. We should be more wary..." he said mysteriously.

Tianara, guessing at Joshua's thoughts, turned to her brother. "Does it live there?" she asked quietly. "Is it still there, or is it just passing through?"

Kiro smiled wearily, patting her hand. "It doesn't live there," he said softly. "I'd have felt it before, and I didn't. You'd have felt it, and you didn't. I don't know if it's still there - I don't feel it anymore, but that doesn't mean anything, necessarily. I can't reach as far."

"And you shouldn't try," replied Tianara soothingly, understanding. She turned her gaze to the others, not quite forbidding them to ask him anything further but something close to that. For someone who had seen him for the first time when she'd found him bleeding in an alleyway, she was surprisingly protective of Kiro.