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Once again, Tianara was reduced to imitating every move he made. "So, do you use a fork for everything?" she asked at last, curiously. It seemed like there would be some things that a utensil with slots couldn't handle, not that she could really think of anything off the top of her head.

Carefully, she scooped up a little bit of the egg and managed to handle the fork correctly long enough to actually eat it. Her eyes widened marginally. "It's good!" she said, sounding surprised. It wasn't fish, or anything that she was used to eating, but it was actually good.

Amazing.

Tianara blushed a little when Joshua laughed at her surprise. She wished she could stop feeling so stupid when she had to ask these questions - she hadn't been embarrassed to ask them of him before. Why did it always make her blush and feel like an idiot now?

Shyly, she picked up each object and examined it carefully as Joshua lectured, moving it around in various ways and figuring out how it was held. So the knife was still used to cut. The fork was used for almost everything. The spoon...liquids, maybe? Did you have to use utensils for drinking as well? Wasn't that difficult?

Looking up again, she set the fork and knife aside and smiled a little, still a bit red. "No," she admitted. "I think I get the knife and fork, but...do you have to use utensils for everything? Even liquids? Do you use the spoon for liquids?"

"Oh," said Tianara, deciding not to ask further. She would just let him eat. "Okay." It seemed like it would be so much easier just to eat things as they were given by the earth. Then they would probably only have to use hands to do it. But apparently it was better to do it this way.

And since it was this way, she had better learn to deal with it. Her eyes turned back to her fork, which was starting to feel mildly less awkward. Carefully, she imitated Joshua once again. Though she had to eat very slowly, she did all right for someone who was used to maybe a fish or two to cover pretty well an entire day.

Thinking of another question, she mentioned it before remembering she'd told herself she was going to stop asking until they were done. "Do you eat everything with these?" she asked, nodding at the set of silverware Joshua had brought out. "Or are there other kinds?" If there was food you didn't need to use these with, it would probably turn out to be her favourite.

Tianara smiled a little. "You're much more patient than Kiro," she admitted. Not that her brother grudged her the time spent on her questions - from the few times she remembered, he just was not a very patient teacher. Just as he had been an impatient student (at least that was what her mother said).

"Are any of them good for you?" she asked curiously. From what she recalled of the teachings about food (of which there hadn't been much), the 'sweets' weren't that good for the body. She wasn't quite sure what the 'sweets' were, but figured eventually she'd find out. In the meantime, she was curious to know if it was only bad food that had that handy lack of needing silverware.

It would just figure, wouldn't it.

Tianara tilted her head a little bit, wondering what precisely 'vegetables' were. Clearly they were different from other kinds of food. Her education on food had been incredibly skimpy, mostly making a division between edible and inedible, as well as the fact that there were some foods that weren't really good for you.

Realizing, however, that Joshua would probably like to eat, she shut up for a while. She could ask him about vegetables and how they were different from whatever it was they were eating now...omelets, had he said?...some other time.

Tianara blinked up at him, looking surprised. He'd eaten very quickly - obviously she had been keeping him from it for longer than she should have. A little ashamed, she finished her own quickly and shook her head in response to his question as she got to her feet. "Oh, no, I'm fine," she replied with a quick, slightly weary smile. "I think we should head back down - we still have a lot to do."

That chained thing, after all, was still out there somewhere. And whatever he was doing, Tianara was willing to bet that it wasn't good.

Imitating what he had done, she put her plate in the sink and went to the door. Stopping to look back at him once she was there, she asked curiously, "So...what exactly are vegetables? What's the difference between that and omelets?" She might as well ask now, or else she would forget later.

Tianara looked away, mildly embarrassed. "Oh. Okay." She hesitated for a moment or two, and asked, "So...it's sort of like karaugh? I mean, it's a plant that you eat for things you can't get from fish?"

Well, at least for merfolk it was fish. For humans it might be different, but Tianara didn't think of that.

Putting her hands into the pockets of her - well, Joshua's, but whatever - jeans, she wandered on down towards the beach, where all four of the merfolk seemed to be in the middle of some sort of conference. They were speaking in their own bubbly tongue, none of them really paying attention to the area around them. As she and Joshua approached, Tianara tilted her head and listened to what they had to say.

Concern immediately washed over her face, and she sped up her stride a little.

"Some of the ocean children," said Tianara absently, too busy listening and figuring and thinking to really spare a lot of attention to Joshua's question. "None from our clan, or any of theirs or the ones close by - we got to them in time. But some from the more distant clans..."

She trailed off, listening for a moment more. "There have been disappearances. Threats. Attacks. A few are dead," she said simply, her voice shaking ever so slightly on the last word.

"A lot of them are scared. They're all pretty tense. Some of them have gone home to their clan. Nearly all have sent their families away, somewhere safer. It's almost a kind of mini-war, Joshua. Whoever wants this war to happen has found out that we were turning to the other ocean children, and they're being targeted now."

Katalina had turned around while Tianara was translating, and was now looking at the young girl with gentle eyes. She said something in their tongue, and Tianara nodded, responding in kind before switching to English. "That sounds like a good idea," she said tonelessly. "I'll be okay, Sorry. Don't worry."