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Mac thought a moment, "Well, I think we should check up on Joshua if nothing else. Then we could come back and stay. You up for it?" he asked.

Mike picked up the phone and called his girlfriend's number. "Hey babe, I just wanted to tell you that I'll-" his voice trailed off as he left the room.

"You're probably right" he sighed, "I think he'll be fine". He finally relaxed in a chair at the dining room table. He looked up at her when he realized he was hungry again. "What do you think about dinner? I think we all should eat something" he suggested.

Mike came back around the corner and put the phone back on the hook. He walked up to Mac, "So we stayin' here?" he asked.

Tianara seemed to accept this after a moment or two of thought. "Okay," she said, although she still had more questions. Like why would a guest who was staying for a long time not have things of their own? She certainly intended to stop using Joshua's things as soon as she possibly could, and she didn't even know if she really counted as a guest.

"Maybe," she said at last, reluctantly. "I just hope they're okay." She sat up and stared out the window, where sunset was painting the sky brilliant colours, and smiled in spite of herself. These last few days, she hadn't really taken the time to appreciate the beautiful things she was seeing on land - she'd been too busy with the horrors.

"It's lovely, isn't it?" she murmured as though to herself, staring out at the colours streaking across the sky. "With all the colours. I guess there are some things about land that I would be sad to have missed." She looked over at Joshua. "Don't you think so?"

Tianara looked at him for a long moment, then gave him a sad little smile. "I guess you know more about what it's like than I thought," she said softly, turning to look back out the window. "For you, the ocean is the big mystery. But all the mystery I need is right here." She waved her hand to indicate the land around them. "I'm always so afraid I'm going to mess it up somehow."

She closed her eyes briefly, then got to her feet and examined the window. "Do you have anything that will make this close?" she asked, suddenly sounding brisk - as though she wanted to change the topic. "I mean, something that would cover up the window? I think we might sleep a little easier like that; it would be harder for the Dark One to reach in."

Tianara smiled a little, some colour coming back into her face. She was grateful for his praise - it meant more than he might think. Curiously, she brushed her finger over the blinds. "So what are these for, for normal humans?" she asked. "The ones who don't usually have to worry about a Dark One peeking in their...window, right?"

In the dimness of the cabin, she had a hard time seeing Joshua's face. She turned around to look more directly at him. Her reliance on reading people's faces was the only way she could avoid irritating folk with her questions - once they started to roll their eyes or look away, she stopped asking.

She was keeping her senses open for either the return of the merfolk or the approach of the Dark One, but so far there was nothing. She wasn't sure if she ought to be grateful for that or not.

Tianara nodded slowly, touching the blinds again and bending the slats a little bit - just the slightest bit - with her testing finger. Then she pulled her hand away and ran it through her hair, gazing at the blinds for a moment. "Oh," she said at last. "Okay." She'd caught his small smile, and it made her lips curve slightly.

Some impulsive urge, one she didn't really understand, led her to step forward and very lightly touch her lips to his cheek. "Thank you, Joshua," she said as she pulled away again. "I don't know what I'd do without you. You're so patient with me."

She turned away and wandered into the bathroom, wanting to take a closer look at the fixtures in there - she knew how to use them, of course, Kiro had taught her, but he'd never really shown her how they worked, and she was curious.

After a moment or two of silence, a delighted laugh came from the direction of the bathroom. Tianara came out cradling something in both hands. "Joshua, look what I found," she said, holding it out. "What is it? I've never seen anything like it!"

She held out her hands to him. Cupped in her palms was a large spider, about the size of her thumb. "It came out of that hole in the sink," she said, smiling down at it as it crawled around in her hands. "What does it do?"

Tilting her head, she noticed that he was very flushed. Concerned, she asked, "Are you all right? You look very red." She wondered if maybe he was getting sick - she knew that after a lot of exposure to the water, some humans did. He'd never mentioned that he had problems like that, and she'd just never thought of it. Guilt instantly overcame her, and she sat beside him, the spider still cradled in her hands.