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Mac was touched by this, by her words, although he did not show it. "That's a beautiful dream Aria" he said with such purity and innocence.

Mike giggled a bit, "You're not gonna bust out in song again are you?" he blurted jokingly.

Mac eyes closed to half way and looked in his direction, "Only if you want me to" he said as if it were a playful jest.

Tianara did indeed smile back, or at least her lips curved a little, but there was a quick flash of something behind her eyes - just a flicker, and then it was gone. "I don't see how that would help in any way," she replied. "How would you find an octopus in time?"

Feeling the urge to move, to do something, she got to her feet and went over to the window, opening up the blinds. She stared out into the dark for a little while, her face solemn and a little distant. "It feels like everything is running away without us," she murmured, "and we have to run ourselves to death just to keep up."

Just looking out, very quiet, she continued - but her thoughts were now on a different tack: "I don't know where the others are, Joshua. I don't like that we haven't heard from them since they left. What the Dark One did was powerful - I had merfolk I barely know speaking to me inside my head, asking what happened. Everyone within a range of at least several miles should have felt that. Everyone within that range should have felt that we were right in the centre of it when it happened - their magical senses would have told them that I at least was here. I don't like that Sorry and the others didn't try to find out what was going on." Maybe they were out of range, but Tianara doubted it. They hadn't been gone as long as all that.

Tianara's lips firmed slightly, and she reached out. Refusing herself the luxury of embarrassment, she took hold of Joshua's hand. "Help me. If you can add your push to mine, we'll have a much wider range. If Sorry was right, they started out at the Sirens' cove. That isn't all that far away - it should easily be even in your range." Her eyes were steady and cold as she looked out. "If we can't feel them with both of us trying, Joshua, then something is wrong. There's no reason they should need to go so far out that together we couldn't reach them."

She refused to acknowledge the tiny flutter of panic under her heart. Sorry and Narcis and the others were like her rock in this mortal world. They couldn't be in danger. They couldn't be. Who would be their connection to the merfolk? Tianara was something, but she wasn't anywhere near as good as one of their own. And it was for themselves, too - the four merfolk that Tianara loved as members of her own family, even if they weren't of her clan. It didn't matter.

They were hers, and what was hers couldn't be in danger. She just wouldn't allow it. Couldn't accept it.

"Help me, Joshua," she said again, softly, her voice making it a request rather than a demand. It was up to him, but she thought she knew the answer he would give.

After all, he loved them too.

"Just reach," murmured Tianara. "Just reach out as far as you can - hold on to me. Until you know how to build a mental connect for magic, and there's no time to teach you now, we have to be in physical contact so that I can feel what you're putting together. When you've stretched yourself to your limit, I can project the beginning of my reach to the edge of yours; it's a pretty advanced bit of magic, but Kiro taught me how. I..." She trailed off, then held herself steady. "I'll be able to stretch much farther, too, if we're connected and I can use reserves from us both. If you start to feel drained, make sure you say so - taking too much can hurt us."

That said, she firmed her grip on his hand and stared out into the dark, waiting for him to stretch his range so that she could build on it. Why could she not reach them? she thought, edgy. She remembered in a flash her own earlier words to Joshua - something about how strange it was that Narcis had decided so last-minute to call Sorry to join them.

Had something happened to them then? And when she had let Katalina go off without saying a word, had she brought them to harm inadvertently?

No. God, let it not be so. She shuddered briefly, violently, still looking outside.

"Stay comfortable," murmured Tianara, noticing the tension in his face and voice. "If it hurts to stretch so far, throttle back a bit. It needs to be something you can maintain - if you lose it, I lose my base." And losing her base would send her on such a wild whipsawing that it was possible she'd never find her way back; there was a reason that this was advanced magic.

But they could do it. She knew they could. They just had to - there was no other way.

So when he whispered her name, she closed her eyes and let herself drop into his magical range, picturing it as a river she needed to swim. Making it easy and natural. She found her way to the edge of it, feeling it accept her as easily as if she had a right to be there.

It was sort of nice.

Stationing herself at the very edge of his consciousness, she let out a soft breath, reached up to lace her fingers with Joshua's where they rested on her shoulder, and flung out her mind. She stretched herself to the edge - Joshua, too, should be able to see and feel everything she did, since they were connected.

And he should also be able to feel and see the same things she...didn't.

Which was the four they were looking for. There was no sign of the four minds she knew almost as well as her own. "They aren't there." Her voice was blank, resigned. "I can't see them."

Tianara, who had ended the magical connection the moment that she was certain there was nothing else to be found there, simply shook her head. "I don't know," she replied quietly. "I just don't know, Joshua. We were extended well beyond the limits of the cove - there's no reason they should have needed to go out farther than we could reach."

Weakly, and she knew it was a pathetic excuse for a hope, she added, "Sometimes when a mind is asleep or...unconscious, it's more difficult to find. Since merfolk are daytime creatures, I wasn't looking for them as if they were asleep, but...I guess it's always possible..."

Except she didn't. In her deepest heart, she felt sure that something had happened. That that something was bad, and that they were now in danger.

"Joshua," she said at last. "Regardless of why we can't reach them, we have to find them. Something...could be wrong."

Tianara went tense, anger flaring briefly in her eyes before vanishing, replaced with something very like grief. She'd thought he understood. She'd thought he got it. Clearly, she'd been wrong.

Since she could not argue that time didn't matter, that the dark wasn't important, that they had to be found, she settled for cold logic. "It isn't as far as you would think - there's only so far four merfolk can go in a single day, or even in a few days," she replied, her voice cool and clipped. "And it isn't as though we would be searching alone. There's a lot of ocean, Joshua, but there's also a lot of seafolk. A lot of folk that know Sorry, or Nezik or Narcis or Jinx. A lot of folk that would be more than ready to help us find them."

She looked out into the darkness. "So what if it is dark?" she demanded, an edge coming into her tone - one that probably wouldn't have been there if it hadn't been for the desperate battle she'd already gone through. She was usually better at controlling her emotions than this. "So what? There are ways to get around the dark. Even I know that, and I spent sixteen years living in a cave." She had begun to pace as she talked, not knowing or caring that she looked more than a little overwrought. "We have to find them. Whatever's going on, we have to find them."

Tianara had to work not to shrug off his hand. It would be childish and cruel, and she knew it. He hadn't intended to suggest that they leave the four merfolk to whatever fate had in store for them - he simply hadn't thought it through. Instead, she held herself steady and nodded her head ever so slightly. "Okay," she replied simply. "I'll wait outside."

In reality, all she wanted to do was get away from him for a moment so she could breathe and resettle herself. Why was she suddenly so wildly unstable? It was like her feelings were all the hell over the place. She didn't like it at all.

And of course, if she was outside, on the beach, she'd find it easier to reach out to the other seafolk. If it was easier, she could reach more of them to ask for their help. Speaking with some of those she considered her own again might centre her, might calm her down. She needed that.