Welcome to Gaia! ::

Tianara was a little more relaxed in the boat this time - she just had a hand on the rail instead of clinging to it like she'd go over the side if she didn't. As she looked out across the water, she smiled. The light was playing off it, and she was getting used to the brightness of the sun. Even enjoyed it, now.

Realizing she was getting distracted, she turned her attention back to Joshua. She nodded at last, her brows drawing together a little bit. "Is that unusual?" she asked uncertainly. "For people to bring lots of towels up to the top? And space heaters? Because those can't get wet, can they?" She seemed a little puzzled. In most cases, she couldn't picture why two people would carry that kind of stuff up there, but it might be a normal thing. How would she know?

"We'd have to decide where to store things," she said resignedly. "Any caves that are on top of water are bound to be damp. We'd have to find one that's dry - especially if the cans...rust?" She wasn't entirely sure what 'rust' was, but assumed by his tone that it wasn't a good thing.

"And then we have to find out from Sorry and the others how many people are coming. I can't remember if we said just the ocean children, or their families as well," she mused. "Do you?"

Tianara looked a little uncomfortable at this admission. But then a thought brightened her up a bit. "But they already think you - we're - strange, don't they?" she asked. "Maybe they'll just think that it's more strange stuff. Maybe they won't really think about it."

It was a thin enough hope to cling to, but Tianara seemed to think it might make things a little easier on them. Switching topics, she patted the propane tank and asked, "How much of this are we going to need? I mean, if it's magic then the merfolk can probably figure out an alternate way to run the...the heaters, but Kiro said most humans don't use magic, so maybe it's not. What is it, anyway?"

She couldn't see how a large white tank would help the little heaters run, but then she wasn't the one who had thought of them in the first place.

At Joshua's last words, she nodded. "Ah. Okay. So we'll find safe places for the children. That's good," she decided. "Then they'll be out of harm's way." She raised sad eyes to Joshua. "None of us could stand it if anything happened to the kids."

Shaking it away, she looked out across the water. "Are we going to another town to pick up more, or are we going to put this stuff away first?"

Tianara reached out tentatively, and touched the tank with her fingertips before glancing over at Joshua. "But where does it come from? The gas, I mean? The special gas? How do the heaters know how to burn them?" She wanted to just pepper him with questions, but had already learned that she had to go a few at a time.

A sad look crossed her face as she stared at the tank. "No magic in the world above," she said quietly. "We can't use it because humans don't want to see it. It's sad, how much we have to stay separate."

She looked up at Joshua, uncharacteristically silent for several long minutes. Then she just shrugged. "I wish it didn't have to be like that. That we could understand."

Then she turned back to her study of the propane tank.

Tianara shook her head after a few minutes. "I don't think so," she said, her voice still soft and sad. "No matter how slow. Humans have spent too long telling themselves that we can't exist. I mean, that merfolk don't exist. And trying to tell them we do...It wouldn't be good, no matter how much time we took."

She stared out broodingly at the water for a few minutes, then sighed.

When Joshua explained about the propane, she paused, listened, and then slowly nodded. "Is that why Kiro told me never to do anything to the valves? He said that if I moved them too much, they might explode. I thought he was just...you know, exaggerating. The way he does."

She flushed a little bit, and then shrugged a little, smiling.

"So, is that the only thing that this gas is used for? The little...space heaters?" Was that its only specific use? Such a thing had to be useful in other ways.

Not that she could think what they might be at the moment.

Tianara smiled and shrugged. "He liked to exaggerate stuff when there was a possibility I might mess with it and get myself in trouble. I was pretty curious about valves and switches and things when I was younger." Not that she wasn't still, but now at least she knew to check for warnings before fiddling with them. She hadn't been so smart back then.

She nodded at his words, understanding some of them (not all - what, for example, were barbecues?) and getting the basic concept from there. "Okay. So it'll be easy to find if...I guess when...we need more."

Although she didn't want to think of it as 'when' - they had three, and she figured that should last a while - she knew that it would probably be a long time before they were safe again.

Shading her eyes, she looked out across the water. "There's the cove," she remarked. "The underwater access to the cliffs is near there."

Tianara's lips curved a little bit. "That's what I was kind of thinking," she admitted. "Kiro and my mother always had to keep me out of trouble." Her other siblings, on the other hand - with the exception of Kistad (and even thinking his name now made her shiver a little bit in grief and fear) - had delighted in trying to find ways to get her to do stuff that ranged from humiliating to actively dangerous. But she didn't share that with Joshua.

She blinked. "You mean the heaters and stuff? And move the food later?" She had no problem with doing the hike first, but wondered if the birds might not get at the food if they left it out in the open.

But she didn't know much more about birds than she did about hiking and humans, so she left the final decision up to him. They had to get all the stuff there somehow, and that was better than nothing.

Tianara gathered up the remainder of the bags, not even seeming to blink. She knew what seagulls were like - they stole the fish guts and squabbled over them whenever one of the merfolk dumped them on the rocks. The seagulls were sort of cute, as long as they stayed away from the food they still needed.

And they wouldn't, so Joshua was right. They had to put this stuff away first.

Shifting the remainder of the bags, she followed Joshua up towards his cabin. They had to have them all put away - the birds wouldn't disturb the heaters in the meantime.

Hurrying to catch up and managing to stumble only a couple of times, she lengthened her stride to walk with Joshua. "So we'll just put the food in the cabin for now and then put the heaters away?" She wanted to get this done so that they could try to contact the merfolk again.

She needed to talk to them.