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Katalina frowned a little at his response, but didn't push. There were others who were much better at that, and if Joshua thought he was going to get away that easily, he had another think coming. Kiro, for one, would be pushing at either him or Tianara about it when he came back. So Katalina didn't press him on it just yet. Instead, she tilted her head and asked pointedly, "Who's Adrian?"

Clearly, she'd been hearing about him already.

Tianara was beginning to walk further away from them as her conversation with her mother escalated. It was getting to the point where she was despairing of ever getting her mom to see it her way. She knew that her mother loved her, but it could be so difficult to have to fight with her over everything that had to do with something this important.

And she didn't want the other two on the beach to see her cry.

((OOC: Going to bed so I don't fall asleep in my lab tomorrow. Goodnight!))

Katalina, if that was possible, looked more concerned. "Is he a good person, Joshua?" she asked quietly. Normally, she'd think that any friend of Joshua's was a good person, but there were more pressing issues to consider right now.

Her eyes kept tracking back to Tianara while she talked, and if he were paying the slightest bit of attention, Joshua would easily be able to figure out why she was asking.

She hadn't heard about Adrian from him, after all.

And she was asking if she should be worried.

"Tell me quickly," she said, still keeping her voice low, "because I think Tianara will be done one way or the other any minute now."

Katalina growled softly under her breath. "I was afraid of that," she muttered. Her tail flicked unhappily, and she looked at Tianara as she murmured, "I'm afraid our girl's going to have a very rude awakening. Take care of her, Joshua. She's young to have her heart bruised so soon, and we can't afford her obsessing over a first crush right now anyway."

She couldn't interfere. She wouldn't interfere. The lives of their humans on land were out of the merfolk's control. Tianara had to make her own mistakes, both in life and in love; Katalina couldn't shelter her from everything. No matter how much she wanted to.

Tianara chose that rather inopportune moment to rejoin them, her dark blue eyes still overbright from tears though she wasn't crying anymore. She looked a little pissed, a lot upset, and like she was going to bite the head off the first person who talked to her.

Katalina, deciding that now was the time to retreat while she still had a chance, looked at Joshua. "Keep me updated," she said briefly, and vanished into the shallows.

Tianara stared after her for a long moment, then took a deep breath. "Looks like it's just us now," she said, her voice a little raspy and rough.

Katalina spoke one more time, in Joshua's head. "I know. You always do try so hard. If she won't listen, let her make her own mistakes. Just don't let him--" a brief flash of a violent torrent of feelings, of something too horrible to name, then back to her voice. "...hurt her."

She was out of range shortly after.

Tianara looked at him with anger flaring hot in her face, then looked away, back out to the water. "Oh yes, I'm staying," she said flatly. "All it took was making my mother cry. Again."

Now didn't seem like a good time to mention that her mother clearly wasn't the only one who'd cried.

She sighed, and her shoulders fell forward. "Sorry," she murmured. "Sorry. I shouldn't take it out on you. It's not your fault. I'm just a terrible daughter."

Running the back of her hand over her eyes quickly, she looked over at him again. "So what were you and Sorry talking about...?"

Tianara gave him a weary smile. "You're right," she replied. "You probably would have." There was no sting meant in the words, and she'd have been surprised if someone had told her that they might hurt.

She looked at the water for a moment, a little colour coming into her face when he mentioned Adrian's name. "Hmm," she said noncommittally. "Seemed a little intense."

After a few moments of that hanging on the air, she elaborated, "The storm. Didn't give much warning for one that left that much damage."

She let her fanciful side take the reins for a moment as she wondered if the sea-spirits were punishing humanity for their treatment of the merfolk. But only for a moment, and then she was back to business.

"We should go up the cliff again," she said briskly, trying not to show that she was hating herself for saying it. "Check to see what the rock gnomes did and how many we can fit in the space they've given us."

She put her hands in her pockets and cursed in her own bubbly tongue when the movement pushed them down a good few inches. "Also, you said something about a...a belt?...earlier? Do you have one of those?"

It grated on her to have to ask him for everything, but she had nothing of her own yet. And she couldn't risk having one of the merfolk or one of the ocean children take her into town. So for now, she had to depend on him.

Tianara was looking back out at the water, and wouldn't have noticed even if Joshua wasn't deliberately trying to hide it. She glanced back at him and smiled. "Yeah, that would be good," she said, tugging ineffectually on the jeans again.

What he came out with was not the clip or magic tie of her imagination, but rather a simple strip of cloth with metal at either end. Curiously, she took it once he'd finished explaining.

She tucked it through the loops, awkwardly, and nearly hurt herself trying to turn enough to see the loops at the back. But once she had it hooked up, she looked rather pleased with herself. "Is this right?" she asked, checking the buckle again surreptitiously. Now that the belt was on, she looked a little more comfortable in her skin.

"Okay," she decided at last. "If it'll stay, then we should go to the cliffs now." She looked at him out of the corner of her eye as though hoping he would disagree, and tell her that there was really no need to go.

Even though she knew there was.

Tianara looked up from where she'd been gazing at her feet. She managed a tired sort of smile at Joshua's words. "There is that," she agreed, stepping up to walk beside him instead of lagging behind. As they went away from the cove and began to approach the cliffs, she lifted her eyes up - and up and up - to where the clifftop stood dark against the blue sky.

"They're so hard," she said quietly. "So angry. But so beautiful at the same time." She glanced at Joshua. "Hard to know what to think about them."

As they came to the bottom of the path, Tianara took a quick, shallow breath.

Then she stepped onto it in front of him.

"I'll go first," she said quietly. "In case."

In case the rock gnomes were waiting for them in a less-than-friendly way. In case someone had changed their minds. In case.

Tianara had never heard of the rock gnomes breaking a bargain before, but why risk it?

Tianara kept her eyes up and refused to look down, to the side, or even back at Joshua. If she just kept looking ahead, if she just kept thinking nothing but one foot in front of the other, she'd be fine.

Just fine.

"I guess," she replied softly, trying to keep from turning to look at him. No matter how much she wanted to see the expression on his face, getting up this bedamned cliff came first. "I remember when we went down the path to the cove. I looked over. It was beautiful then."

Less threatening. Just beautiful. She'd loved it then.

But things changed when they got scary. She didn't know if she'd still like it if they went up to the top and looked again.

She hoped so. It wouldn't be fair to lose that beauty because she was scared.

If it came to that, she'd stop being scared. There had to be a way.