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Tianara tensed up helplessly when Joshua hugged her. She shifted in his direction for a second, as though wanting to be held. She wanted to be hugged. She wanted someone to care about her.

She wanted the hurt to go away.

But he pulled away again, and she shifted back. Even he didn't want to be near her.

Her dark blue eyes closed again, sorrowfully. Then she looked back at him when he spoke again.

"What?" she whispered. "You tried to..." Her eyes widened. She reached out to him without thinking, then pulled back again quickly. "No." She reached out again - this time mentally. It took her a few minutes of carefully looking through his mind, but she found what she was looking for, and pulled back again. When she did, she was trembling. "I..."

She closed her eyes. "It's the creature from the forest," she said softly. "It's the thing that chased me from the forest."

Though she winced at the tone of his voice, her words were brisk and clear. "No," said Tianara absently. "It didn't cause the rockfall. It isn't so interested in us as all that, I would suspect." She didn't comment on his defense of his actions - she didn't think he'd done anything wrong. In his place, she'd have tried the same.

In fact, she might have already.

"It..." She frowned thoughtfully. "It's not the same as the chained creature, not exactly. But there's a...a taste to it. That's a little similar? They aren't the same. Not even near the same. But there's a...there's something. Something that's similar."

It could be anything. She wouldn't be able to tell, not without sensing the creature on her own. And to do so would hurt. To do so would be beyond terrifying. She'd already sensed it in Joshua's mind.

That in mind, she looked up at him and asked softly, "Are you okay?"

That was so very much the wrong thing to say.

Tianara's eyes narrowed and she actually growled at him. "Joshua." Her voice was low and not quite threatening, but her face suggested it would get there fast if he evaded her again. "Would you like me to detail to you how you looked when I walked into this room?"

There was a second of silence, and then she raised a brow. "Try again. Are you okay?"

She'd have the full answer out of him. One way or the other.

While she was worried about the chained creature and the monster that had left Joshua in that state, she was more worried about the state itself than anything else. He was her friend. It was okay to worry about him. It was okay to be terrified of what would happen if...if anything were to happen to him.

Her mind refused to bring up a picture of her brother, but it knew it was there. That was the problem with trying to evade yourself - you always knew. But on the other hand, she was still bruised and aching from the sheer amount of heart-wounds she had taken lately. After all, she was still only a child in many ways. Could she really be blamed for missing the signals?

Tianara relaxed a little as it became evident that he wasn't going to try and avoid her again. She listened to what he had to say. Didn't speak. Didn't question. Just listened.

It occurred to her that they hadn't been doing very much of that as of late.

"Don't do that," she said at last when he was done talking. Her voice still had a snap to it, but it was gentler than it had been before. "Don't."

She couldn't accept it when he did that - dismissed his own pain and his fears like it was nothing. Like it wasn't important. For a second, she reached out as though to touch him, and then dropped her hand.

She couldn't.

"It won't," she said instead, softly. "It won't, because you know what to expect next time. And you won't be alone."

If the creature came back, she would stand with him. There was nothing else she would accept.

"Don't pretend like it's not important," said Tianara flatly. "Don't act like it doesn't matter that you're in pain. It hurt you." She pushed away her heavy dark hair and stood up, beginning to pace the cabin confines. She felt sheltered in here normally, but today it felt a little claustrophobic.

"The thing will come back," she said abruptly, still walking. "Why wouldn't it? Whatever it came for, it didn't get." She was still pacing, still thinking aloud. It was easier for her that way. "We'd know if it got what it came for, I think. It would be gone, and that...taint...wouldn't still be in the forest."

Which it was.

"But it won't hurt you again," she said, still pacing. "We don't have to read its thoughts to know what it wants - we can figure that out from its actions. If we work on it together, or if..." She trailed off. "Feel free to chime in any time. I'm just babbling."

She kept walking while she talked, her mind chewing at the stubborn problem of what do we do now?

Tianara paused mid-step, one foot still in the air. Seeming not to notice, she swiveled her head to face him. "Looking for something," she muttered, distracted. "Looking for something. And if it was examining you, then you bet it can sense magical energy - one is a basic step to the other."

Finishing her step, she started pacing again, but now her thoughts were on a different track. "Looking for something. And you said it was toying with you - definitely not something we want finding whatever it's looking for."

Pushing her hands into her pockets, she continued to mutter to herself and to Joshua. "It can think, obviously, or you wouldn't have been able to hear it. Something malevolent and intelligent and somehow related to the chained thing that can sense magical energy..." She trailed off. "And it came to the cove. It didn't take its time getting here, or I would have sensed it a long time ago." She could still almost taste the taint in the air. "It came here, and it came here for a reason."

She kept mumbling, but now she was too quiet to be understood, and had mostly switched over to her own language anyway. It was easier to think in her native tongue.

Tianara paused once again in mid-step and looked thoughtfully at the door. "Maybe," she said at last. "Maybe. Predators sometimes come looking to feed on the magical energy of the merfolk or their children. It's been known to happen, but not since..." She tried to think back through old stories. "Not since...not for centuries. My grandmother barely remembers the last time it happened."

She sat down on the bed again abruptly. "And there's really no way to tell unless we go out after it - or it comes back."

If it was after ocean children, it would. Tianara was a bona fide ocean child, and if that was what the creature wanted, well, she was right there.

Not that she mentioned that.

She wouldn't have to. Joshua wasn't stupid.

Tianara nodded briefly to acknowledge his words. Her eyes were on the door for a few minutes. "Maybe I should go somewhere else," she said at last, quietly. "Every day I spend with you is rubbing off more magic onto you and your space. Eventually, you'll smell enough like one of us that it won't be able to tell the difference."

It was bad enough that the creature had come to this place because it had smelled her scent on him. That seemed to be what had happened.

It would be worse, so much worse, if that eventually got him hurt or killed.

She pushed her hands into her pockets and stared at the door, getting slowly to her feet before walking over to the window instead.

What else was there to say?