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Tianara just nodded. If he didn't take it seriously, well, she didn't think it was that big a deal. She just felt good about that particular style, that was all - like it was trustworthy. Maybe like it was better than it looked.

She didn't actually know anything about tanks, but it looked okay to her. And as previously mentioned, it felt good. As a girl who'd never learned to stop operating on instinct, that made it good enough for her.

But it had to be good enough for Joshua, and that made it more important, for some obscure reason that Tianara didn't care to think about.

Tianara blinked as she was addressed by the boy just as she finished thinking this. "Oh. Um." She focused on the tank, trying to remember the feeling she'd gotten when she first looked at it. "That one. In particular, I think. It feels...special. It'll be good for you."

Tianara watched him buy the tank with a sense of satisfaction. Yes, that was definitely the one - she didn't even bother to question why. Outwardly, it was no different from any other tank. But Tianara was sure that that was the one to choose.

She followed him out the door, nodding consideringly at his plan. Then she frowned. "...Newspapers?" she asked timidly. "Are those those big grey flat things with all the writing on them? They're thin like the maps?"

Of course. How would she know what newspapers were? It was surprising she even had an educated guess.

Even more surprisingly, she continued after the briefest of hesitations, "I saw some of those. They were on a stand outside of the map shop. Should I have gotten some then?"

That explained the hesitancy. She thought she'd made a mistake. Maybe that Joshua would be annoyed with her - not that he'd ever been before, but who knew?

Tianara felt warmed by the evident approval in Joshua's gaze, though she didn't question the why of it. She just felt good - the way she had about the tank. Maybe this was what friendship with humans felt like. Was it supposed to feel different from the way it was with merfolk?

Well, everything else was. Why not?

She turned with him, tugging idly at the jeans she had borrowed from him to keep them in place - they were a bit too big, and kept falling to her hips. Maybe she ought to ask him if there was a way she could make them fit better.

But that could wait.

"And that's everything we need?" she asked, looking over his shoulder at the newspaper he'd picked up. She couldn't think of anything else, but then, she had forgotten all about Joshua needing a new tank. She was going to be so bad at this human stuff, she thought miserably.

She looked up at Adrian's arrival. There was a momentary confusion in her eyes, and a soft blush rose in her face. She had to talk to Kiro about this - surely it wasn't normal for her to react like this every time the blonde man spoke to her. A smile appearing slowly, she said, "Tia is fine. My friends use it sometimes." Narcis and Sorry occasionally called her that, after all - normally only when they needed her attention right away, but it was used.

So it wasn't really a lie, and she didn't mind him calling her that. It was even sort of nice, she supposed.

Tianara blinked at Adrian in some surprise, before smiling a bit. Joshua had never said anything like that to her, but she supposed it must be normal among humans to say that sort of stuff - hadn't Joshua said that he was different from most people? "Thank you," she said, accepting the compliment in the spirit that she mistakenly thought it was meant. Joshua was right; Tianara was completely oblivious to Adrian's not-so-subtle moves. Courtship among the merfolk was subtle, structured, and most of all private - none of them would ever have dreamed of flirting with someone while said someone was with a friend.

And so Tianara didn't realize that Adrian was actually trying to get the reaction out of her that he was eliciting - she thought it was just kind of happening.

She turned her surprised dark blue eyes to Joshua when he spoke up again. "Oh," she murmured, glancing down at her - well, his - clothes. "I forgot about that. It doesn't matter, Joshua. We can do that later." She was confused by his blush, but said nothing. It wasn't something she was entirely comfortable asking about, particularly in front of Adrian. "S-- our friend is waiting for us."

Although she wouldn't have minded lingering, she knew intellectually that they had to get back to Sorry as soon as possible. This was important.

Tianara wondered if he was surprised by her decision. She didn't think he should be - after all, it was the same one he would have made. "Belt," she repeated. She'd have to ask him later what a belt was. "Okay." But she didn't think, again, that that was something to be asked in front of Adrian.

So she asked him mentally, deciding on the spur of the moment that she ought to at least know what she was reminding him of.

"Joshua, what's a belt?"

She smiled over at Adrian again. "Goodbye," she said, correctly interpreting See you later as another version of same. Once the blonde man was gone, she willed down the faint blush and started towards the town boundaries. It wasn't too far.

Now she had two people she definitely had to talk to once she went home.

Tianara smiled at Joshua. "Oh," she replied, comfortable with speaking out loud now that they were close to the edge of the woods. "Okay." That made sense. But what did it look like? Was it like a clip? Did it magically shrink Joshua's pants? She hoped not - they were, after all, his, and she didn't know if this magical 'belt' could also loosen clothing.

She looked down a bit, blushing, when he mentioned her fitness for being in town. "I made mistakes," she countered. "Lots of them. Especially with Adrian." At his name, her blush darkened a bit, but she resolutely went on. "I didn't think up any stories fast enough, and you had to save me. And then I almost touched the...plasstick. When it was hot. It was dumb."

Not that she could have possibly known better, but she seemed determined to prove that she had been right and that she was unfit for the world she was expected to live in. If that meant judging herself far too critically, well, that was just how it was going to be.

Tianara watched him out of the corner of her eye. She wished she had the courage to ask him questions about how she kept feeling whenever either of them happened to mention Adrian's name. But she had an idea that it would be indelicate at the least, and decidedly awkward no matter what.

So she let it go. She would ask Kiro. Kiro would know.

"Only if I can remember what they were," she replied, trying not to smile in return. "I don't think I really do - do you? And wouldn't it be worse to tell them a story that is different? Because you said people talk a lot about new people, and if the stories are different, we might be in trouble."

Now there was a black-and-white view of lying.

They had made it to the top of the cliff. Tianara stood near the edge of it, her hair blowing around wildly, and took a moment to look down into the water.

"It's so pretty from up here," she breathed, fascinated. "Look, Joshua."

((OOC: You should look at the first page of Abigail's Nine. biggrin ))

((OOC: He was. I thought it was lame that we only had two. biggrin ))

Tianara turned and flashed him a smile. "That might actually be a good idea," she admitted, with a grin of her own. "Otherwise I'll never be able to keep it all right." She pushed away the hair that had flown into her face and turned, reluctantly, away from the cliff. They had to go.

"Do you have the maps?" she asked, walking back to the path and waiting for him to join her. "And the papers? What did we need the papers for, anyway?" She had forgotten to ask that earlier, and couldn't remember if he had told her or not.

She had missed his blush as well as his words, and was contentedly ignorant. Doing a little dance on the path while she waited for him to come back, she considered and rejected various ways to ask Kiro what had been happening to her while she'd been talking to Adrian back in town.

Her brother would be able to explain, and it didn't feel quite right to ask Joshua, as she'd thought before.