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Aurora's nostrils flared slightly as she caught a scent that she thought she recognized, but slightly different at the same time. By the time John walked in from the kitchen, she was salivating slightly.

"W-what is that?" she asked him in a genuinely curious voice, looking at the small can and plate he held.

He set the plate on the coffee table in front of the couch where she lay and poured the contents of the can onto it. "Try it." He said.

Again, where Aurora would normally have been apprehensive, she was surprised to find herself leaning forward and giving the strange substance a taste. The moment her taste buds registered what it was, he eye widened and she then proceeded to bury her snout in it.

"Heh, I thought since you didn't get the chance last night, that maybe you could use some now." Chuckled the human.

"I LOVE tuna!" the femme exclaimed as she finished devouring the fleshy mass of what she now knew to be fish.

It was then that John's alarm went off and the shark anthro suddenly jumped with surprise, not quite knowing what the strange sound was. John laughed softly to himself, but covered his mouth when she gave him a dirty look.

"What on earth was that?" she asked him, still a little nervous.

"Oh, that was just my alarm. It tells me it's time to go to work."

"Work?" she queried again, completely at a loss.

"Yes. It's.... how do I explain? Even though I have enough money to live on my own quite comfortably, I think it's important that I have a regular vocation and contribute to the community rather than just being a couch potato."

"Couch... potato?" she asked again.

The human sighed in slight exasperation, not used to talking with someone not familiar with common terminology. John corrected himself... common terminology where HE was from.

"Never mind, it's not important. Listen, I know how precarious a position you're in... but I've been taking too many days off because of schoolwork and I can't for the life of me think of what to tell my boss if I were to not come into work today."

"I'll be fine, John. Go ahead and go to... work. And thank you once again for everything you've done."

John cocked an eyebrow at her. Something in her tone of voice was odd, like one would sound if they were saying goodbye to a dear friend.

"Are you sure you'll be okay?

"Yes John." She repeated adamantly.

"Okay. Here, just in case you get hungry again..." John said while walking into the kitchen. He came back with another can of tuna and deposited the food on the plate that he'd used for the first helping.

"I'll be back in about nine hours or so..." he called to her with his hand on the front doorknob.

"Okaaaaay" he heard her say and again he frowned thoughtfully. Her inflection resembled that of a child who was tired of having their parents tell them something one too many times.

John shrugged to himself, dismissing it as just his own ears playing tricks on him and walked out the door.

Later that night...

John sighed to himself as his feet left the cold, rough pavement of the road and trod upon the soft, yielding sand of his little beach.

He'd actually had a rather frustrating day at work, peaking in a minor altercation with another employee towards the end of his shift. But there was something about the sand between his toes that just seemed medicinal, alleviating his residual frustration.

He strode towards his little house in his little grove of palm trees, both anxious and somewhat nervous to find out how Aurora had fared by herself. He did feel a bit... okay, very guilty about leaving her alone amidst all the strange appliances and the like in his house. He sighed again; what's done was done.

"Aurora. I'm home. Are you okay?" the human called as he opened his front door.

He could immediately sense something different; there was an eerie silence that cast itself over his senses like a dark blanket, without even entering the living room.

His unease was bolstered as he rounded the corner of the kitchen and found....... nothing. Now he began to get worried, really worried; there were only so many places in the house that she could be. He knew that he couldn't very well squelch her curiosity, but if she wasn't inside...

John shook his head slightly, trying not to enter into that scenario until he'd made sure that she wasn't there.

"Aurora...?" he called a bit more tentatively this time as he walked down the hall, checking in all the rooms and growing more worrisome as his search proved fruitless. She might have thought she wasn't in as bad of shape as she was, but John knew a thing or two about human anatomy. And even though she was obviously NOT human, she certainly did display many similar characteristics. She had the kind of deep-tissue wounds that took weeks... sometimes months to heal. He also knew that if she was outside in her current state that there was no telling what might... or already HAD happened to her.

"Damnit..." the human whispered to himself as he accepted the inevitable fact that she was not anywhere in his house.

"Aurora!" yelled John as he once again opened his front door, in a considerably different state than when he'd last opened it. His gaze franticly wandered the surf line, knowing deep in his heart that if she had tried to leave, there were few other places she would try to go.

His breathing froze and his blood seemed to congeal in his veins as his eyes came to rest on a site all too familiar to him. He'd seen it last night and, despite not knowing her then and not very well now, had hoped he never would again.

She was slumped against the corner of a tide pool in the corner of the lagoon, apparently unconscious. John could fairly easily gather that she'd tried to get away, maybe even as soon as he'd left for work. That meant that she could've been lying there for close to seven hours! John was not a religious man, but the fact that his abode was in a lagoon and thus protected from the currents had him silently thanking whatever gods there might be. The tide must've also been coming in when she'd fled, if it hadn't she would've been swept out to sea.

John rushed over to her with his adrenaline pumping, not even knowing the extent of her condition. But as he got closer he began to see signs he was hesitant to call 'positive', but she was definitely alive... for the moment. And if she wasn't stabilized soon, that could change. He saw her body shivering heavily, breathing completely arrhythmic and random.

When he reached her John knelt down and shook his head in disbelief. Despite being patched up and sealed the night before, her wounds had opened once more and John was pretty sure that having them exposed to salt water was neither healthy nor pleasant-feeling, no matter where you come from. He also knew that her skin must have been less permeable than human flesh, but with her veins and arteries exposed to the exterior environment like they were, her internal salt balance could be shifted alarmingly due to passive diffusion, causing a fatal shift in the acidity of her blood.

"Again with this, huh? This is becoming a recurring theme with you isn't it?" asked the human, not really knowing if she could hear him.

Once again, just as he had the night before, he lifted the shark anthro from the frigid water and began to carry her towards his house. This time was going to be a little different; since it was a rather cold night in addition to the wind-chill factor, and the way the femme was violently shivering in his arms was making John increasingly aware of, and concerned with her hypothermic state. He knew he'd have to warm her up soon or her internal systems would shut down and she'd die.

John kicked the door open with his foot, again in quite a different state than when he'd done it last. This time, however, he turned down the hallway towards his bedroom. The young human had no sinister thoughts or carnal intentions, but a thermostat could control his room's temperature... so he could warm her much faster there.

Again employing his lower appendages to open his door, John staggered into his bedchamber and laid Aurora on his bed as gently as he could manage. She continued to shiver and whimper softly, obviously far from comfortable, making a knot begin to form in the young man's stomach.

"This is all my fault..." he lamented to her unconscious form as well as to himself. "If I hadn't been so concerned about my own problems instead of your life-threatening ones, this would've never happened. I shouldn't have left you alone."

He shook himself slightly; if he didn't hurry and find a way to raise her core temperature he'd have a whole new reason to be sorry... and she wouldn't be there to hear him.

John ran down the hall to a cupboard in his garage where he kept all his emergency supplies; disinfectant, splints, bandages, gauze, anesthetics,... it was all there. But he just needed something to help her with her flesh injuries. While riffling through the cupboard John stopped and smacked his forehead; he'd never even bothered to put the towel he'd used last night away. He went to the living room and picked up the torn rag and the coagulant he'd also used.

By the time he'd re-entered his room, Aurora's shivering had taken on a slightly less worrisome quality, but John wasn't going to leave anything to chance... not this time.

He reached down to examine if her injuries had gotten any worse since what John could only assume was her escape attempt and almost immediately began to shiver himself; she was freezing! He repeated his process of the night before with one slight difference. Not only did he tie a piece of the towel over her wounds, he also tore a thin strip of the cloth and tied it tightly around her thigh to decrease the circulation and let the blood clot without further bleeding... trying but failing to not look at the soft cleft between her legs.

"Well, that's one problem solved,..." sighed John more to himself than to her. Now he just needed to find a way to get her warmed up, because it didn't look like just covering her in blankets was going to be enough this time. John recalled one way that was often used to help people who'd gone hypothermic, and since the femme wasn't quite in that extreme of a state the night before, John hadn't had to employ it.

However, under the current circumstances he didn't think he had much of a choice...

John draped several blankets over her, waiting to see if her condition improved at all before he resorted to... drastic measures. Sadly her shivering persisted, she must've been even more susceptible to the elements than before due to the fact that she was still recovering from her encounter with the wild shark. This left the young man with no alternative, but despite having only known her personally for less than 24 hours and not knowing at all the extent of her origin, he was feeling himself being drawn closer to her by means of these debacles.

With a fair amount of reluctance he lifted the covers, got in beside her, and pressed his body close to hers... hoping that his own biological heat would be sufficient to bring her out of her precarious state.

One minute... no change.

Two minutes... nothing.

Finally, after three hundred very tense seconds... Aurora's shivering began to taper off as her core temperature started to rise. John's breathing also started to return to normal from his increased rate of respiration that even he himself hadn't been aware of.

It seemed only natural to the young human that saving someone's life twice in less than twenty four hours would form at least a small bond between savior and victim, but the fact that his utter concern for her safety and survival had caused such a reaction in him was beyond what he deemed normal in a situation such as this.

John decided that this was worth a fair bit of thought, but that notion was swiftly rendered moot by a certain part of his anatomy just below his midriff that was slowly making itself more prominent by the second.

He couldn't help or deny it; species, origin, or genetic makeup aside... she was the most beautiful thing he'd ever seen. And the more he thought about it, the more noticeable his erection became.

As if things couldn't have gotten any more awkward, Aurora's arms slowly rapped themselves around him and her elegant snout formed into a grin just as it had the night before, the femme now slumbering peacefully.

While slightly uncomfortable at first, John slowly relaxed and resigned himself to just lay there with her on the grounds of being sure that she was warm enough and that she wouldn't relapse.

At least that's what he told himself to cover up how wonderful she felt next to him.

And as the night's events began to fully weigh heavily on him, John began to feel incredibly sleepy.

'Introspection can wait.' was his last thought before he too was fast asleep, his strangely emerging affection for the anthro trickling into his subconscious. This caused him to unwittingly return her gesture... enfolding her in his own embrace.

Noon the next day...

"Mmmmmm..." John groaned deeply as he always did when he woke up. He was pleased that Aurora still slumbered... in his arms.

"H-how did..." the human asked himself. He remembered HER arms wrapping around him the night before, but how she came to be in HIS embrace eluded his comprehension. But it did serve to reawaken the need for the thoughtful introspection that he'd put off last night.

However, he wasn't going to try and extract himself from her just yet; after enduring yet ANOTHER traumatic experience he wanted to let her sleep for as long as her body needed... at least that's what he told himself. Her smooth skin felt so good against him as much as he... no, he DIDN'T hate to admit it. The more John thought about it, and her, the less ashamed he became about admitting that he WAS starting to feel something for her. It wasn't much, there was nothing that could change the fact that they'd only known each other for just over a day, but a strange kind of bond was forming between them... he could feel it.

So, John just lay there in bed with Aurora. Even though he knew next to nothing about her body's natural rhythms and what her sleep cycle might be, but he wasn't going to move unless he either got very hungry or if his bladder or bowels reached critical mass.

Fortunately for him Aurora began to stir in his arms, eyes slowly opening to gaze into his for a moment before widening in surprise.

"W-where am I?" she exclaimed as she extracted herself rapidly from the bed and his embrace, looking around franticly.

"Where you should've still been when I got home from work. What were you thinking?! You weren't anywhere CLOSE to being in a condition to be outside, let alone try and swim!" exclaimed John, clearly upset.

Aurora seemed to calm down a bit as she took in her surroundings. "Well, now that I know where I am I guess I can tell you. Please understand that the deep ocean where I live is fraught with predators and danger, and merits that my kind's entire life be devoted to self-preservation. I felt bad for doing it, but my instincts still prevailed when you found me. I saw myself in an unfamiliar situation and place, my gut told me to try and get back home as soon as I could. Apparently my instincts outweighed my common sense. You're right; I wasn't in any state to try and return home."

"So why are you telling me this now?" asked John, now a bit calmer himself.

"I figure that if you rescued me a second time, you couldn't have sinister intentions towards me."

"You said you felt bad for obeying your instincts. Why?"

"Because from the point of view of someone who's lived their whole life looking out for themselves, the act of someone helping someone else at their own expense is a very foreign gesture. I found it quite... flattering." She told him, sitting back down on the bed once more.

"But why the sudden change of emotion? You were all jittery when you woke up, but look at you now..."

"I could ask the same of you. You sounded quite angry before, but now you're calm." She retorted sarcastically. This stopped John cold. Why HAD he gotten so heated about her trying to escape? Regardless, it just drove the nail of his growing feelings for her further into his heart.

"I-I don't know... does it really matter?" he said trying to change the subject so she wouldn't get an inkling of how he was beginning to feel.

Her expression softened as she sighed. "No, I guess it doesn't..." Aurora conceded. She sensed he was dealing with some kind of internal conflict, but decided to let it be for the time being. He would tell her when he was ready.

"Well, I don't assume you'll be trying that again any time soon. Do you trust me at least a bit more now...?" John asked tentatively.

"No I won't. Yes I do." she told him with a smile, mimicking his gesture from the night before and lightly caressing his cheek with her hand. John's skin immediately erupted in goosebumps, the simple act causing his heart to skip a beat. What was wrong with him?

"Err, so... since you'll apparently be here for a while, is there anything I can do to make you feel more at home?" he asked her.

Aurora smiled. "Do you have any more tuna...?"