A/N: This was another oneshot challenge posted on the Ushi forum. Boxerlover's challenge: What Leia does during the day in her little fish tank, and how she manages to cook for Daryll in there! Well you know me, it's become a lot more general than that- please enjoy! Constructive criticism and guidance is welcomed, it's been a long time since I've had anything to do with this HM Universe so it's likely to be a little rusty.

The Sun the Moon and Me

In respect to her tank, Daryll's high basement window was situated in exactly the correct position. When the moon was high the surface of the water like glass would reflect its image until finally risking a breath the circle would vanish, replaced instead by dancing white splinters that rippled outward, broke apart, and disappeared. She would giggle, watching them go, and then still herself until they returned; that smooth white reflection soothing somehow until the game began again.

Daryll slept in a small single bed across the room. His sleep was usually uninterrupted by her routine, although now and again she'd feel his sharp eyes focus on her groggily until he gradually drifted off again. She tried not to flap her tail, as this disturbed the water the most, but it was an exhausting task of mental capability. After all, she was a fish. Resting for such a drawn out period was a strange concept to her, but Daryll had explained that a person needed so many hours of REM sleep to perform the most minor of cognitive brain functions, and a well-maintained mind required even better.

It was times like those when Daryll was ablaze with fervour and acumen, wanting only to teach her and nurture an interest in the great sciences, that she was ashamed when her own mind wandered. She preferred the more mundane aspects of life. If she had wanted for much more it might have become apparent that their little basement world had become too small for her, that she was beginning to long for the sea, so she was thankful it wasn't so. Daryll would lecture intently, not seeming to mind when her attention waned or was lost, and afterward she would smile.

After an indefinite interlude of bathing in the moonlight Leia would indeed grow drowsy in keeping her fins from fluttering. Laying her head in the crook of her crossed arms extended over the edge of the tank, she would gaze out the window until the night sky became a blur of indistinguishable darks. In the morning the window offered her a new plaything: sunshine bright and beautiful warmed her hair first, and then gradually the water which had grown quite cool.

Another game then had been to pretend she was still sleeping when Daryll awoke. He would tip-toe past her like a ghost, silently reaching for the cafitiere, and she in turn would shriek playfully, shooting a well-aimed stream of water at him from between perfectly hidden palms. His naturally tense demeanour became more so if only by a fraction, but Leia could see it. She placated his surprise with a tinkling laugh, smoothing the errant hair at his cheek.

"Let me," she would say, worming further over the edge of her tank to make the coffee. His sour expression remained.

-She didn't like to play that game too often.

Daryll was one for getting deeply entangled in his various studies. The afternoons when he would skip lunch and the food would grow cold made the staircase up seem that much more of an impossible journey, but these were the days she busied herself with the duster or the broom, sometimes stripping the bed the replacing the sheets.

It was difficult but it wasn't unnatural; she could stay upright on her tail for a few hours a day. She would use the superior muscle to support her upper body weight and shuffle along carefully so as not to mar the fine shiny scales there. Daryll kept most of the necessities nearby so that the effort wasn't entirely required but she was happy to make use of their space more freely- and he could hardly be trusted with laundry and the likes!

She liked cooking the most; stabilized against the dark marble countertop with a variety of different spices and ingredients at her fingertips. Although her stomach seemed primarily compatible with the flavours of the sea, there was something quite mystifying about the diversity of food available on the surface; something almost magical about the spectrum of taste she could achieve should she just combine this and that. Daryll wasn't as picky, so she had the freedom to experiment. Not all her experiments were satisfactory of course, but the days when he was present he always managed to swallow a bite and thank her for the effort.

In the beginning her license to experiment did not stop at the kitchen. Her curiosity spanned ingredients of all shapes and sizes to the altogether inedible. Daryll's chemicals and equipment were not excluded. He had muttered quite comprehensively when he had to move anything potentially life-threatening upstairs and out of her reach.

She was content to return to the culinary arts after all.

Their earliest conversations had been fuelled by questions.

"Where do you live?"

"-in the water,"

"How long have you lived there?"

"-since I was born of course,"

"What do you eat?"

"-fish,"

"How many of you are there?"

"-my mother, my father, my brothers and sisters..."

"What sort of parliamentary system do you use?"

"-what's a par-lee-ah-men-terry?"

As far as specimens went Leia was the worst. Daryll did his best to hide any exasperation when she failed to provide him with conclusive answers but she still wished she could have done better for him. After a time the subject matter became simpler- mere curiosities. They lacked the usual foundation in persevering research and instead gained the intent to grasp some insight on Leia's personal experience. These questions were much better suited to her, and through them Daryll answered to her own simpler curiosities of the surface world.

Like the moonlight, her high window to the outside also let in a steady stream of sunshine when the weather was fair. The timing shifted with the seasons but she felt the change like pinpricks on her skin.

"Lunar tides," Daryll clarified one evening, while they were both making a particularly unsightly mess of themselves with their spaghetti bolognaise (vegetarian for Leia.) "The gravity of the celestial bodies, particularly the moon, pulls the ocean which is trapped in perpetual motion, resulting in a cycle."

"Are there sun tides too?" Leia asked frankly. She could tell he'd worked hard to simplify his explanation.

"Solar tides," he sniffed.

Somehow the idea seemed beautiful to her. Beyond all of Daryll's science and mathematics was a very simple truth: everything had a balance. It didn't matter where she chose to reside, the ocean would always reflect what happened outside that window. It soothed her without really needing to be understood. The sea harmonized with the sun and the moon and so did she.

She spooned another helping of spaghetti onto Daryll's plate and his eyes bulged.

The reasons for Leia to continue repaying this peculiar human seemed to keep piling up.

Fin