That night, he wasn't found anywhere. He wasn't in his moonlit-bathed bedroom when Em had grown irritated from repeatedly calling him down for dinner. Robin wasn't anywhere in the house.

His cutlass was tucked safely in the locked narrow wooden chest at the end of her bed, but that fact still did not diminish the uneasiness Em still felt. Abandoning the rapidly cooling dinner that laid on the table, Em strode past the wreckage that was once the sitting room and threw on a traveling coat before setting off into the night.

Em found her son down at the shoreline sitting on a large and flat boulder. He was not too far away from the spot where she had trained him a few nights ago. Robin had his knees pulled to his body with his chin resting heavily on them. He was staring forlornly out into the rough waves. Em stopped a few feet behind him, now sad from looking at this pitiable figure.

"Is there room for one more?"

She had spoken softly so as not to alarm him, but Robin had jumped anyway. His reaction was so intense that he would have slipped off the boulder had Em not caught him firmly on his upper arm. When he was steady, Robin quickly jumped off the rock.

Em raised an eyebrow. "I'm guessing that's a no," she said calmly.

Robin's dark brown eyes warily followed her as she took a seat on the boulder anyway. His chest was heaving as if he had swum a thousand miles. When his mother turned her eyes towards him, Robin felt his shame again and turned his back on her.

Almost no words needed to pass between them about what happened after Robin had been dragged back home by the ear. For the first time in his life, his mother had deeply scared him in her rage, which had finally gotten the better of her. The disaster of their sitting room was the end result.

Em leaned back on the boulder, bracing her arms on its roughly flat surface. Robin wasn't the only one feeling ashamed. Em felt the same way. Yet now content with having found her son, she crossed her ankles and began to softly whistle an old pirate song as the minutes stretched.

"What are you doing here?" said Robin after a while. He said this irritably over his shoulder, although still avoided eye contact.

Em stopped whistling and gave him an almost dark look. "I could perfectly say the same thing," she told him. "Turn around." Robin crossed his arms over his chest as a sign of defiance. Em sat straight and rolled up her sleeves. She scooted over a bit before leaning forward, taking the back of Robin's collar, and yanking him down onto the boulder next to her.

"Ouch," yelped Robin as his rear end came into sharp contact with the smooth rock. Still smarting, Robin pointedly turned his whole body away from his mother.

Em sighed in frustration. She ran a hand through one side of her long hair. After a debated silence, she spoke. "I don't know what to do with you anymore."

Robin sat up straighter. He had thought she was going to say along the lines of "I don't know where I've gone wrong". As this once mighty pirate began to talk again, his upper half of his body slowly turned towards her.

"I thought," Em continued, "that you would have known to come to me if anything bad was happening to you. Apparently, I was wrong," she added with a sarcastic note. She blinked away the tears of disappointment in herself. "It's my entire fault," she half-moaned. "It's my fault that you've never had a father-figure growing up. I know now that I should accept marriage with our landlord-"

"You can't!" Robin suddenly yelled. He was fully facing his mother now, teeth clenched with anger and eyes wide by disbelief. "You can't betray my father!" Robin snarled.

Em looked at him shrewdly. "Your father, you say," she drawled. "From what I saw and heard this afternoon, for all you having a father, you didn't act anything more than a parentless street rat."

Robin flinched as if he had been struck by an invisible hand. What she had said was a low blow. Anger bubbled rapidly in his gut, but with a great effort, Robin forced himself to calm down by taking deep breaths. He looked up at Em Kraven's stony face, which had turned to the crashing waves. "I don't want you to marry any other man," Robin began slowly with a hint of pleading that nearly bordered on begging. "Especially that bloody git." His hand began to shake with anger and he quickly clenched it. "I know I acted like"-he gulped-"a 'parentless street rat', but I thought I could prove to myself that I can fix my own mistakes."

"Yet some things are too big to fix alone," Em retorted smartly. She looked like she wanted to say more on that matter, but then shook her head wearily. Instead, her eyes took on a distant look. She began to speak softly.

"Long ago, there was a mermaid who fell in love with a sailor. At one point in time, she saved him after his boat had accidentally hit a coral reef where it sank. The mermaid had two painful decisions to make shortly after rescuing him: to either give up her immortality and the love of her home the sea for the man she loved, or give up the love she had for him to keep her immortality and the only home she knew and loved dearly. With a heavy heart, yet without any regrets, the mermaid chose the sailor."

Robin didn't see how this had anything to do with their current situation. Yet, he found himself listening in rapt attention to the story.

"It is said that mermaids do not cry, but as this mermaid's tail began to slowly change into human legs, she shed one tear that turned into a glass orb. This became known as the Mermaid's Tear, a priceless treasure that when looked into, the beholder could see the sea within the orb." Em turned her head towards her son. Tears of her own glistened in her eyes. "That was the last story Vincent Drummond, my old caretaker and father-figure, ever told me. It was my hope," she added with a wistful smile, "that I could find this treasure."

Anticipation suddenly flared in Robin. He was observing his mother with excitement in his dark brown eyes. "Could we find this Mermaid Tear orb?" he demanded as a thousand sea adventures paraded in his mind.

Em's demeanor took on a mysterious aura. "Possibly; nothing's improbable," she said as she leaned back on her elbows and looked out towards the ocean again.

Robin fell silent, studying his mother, who suddenly looked quite worn-out right before his eyes. "You're not going to . . . marry our landlord, right?" he asked hesitantly.

Em gave him a side-long glance. "No," she said shortly. Never, she thought.

Robin finally burst with questions that he had needed to ask her since the day she had told him who his parents really were. "Why did you leave the ocean? The adventures? The treasures?"

Em Kraven slowly turned her head towards him again. She did not directly answer his question. Instead, she said, "Maybe one day you'll find you own adventures and treasures . . . along with your father."