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Emelyn would have explained to him that the island was canvased with surveillance cameras, microphones, and other gear- but the tone in his voice suggested that he didn't want to talk about it- so Emelyn filed the information away as something he would likely learn on his own in the time to come.

"I thought you washed up on shore, though. Fell off an... what was it, ocean liner, cruise ship? Poor thing, being dropped in the ocean and not being able to swim. ...I'm glad you made it."

"Rex?" The name was followed by a bubbly chuckle that escaped up her throat and past her lips in an almost joyous hiccup. "No, I think I would have remembered meeting someone named Rex." She was sorry to hear that, even now, there were new people coming to the island. Would Moreau ever decide to put a cap on this torture farm?

She put her hands atop her head, wading backwards through the ankle-deep water, her eyes still on Avery.

"Well, if you'd ever like, I can teach you. I've got a lot of freetime these days." A single corner of her mouth lifted up, curling upwards towards her blue eyes in a crooked grin. "All you have to do is find me. I'm not exactly... easily accesible these days," she explained.

The drop of his eyes to her bikini-clad body was brief... but noticeable, and Em put a hand on her hip, amused. She had pegged this well-coifed man as gay. She thought to herself that she was either wrong, or that his gaze was stricly related to curiousity at the fur that covered her body and the quill-like masses that had transformed her hair.

"Oh, sure- I've done everything I wanted to do for the day; I just came out to get a swim in. I'd be happy to start to teach you now. Just come on in the water and we'll pull out all the stops, alright?" She smiled, and said over her shoulder as she waded a little deeper, explaining, "Oh, and I meant that I'm not living in the village anymore. I live up on the mountain."

"It's a long story," she said softly, yet free of angst. "Suffice it to say, when you arrived, Moreau had us in the middle of a ...sick experiment to see how we would react to being kicked out into the wild. When he decided to be 'magnanimous' and let us all back into the village, I just decided that I wasn't going to be his little yo-yo. He made a very clear point that he controls our lives, and that the comfort he provides can be taken away at any time. So I decided to... deny him the choice." She waded about waist-deep into the water, and indicated with outstretched palms, fingers curling repeatedly back towards herself for Avery to wade in with her.

"So... why haven't you learned how to swim?" She asked. She needed to know how quickly to start him- whether to familiarize him with breath-holding or the water in general, or to skip past basic flutter-kicking and teach him how to hold himself up by strokes. If he was afraid of the water, or was uncomfortable with the idea of total submersion, she'd start him off slower.

Em just nodded, glad to see that Avery was already on a good start for realizing what Moreau was. She focused her mind on the task at hand- one infinitely more enjoyable than lambasting the mad doctor with her words.

"Oh good," she said, "then you won't mind starting from slightly deeper water. Here, just follow me." She reached out and took his hands in hers. "Disregard the claws. They're not very sharp. I still have to use a digging stick to get any decent roots out of the ground." Her smile was easy and warm, and she kept her eyes on his as she guided him out to deeper water- as if to hypnotize him, should the water suddenly seem frightening to him.

She paused her gait and halted them at a certain point, about armpit- deep in water. "Now, I know this spot. There's a dropoff past here that goes about a foot or so deeper. Before we get there, just practice this..." she put her arms straight out to either side of her and made steady, synchronized circles in the water with them. "Just do it nice and steady, and when you can match how I'm doing it, just step off the dropoff and keep spinning your arms at that pace. Also, kick your legs slowly back and forth, just gentle kicks, like you were sitting at a desk in school and swinging your legs. I think if you can float, you'll be pretty good at treading water," she explained. "And then I can teach you how to do strokes in shallower water."

Em stood on the edge of the dropoff, her toes curled around a ream of silky wet sand, watching her 'student' and smiling. She clapped once with glee, and nodded emphatically.

"Yes. That's exactly how to do it. Treading water is a good skill to learn- because you can pause in swimming if you get a little tired, or if you just want to hang in one spot without staring at... well... the sky," she laughed.

"Alright, now I'm going to pull you back in, and do some stroking." She told him so he wouldn't be surprised, but she snaked out her arms and pulled him in from the chest, ducking underwater temporarily to pull him those last few inches back to the level mark. She surfaced, brushing the water out of her eyes as she did, and smiled.

"Sorry. I'm sure you could have done it yourself, but I didn't want to risk you going under. You're doing so well." She shook out her quills a moment, brushing them out of her eyes by pinning her goggles down atop them. "Now," she finished, "if you didn't mind, I could hold you up in the water horizontally, so you can work on the kicking and stroking. That's really the easiest way to do it, as long as it doesn't make you uncomfortable. ...We could just go to the shallow end," she reassured.

"No, it's not silly at all. People just have different circumstances. We'd be such a bore if we were all the same." She wrinkled the tip of her leathery, moist hedgehog nose, as if to show just that point with her science-fiction like features. "Me, I didn't know how to tie my own shoes until I was in second grade. I kept tricking other people into doing it for me." She laughed once, then stepped back to give Avery room.

"Okay, what we're going to do is, I'm going to put my arms out in front of me here, and under the water, like this... now you just "fall into" them- stomach first- I'll hold you up so your head is out of water. Then you'll just kick your legs at this pace.." Emelyn lifted her legs up in the water and tipped herself back until she was floating. Then she kicked her legs at a steady pace- quicker than her arms had been going for treading.

"As for your arms, you'll work them like a windmill- lifting it up above your head and then down into the water, like you're scooping it down past your torso and then up in the air again at your middle. You can only practice that part with your right arm, since... well... you'd smack me in the face otherwise." She laughed. But I'll correct you if you're doing something wrong, and then when you have the hang of it, I'll let you go and see how you do. Okay?"

She put her arms out in the ready position.