Welcome to Gaia! ::

Lin gasped softly at Dymetri's words and she leaned her head against his forehead as she was pulled into his arms. She closed her eyes and wrapped her arms around his neck.

"Oh Dymetri... No one has ever said anything so beautiful to me before. You even complimented my home greatly at the same time. I know that they are not empty compliments. I know you and you don't do that at all. Anyone who can say and mean such things is gorgeous. I do not think we're as opposite as you would like to believe we are."

She pulled back and smiled excitedly at him. Her eyes were dancing and she was nearly bouncing in place. "I am so happy to have you here and about to meet my family, Dymetri!"

She hugged him quickly and then put her hand in his. Moments later, they were teleported to the main elven entrance building. There was a ramp a few feet in front of them that led to an open doorway. That doorway led to the rest of the elven village. A person could see parts of the pathway, but most of it was invisible and made the elves appear as if they were walking on air. Once they were in the safety of the village, there was no risk of falling through the trees.

Moments later, a tall elven man with kind features and long black hair walked down the ramp through the open doorway and stood a few feet before Lin and Dymetri.

Lin smiled brightly, released Dymetri's hand, and ran over to wrap her arms around the man's waist. "Father! It is wonderful to see you!"

The man closed his eyes in relief and held his daughter closely. "It is a relief to see you, Lindolyn, and to see you so well. Your mother and I were so worried when we were notified of your condition at Bai Ching."

Lin's family had visited her while she was at Bai Ching recovering from the grief of Dymetri's death, which had helped in recovery. But her family was still constantly worried. This was the first time her father had seen his daughter so lively in a few weeks. He had missed it dearly.

Lin pulled back and smiled brightly up at her father. "I am more than alright, father! I have brought a very good friend with me... no, father, I am sorry. He is not simply my friend. I... I love him."

She smiled bashfully at her father and then turned to smile lovingly at Dymetri. "His name is Marcos. Marcos, this is my father, one of the elders of this village."

Lin's father looked at Dymetri, considered him. He was very thankful that Lin seemed to have gotten over the death of her beloved teacher, but he had not expected her to find someone of a romantic interest so soon, let alone at Mystic Fountain High School. He could see the love shining in her eyes, though, and for that, he was very thankful.

He smiled at Dymetri and held out his hand. "It is good to meet you, Marcos. Welcome to our home."

{{lol. I got Marcos' name right on all my posts except for this one. Weird...}}

Lin blushed brightly when Dymetri whispered his question in her ear. Her 'secret' was out.

She giggled softly and nodded. She whispered back. "Yes... Lindolyn is my full name. I almost always like using a person's full name in place of a nickname, but name is harder to pronounce for some. It is just simpler to use 'Lin'."

She grasped Dymetri's hand and began to follow her father.

Lin's father had seen the bright smile that had been on Marcos' face when he looked at his daughter. He could see the love in his expression as well. That was comforting to see. The relationship was certainly not one sided.

"Well, shall I take you to your guest chambers, Marcos? Your guest house will be right next to our house."

He turned his body around gracefully and floated along the path he had come from moments ago. Yes, he seemed to float, not merely glide. When he came near a group of other Elves, they seemed to part naturally for him. Not in fear but in deep, true respect for one of their elders. And every time, Lin's father would smile happily and nod in greeting at each person he passed.

The moment Dymetri stepped into the open forest canopy, a melodic, haunting tune would be heard faintly, as if it were surrounding them all. You could not hear or see where the music and the singing were coming from. It simply surrounded you.

Dymetri would also be greeted with a larger view of the forest home they could only glance at from the forest floor.



As Lin, her father, and Dymetri passed, many Elves' eyes would fall to the newcomer that followed their elder. Their gazes were not hostile at all. Simply curious.

"Holy leapfrogging Christ." Danni practically dragged herself back into the closet, feeling the fatigue right down to her bones. "My damned head." She scowled at herself, leaning against the doorjamb for a moment as she turned back to study her work. A damned good job, she thought, though she'd have preferred that slight layer of dust rather than the gleaming bells that brought unwanted light into her new refuge. It didn't help that, while polishing the inside of one of the bigger bells, she'd lost her footing on Zap and banged her head. The sound had echoed, and she'd been forced to clutch at her ears until the ringing had stopped.

But though she wanted to collapse for the next little while, she spotted a few of the dangling ropes from the bells, and her eyes gleamed, just a bit, and she gave into temptation.

Walking over again, she grabbed one of the ropes, gave it a tug. When it did nothing, she frowned, then took a better grip and pulled with a sudden force. The bells rang out, cheerful and breathtaking, gleaming in the sun and swinging as the sound echoed.

"I'll be damned...Ok, bed. Bed, bed, bed." It became a mantra as she turned around, made her way back to the old cot. She kicked the door shut behind her once she got inside, and took one look at the cot before she collapsed on it.

"Sweet merciful Jesus..." She murmured it up like a prayer, and in only moments she was out cold. And for the first time in months, she slept without dreams of blood and death, with the blessed silence she'd been coveting.

Cook looked around the shack that he'd called home for many a year now. His fireplace, with the scarred mantle that housed a few knick nacks that he'd collected over the years, two deep, cushy chairs in front of it, with a circular dark throw rug over the random length oak floor.

He remembered a time, not too long ago, when a girl with a quick laugh and a cocky grin had laid on her stomach on the rug before the fire, beaming up at him even as his dogs wrestled with her.

There was the kitchen-slash-dining room in the next room over, and here he had indulged himself. Gleaming appliances and generous counters, glass fronted cabinets and extensive spice racks. He'd always gotten his greatest joy from cooking. And he remembered, with a ghost of a smile, watching the hard determination in a girl's huge gray eyes as she tugged back her blue hair into a tail as he tried to teach her how to knead bread dough. And she'd laughed like a loon when a bag of flour had tipped off the cabinet and exploded all over her.

With an absent chuckle, he traveled upstairs, passed by the small storage room to the empty bedroom near his. It was empty now, and neat as a pin. But he thought of how, even just a few hours ago, there had been textbooks strewn across the floor, clothes tossed in a pile in the corner, the bed comfortably rumpled, and possibly the girl herself sprawled on her stomach on top of the sheets, completely disarmed in sleep.

It took him a moment for him to shut the door again, to continue on to his room. There was the bed here, of course, and the dresser, but it was the bookshelf he headed for. In front of the cookbooks and classics, picture frames were propped here and there. And it was the pictures that caught his attention, just as the photos in the albums stowed carefully in his closet always held his attention.

Stepping closer, he picked one up, studied the bright colors and smiled. His daughter, his Danni, was sprawled in the grass in front of the shack, streaked with dirt with her arms wrapped around Moe's scruffy neck, the dog's tongue flicking out to lick her cheek. Setting that one down, he surveyed the others, and chuckled. There she was, on the roof of the shack, hammer in hand and nails in her mouth as she patched up a leak. There was that steely eyed determination in her eyes again, with just that faint gleam of triumph on her face.

And there she was again, and for this one he'd put a timer on the camera. He'd tugged her into his lap, he remembered, and the camera had captured the surprise, and the amusement, and the way her hands had automatically settled over his, her fingers twining with his.

Was it any wonder, he thought, that the house seemed empty now that his girl had cleared out? He had the dogs, of course, he'd always had the dogs. And they'd all gotten on more than fine before the blue haired sorceress had come around and wormed her way into his heart. Not to mention, she was only just across the campus. He should be grateful she was alive, not sulking because she was obeying a punishment. Hadn't he just spent a good part of a day drunk and sobbing, thinking she was dead and gone, buried in the ground beneath the tree in front of his house?

"She grows on you before you know it." Cook blinked at the now familiar voice behind him, and turned to find Sly in the doorway, his slacks and dress shirt rumpled, his eyes dark as his hands slid into his pockets.

"That she does. Do you ever plan on telling your missus what happened over the past few days?" Cook asked, having bonded a bit with the man who'd helped bring his girl into this world in the first place. He knew Sylvester Rinaldi well enough now to recognize the faint line between his brows as a frown of disagreement.

"No, no I don't plan on it. Eleanor...She'd see it only as an annoyance, an embarassment. As would the rest of the family." He sighed, strode forward to stand beside Cook, and together the two studied the pictures for a minute or two.

Finally, Sylvester spoke again. "I'm not a particularly kind man." He mused, and Cook remained silent, sensing there was more. "I'm not really kind...But I'd have never considered myself outright cruel. I gave to several charities, did my duty to the family, maintained and strengthened the fortune and power we'd acclimated. But somehow...somehow I missed the fact that my greatest act of cruelty was below my feet, pacing in the basement. I locked her away, you see. I locked her away, believed Eleanor when she assured me Isadora should be grateful she was being allowed to live at all..." He shook his head, ran a finger over his daughter's smiling face, captured forever in that single moment in time in the photograph.

"And then, when we sent her here...The moment she found you, found something that made her happy, as she deserved to be...We held it against her, and we disowned her. And she smiled when we signed her off, when we cancelled her trust fund, her inheritance...everything. She grinned as though she couldn't care less. And it only made me that much angrier when I remembered that, it seems it was centuries ago, she used to come running, leaping in the air, trusting me to catch her. How the name used to mean something to her. She would say, when she could speak, she'd say...'I am Izzy Rinaldi! Ready or not, here I come!' It seemed, after she said that, she'd always go off running, looking to climb some tree or swim in the sea...I took that light from her eyes, you see. It was me, more than anyone, who made it so the name meant less than nothing to her. And you brought it back, my friend. You gave her what I refused to...For that, I'll never be able to repay you."

Cook said nothing for a moment, only continued to study the pictures, before he sighed and turned to Sly, and his eyes said it all.

"Go see your daughter, Sylvester. I've cooking to see to." And just like that, everything was understood.

((Eh, I'm stuck until John posts, and everyone is stuck until I post, so a break is all fine and good.))

((Or I could just post.))

Sly stepped out of the portal into the bell tower, glancing briefly at the freshly polished bells and washed floor. There was only one door, so he walked over, opened it, and felt his heart jump, then soften, when he saw her.

There she is, his mind seemed to say. It's about damned time you found her. She was sprawled on her stomach, as she always was when she slept at ease.

"I don't know what to do with you, Isadora." He said, laughing at himself, while she slept in front of him, unaware. There was, he thought, one thing he could do for her. Something no one had to know about, not just yet.

With a murmured spell, he drew up the lengthy Rinaldi family tree, scrolled down until he saw Ambrose's and Lia's smiling faces, and the blackened mark where Danni's face had once been.

With a wave of his hand, the black disappeared, and Danni's face appeared as he'd seen it in one of the pictures in the shack, mouth curved cockily, eyes gleaming with some secret amusement, blue hair streaming down her back. Beneath the picture, the name Danni Rinaldi was scrolled in gray. She wasn't the white that marked everyone else's names, nor was she the black that marked one or two other names far up on the tree. She was...gray. Forever shifting its color just a bit to suit itself.

Without a word, he rolled up the tree again, watched while it disappeared from his hand. And for a while, he just watched as she slept. Danni, he thought, not his Izzy. You couldn't go back, and you couldn't change what had already been done. He couldn't have his Isadora back, but he could try to understand Danni.

No documents, but lived through much of history... Those were the same grounds Ialo had hired Ophiuchus on. And he really couldn't afford to be picky right now. Futures were at stake here.

"You're hired," Ialo said, "And you start right now." He shifted his weight and realized that he was still barefoot, and shirtless. He would fix that later. But, someone who had lived through so much history... "How good are you at research?"