Welcome to Gaia! ::

Carda was, for all intents and purposes, wiped out. Not only had he let his teacher, Xironielle, talk him into doing some shopping in town, he had let her drag him from shop to shop to BLOODY SHOP for a good three hours.

Simply put, he was exhausted and wanted nothing more than to go home.

But that didn't look like it was going to happen for a LONG while. Carda had collapsed in a random chair to get a few minutes' rest, but sure enough Xironielle came up within thrity seconds of Carda's sitting down.

"Come ON, Carda, I have GOT to get your opinion on something..."

Carda gave her a look of defeat, dragged himself out of his chair, and plodded along behind. "I liked it better when I was unconscious," Carda muttered glumly.

Carda, meanwhile, had decided that enough was ENOUGH. After "helping" Xironielle shop for the fifteenth pair of shoes (Where did she get all this money from, anyway? he wondered absently...), he had slipped away from her in a crowded store and fled to a relatively secluded cafe he'd found in a back alley a few weeks earlier. After ordering a meal big enough for two and a chocolate shake to match, Carda pulled out his novel (which he had sneaked into his jacket before leaving the house) and began writing again, oblivious to just about everything.

Carda had heard the door and sensed the presence of two people come in, but all that was filtered into a corner of his mind for the time being. Priority one was the book he was writing...

Then he heard a name. A name that slipped past the filter and hit his brain full force. "Riven."

That name sounds familiar, where have I... Oh, that's right, that's Sosiqui's son. She must know them. Recognition of the name gave way to full comprehension of the entire sentence, and Carda understood that the speaker must be fairly close to the family.

All this passed through Carda's mind without him even needing to look up. He decided that a furtive glance wouldn't be out of the question.

Carda looked up and pretended that he was thinking about what to write next, staring off into space... with the occasional glance at the table across the room.

Well. It wasn't often that you saw... whatever it was Carda was seeing.

The pair weren't enough to send Carda into dangerous "suspension territory", but several weeks ago they might have. He decided to eavesdrop on the conversation a little longer...

Carda kept eavesdropping, trying to make sense of this new little tidbit of information.

Hmmm. So these two were definitely friends of Sosiqui and her son. Interesting.

Then again, Carda realized, it could cause problems later on if a certain someone decided to show up again. Carda still wasn't sure where Octavius had been sent, and the thought of how it had happened sent a chill down Carda's spine all over again.

Carda's foot shifted, bumping his staff. The staff had been leaning against the table the whole time, and the nudge sent it off-balance. It slowly slid off the table and clattered noisily to the floor before Carda even noticed it move.

Turning red and quickly recovering the staff, Carda hoped no one had noticed despite the fact that there was no way anyone could have MISSED the noise. "Stupid thing," Carda grumbled, opening his backpack. He opened a small portal in the bottom of the bag that led back to his house and stuffed the staff through it.

To anyone watching it would have looked as if he had just stuffed a six-foot-long pole into an eighteen-inch tall bag and then zipped it up as if nothing was odd about it.

Just then Carda's taco salad and chocolate shake arrived, so he dove in, still a little red in the face.

He REALLY hoped the two girls at the other table didn't think he was being a creep.

Well, so much for stealth. "No. No, nothing broke. That staff is just noisy on hardwood floors anyway... As for how I got the staff in the bag, um..." Well, this was certainly awkward.

Ah well, no sense in leaving them in the dark. They'd probably find out everything eventually anyway, given their connections to Sosiqui.

And besides, he needed to make some friends around here. Heaven knows he'd need friends sooner or later. He couldn't very well live like a hermit for the rest of his life, marked man or not.

"It's not really IN the bag. I just sent it back to my house through a little spatial portal. The bag was to keep it from being obvious." Carda grinned lopsidedly. "So much for that, huh?"

And now he might as well get it out of the way. They probably suspected now that he'd been eavesdropping earlier, especially given the way his face was a bright shade of red.

"I'm sorry, but I couldn't help overhearing earlier... You mentioned Sosiqui's son, Riven. I take it you know them?"

"Yes, I know Sosi... in a manner of speaking. It's... kinda complicated."

Carda blinked at the question that followed.

"Chaos... thing...? Um. Not that I know of..." Carda had a lightning-quick thought of that whole "Stormbringer" incident but quickly stifled the impulse as being utterly ridiculous. No one else in this world even knew about the legend, much less what had happened the week before...

He raised an eyebrow. "Though I have to agree, that's not the best way to go about finding out something like that. Especially if, as I'm guessing, this isn't something or someone you'd want to meet in an open field, much less a dark alley... I'm sorry, where have my manners gone today? Honestly, I'd probably forget my head if it wasn't attached to my shoulders. My name's Carda."

"Like I said, it's... complicated. I guess the short version is that I grew up knowing another version of her and just recently met the one here."

Carda sighed and continued. "It's a little difficult for both of us, especially since I used to be a Strider. The Striders... don't exactly get along well with kairomancers." Carda left out the part about Octavius for now. He wanted to talk to Sosiqui first. Better for her to find out from him than by secondhand information.

"I guess when I originally discovered that she was here, I hoped she might have some memory from the Sosi I knew, but... I dunno. I don't think I've been doing a very good job with my second chance at a first impression."

"Yeah, it's just a little tough trying to reintroduce yourself to someone that you already know. Believe me, it's not fun. Almost like you're not sure who has amnesia, you or the other person."

Carda took a sip of his shake before continuing. "Granted, I haven't exactly been the easiest person to get along with lately. I've had way too much on my mind to have even been serious about trying to get to know Sosi all over again, what with my teacher getting exiled and my sister coming up missing and the Strider Council breathing down my neck just to get to Sosi and--" Carda stopped short in horror at what he'd just said. He'd let slip just a bit too much data with his nervous babbling.

Crap. What have I just done? Carda thought in shock.