Welcome to Gaia! ::

There was going to be a slight change this time around, however: Ura was not going to be joining the others on the trip. Shiro was trying an experiment, one that Ura was more than happy to volunteer for. Shiro would go to Arda, and Ura would stay behind, and they would see how much they could communicate together despite being in different worlds. If it worked, Shi would probably try to spend a lot more time in Arda and Ura would simply send him any messages that he received for him.

As it was, Shiro and Kaito showed up at the portal room with their bags, ready to go.

"We're set," Shiro nodded at Lin and the others, keeping his tablet tucked securely under his arm.

In Arda, it was late winter, and the snow was deep and crisp. There were no tracks in the area, but since it was snowing lightly that didn't mean that there hadn't been anyone around recently.

Kaito ruffled his feathers and wrapped them around himself. "Wow," he murmured. "Talk about a climate change."

Shiro pulled a sweater out of his bag and pulled it on. "Come prepared," he quipped. "You know the Borderlands has the coldest weather of anywhere we've been yet in this world."

"We'll come with you to Haven," Shiro told Lin once he and Kaito were ready. "I do want to check sometime and see if Adonai is back, but for now I'd like a guarantee of warmth."

For the most part, he was all right, but his wings didn't have feathers for protection like Lin's and Kaito's, so his wings were often cold. And they didn't fit inside a sweater or jacket comfortably.

"Let's get going then," Kaito nodded, starting off towards the ranch.

Shiro led the way into the house, and once he was inside he called out, "Hello? Anyone home?"

"In the playroom," Haradhel's voice answered back from the direction of the playroom. "Come on in."

Kaito left his bag at the foot of the stairs and headed in, followed quickly by Shiro.

Haradhel was sitting cross-legged on the floor with a small mocha-skinned child on her lap: a little girl with dark eyes and blond hair, who couldn't be more than three or four years old. It seemed that Haradhel was reading to the child, because she had a picture book in her hands - a new one, because most of the original books that had come from Gaia had rotted away by this time.

Haradhel smiled widely when she saw the group that had arrived, and she greeted them warmly.

"This is Brooke," she introduced her. "Timaeus and Alyse's third and youngest so far. I'm just babysitting for a bit while Timaeus is hunting and Alyse is schooling Jasmine and River."

Her eyes sparkled brightly as she looked at Miyuki. "And I see that's not all that's new. Earendil told me you'd grown, Miyuki, but I couldn't imagine until now just how much you've grown. My, but you're growing up so fast!"

Haradhel laughed. "Indeed. This is the place you first visited in Arda. You were here when you had one and two tails, though you left soon after you grew your second tail."

She had learned from Earendil that Miyuki counted her age by tails, rather than years.

"Speaking of which," she added, looking at Lin, "if you're looking for him, I believe he's out with Aethos somewhere. I'm not entirely sure where ..."

Haradhel couldn't help but giggle at Miyuki's enthusiasm.

"It's quite possible," she winked. "They've been here half a year already - and what a half a year it's been! Poor Luk ... it took over a week for all the ranch hands to meet him, and just about every time he ended up almost jumped on!"

Though it was probably hardest for Arthael, finding out what she was after growing up with the values of the Westlanders.