Welcome to Gaia! ::

Avalon sat in the kitchen chair she had already designated hers, and tucked her legs up under her. She didn’t need the extra height to tower over Babylon (Finn) and his silver-haired friend, but she liked to have it when she was around new people, she was noticing. Kaatje put her on edge, even though Kaatje had also given her clothes that almost fit--she was swimming in the v-neck top, and she had cinched the drawstring on the pajama pants tight. All the things she didn’t know about Babylon, all the things that she didn’t know about the world… she was starting to notice them, and she was starting to be afraid again.

She gave Finn a beseeching look, and received nothing for her efforts besides a smile and a bowl of some sort of rice and fish concoction. At the smell, she made a face, and then she took a bite and it was actually pretty good, so… she still wasn’t going to admit it, but she liked it. And she liked the chopsticks. Even though there was definitely too much food.

When she was done with her four bites of rice-fish thing, she picked up the baby book and opened it to a random page. Why couldn’t she be Sparks Nevada? It was a perfectly good name. “Can I be Tahonga,” were the first words out of her mouth.

“No,” said Anabel, biting into her salad.

“Can I be Cerys?”

“No,” said Anabel, stabbing a tomato with more verve than strictly necessary. “Derouen, I’m not paying you any trail mix for being my redshirt. I’m not going to do it.”

Her last name, Avalon ruminated, probably did not matter. She would only be changing it to Derouen… someday… “Akemi?”

“No, you don’t look even a little Japanese,” Anabel said, around a mouthful of lettuce and ginger dressing. Avalon subsided for a moment, and slumped in her chair.

Catty-corner to her, Anabel sighed. She didn’t like being so negative, especially not with someone who was so… weird already. Intellectually, Avalon had little more than a day’s experiences to draw from, so of course the odd names were normal--but the goal was not to create a unique, attention-grabbing name. The goal was to let Avalon blend in. Resuscitating the Tate Konstantin identity would make that easier, but the glamor made using the same name… unwise.

“Iphigenia,” asked Avalon, and Anabel accidentally bit her thumb in the process of eating a cucumber.

She sighed. “Here’s some parameters. English, Welsh, Irish, or Russian names only. Go.”

A few minutes of disconcerting humming from Avalon later, she said, “Regina?”

Anabel said, “That’s Italian, but that’s progress. Why don’t you make a list?” She passed her notebook and pen across to Avalon and then, gratefully, returned to her dinner.

“I’m full,” said Avalon, thumbing through the pages. On the other side of her, Anabel snorted, and continued to pick through her salad. “I like the book. And the rice. It’s very good.” She finished her list and looked it over; she had made careful note of the countries of origin of each name, to prevent future mistakes of the Regina type. “I think I look like a queen,” she mumbled to herself, and hummed a few snatches of notes before setting her book aside.

(Anabel put down her fork. This ought to be good.)

She took a deep breath and listed off: “Alexis, Arkady, Ashley, Carson, Cassidy, Cheyenne, Darcy, Finley, Francis, Hadley, Harper, Haven, Jocelyn--I would call myself Jack--Kasey, Kelsey, Kit, Lesley, Madison, Parker, Presley, Riley, Sheridan."

(It was not horrible.)

Avalon looked from Anabel to Finn, green eyes a little uncertain. “I really like Arkady and Presley,” she ventured, pillowing her chin in her hands. “I could be Arkady Ashlyn-Smith, and people could call me Ash, unless they wanted to call me something else. Or I could be Presley Smith. Smith is a boring last name, isn’t it, and it doesn’t really matter, since I’m just going to change it to Derouen one day, right?”

Anabel choked on her salad. “What. What?”

Avalon accepted this with good grace, though she frowned at the idea of being Kady... to anyone but Finn. She leaned into his arm and picked up her rice-fish thing, picking at it again. It was much better cold, she decided, and took another bite.

“Arkady Smith is a good name,” said Anabel. “Good balance of weird and not-weird. People in our generation have a lot of weird-spelled names in an attempt to be unique, so, no worries.” She shuffled her paperwork, and picked up the pen she’d lent to Avalon. Carefully, in block print, she filled in the new name: Arkady Ashlyn-Smith. The rest of it was easy, except the birthday: Tate Konstantin was registered as the 24th of December, which Arkady protested loudly and with force, but--it wasn’t like Anabel could change it, even with her uncles’ connections. “You can celebrate in February,” she said.

Arkady subsided, pouting and putting her fish dish aside. “I’m full,” she whined, hiding her face in Finn’s shoulder. “Can I eat it more later?”

She tucked herself up into Finn’s arms, draping her legs over his. “All of the papers are done,” she asked, pillowing her head on Finn’s shoulder, lazy as a cat.

Anabel shrugged. “I might know someone,” she said. “My friend Starling’s boyfriend is the registrar, but I don’t know if he’ll be like, morally chill with faking the whole… thing… when she doesn’t have any memories, you know?” Like, if Starling were the assistant registrar, it’d be one thing, but it was definitely Hanna filling out the forms and he had, like, rules. She hooked a lock of silver hair behind her ear and tucked the paperwork away in its bland black folder. “Maybe just prove she’s competent to do her job, you know? Any job.”

She cast a doubtful look at Arkady, who had closed her eyes and pressed her forehead to the side of Finn’s neck. “But maybe make sure she can, you know, function without trying to crawl all over you, you know? Social norms. That kind of cool thing.”

With a sigh, she got up and pressed a hand to her stomach, gingerly. “Help me to the downstairs door, Derouen?”

Anabel traipsed down the stairs, if traipsing could be used to describe her heavy step. Halfway down, she stopped and steadied herself on his shoulder for a long moment, grey-violet eyes fixed on the bottom of the stairs. She could hear Mendel barking outside as he played. “Yeah, I know,” she said. “I want you to be careful, though. You know, she’s got, what, less than twenty-four hours of memories? Just… be careful. With her.”

At the bottom of the stairs, she patted his cheek with a smile. “I know you’ve got a thing for broken birds, but take time out for Finn, too. Or I’ll have to kick your a**. You know he’s a really good friend of mine, right? We’re sort of mysteriously space-connected.”

Anabel smiled and waved him off, collecting her dog with a whistle.

At the top of the stairs, Arkady peeked down at Finn, her arms pillowing her pointy chin. “Hello, Finn,” she said, tapping her toes on the top stair. “Hello, hello. I came to wait for you.”