Welcome to Gaia! ::

The sand squelched, wet, beneath Lithian’s bare toes.

The raging squall of the night previous had simmered down to a grey drizzle, warm on his naked shoulders, and he drank in the morning view with curious eyes. A heavy, rolling mist coated the shoreline, seeming to spill out from the steaming mass of greenery that was the island beyond the scope of the beach. Lazy waves licked up along the white yellow-sand, the sound of their soft hssssshhhhing a murmur in comparison to the complex maze of sounds that was the body of the island.

Chirrups. Hoots. Strange meshes of varied bird call and a wide selection of humming and buzzing noises.

Clearly, the place was alive. Alive with what all, precisely, Lithian couldn’t be sure. In the clearer light of morning, the atmosphere still looked, felt, and smelled alien: rich with a woven mess of unfamiliar scents, and…thick, in a way Lithian found difficult to explain. As though the air itself were especially dense and wanting to cling to him, particularly when he ventured near to the edge of plantlife off the beach line. His magic told him that this was due to an increasing water density in the standing air — a density which only grew the further in he probed. So polarized was it from Eowyn, though, that it seemed outright bizarre.

Humidity, he thought. That was the word for it, wasn’t it?

The Celestial Plane never experienced such a weather pattern either, but he had read of it. As his eyes trailed up the strange trees to where their broad leaves made a lush green canopy of sorts, he wondered if the place had been ever been charted by travelers previously, sketched down onto a map or studied. If not…

Lithian tucked the thought away for the time being.

Lithian startled at Casseth’s touch, so lost in his own thoughts that his mate’s approach had slipped completely beneath his realm of awareness. Immediately upon identifying it as Casseth, though, he relaxed, shutting his eyes and leaning into the touch with a hum.

“It is, in an odd way, isn’t it?” he responded, shifting in Cas’ hold to face him and leaning down to catch him in a chaste, if lingering, kiss. “Mm…you’re up early…” Smiling against Casseth's lips, he let their foreheads rest together for some time before leaning back. “Are you here to drag me back off to bed? Or are you in the mood for a sunrise breakfast…perhaps a brisk morning swim? With the fog rolling over the waves it looks almost mythical out there…we could catch some fish for breakfast. Perhaps a clam…unless you wanted to try braving the…wilds.”

After a stray glance in that direction, Lithian flicked his wings, passively wary.

“I wouldn’t personally recommend it. Not, at the very least, until we are fed and you’re fully awake.” He kissed Cas’ cheek. “So? What will it be, oh, dashing love of mine…” he asked, eyes dancing with warm amusement.

Lithian chuckled, watching as Casseth stepped away and humming to himself. “That sounds fair enough,” he said at length, following to move up behind his mate and draw his fingers gently down the small of his back, between his new wings, before pressing a kiss to his shoulder. “They are lovely, Casseth. you’ll be able to fly all the stronger when they’re fully grown in and ready to support you in earnest.”

In agreement on the point of breakfast before adventure, the two of them set out soon after that into the surrounding shoreline, ‘fishing’ long enough to gather meet for a proper meal and then cooking it up with some dried travelling spices brought along for the trip. Lithian ‘purified’ some of the surrounding seawater, removing the salt and cleansing it to assure it was safe to drink before using it for morning tea alongside the fresh fish. Once they had satisfied themselves insofar as food was concerned, they warded off their campsite, making certain nothing would steal into it in their time away, and then set out on a careful trek into the neighboring wilds.

The land was alien. Rather than making more sense, it seemed only to get more obscure the more they inspected, but it was also clearly rich with life of all sorts, many of the plants therein bearing ‘fruit’ of unfamiliar varieties, blooming with exotic flowers, and sporting thick, winding vines. Pausing before one such plant with heavy, low-hanging yellow fruit, Lithian called on his magic, drawing up a small stream of water from one of his waist-flasks to run over the outside of it and test for outside signs of poisonous or toxic chemicals. After finding none apparent on the outside, he let the water withdraw and touched his fingers to it directly, murmuring a quick testing spell that rippled through the body of the fruit itself.

“Strange as it all looks,” Lithian said, “this seems as though it should edible. I can’t find any trace of poison…though it makes you wonder if there truly is no one else here. It’s so remote and lovely in its own way…you would think surely someone had located it before us…”

Lithian blinked. “A second…?” As Casseth’s implication sank in, though, a curious smile edged onto his lips and he glanced up to the surrounding area. “Perhaps…it’s so far out I’m not entirely sure how practical it would be, but…it is lovely, and we’ll have several days to explore, find out what lives here, and so on. One day when we adopt…if they are hybrid children, it may do us well to have a home further from civilization in case of something going poorly. Though…can you imagine trying to settle out here? Or have Araceli and Detraeus visit…perhaps when she, too, learns to adopt her true form it would be less of an issue. It is something to consider, certainly…”

They spent the remainder of the day doing just that: exploring the surrounding landscape, shifting into their dragon forms to get an overhead view of it and then back into humanoid shapes to explore in detail. There were a variety of strange beasts that made their home there — and predators — but none so large as to seem of a mood to take on their dragon forms, making it easy enough to stay safe and investigate at will. Five days passed similarly with them gradually expanding their comfort zone and, after verifying the safety of various plants, experimenting with mixing some of the wild fruits into their meals. Between fruit, nuts, fresh fish and clams, thick cookable root stalks and on occasion the meat of a small native animal, they spent their days well fed and curious, Lithian privately recording what he could of the area in a leather bound journal he’d brought for the trip.

Eventually, though, when Casseth’s wings were fully grown in and stable, they headed out again, making note of the location both through spellwork and recording before setting back into their travels. Though not intended at the time, Aisko was — unbeknownst to them — next on their list.