Welcome to Gaia! ::

When classes were let out for the day the little Nixie named Aurelia leapt up from her seat with an enthusiastic slap of her thick tail, hands raised in the air in triumph and a gleeful smile on her precious face. Oh, she didn't hate classes by any means; she loved learning new things, once the day was over, though, it meant she could go out and play! It didn't take her long to figure out she was going to go to the gardens, especially since she wanted to run around and stretch her legs....and her imaginaaaation! She skipped all the way outside, pondering aloud what she would be doing...in song, no less. A little off-key but full of her trademark cheer, she made up a song about her play options.

"Oh what will I do today? What fun kind of game will I play? I could lie here and watch the clouds go by or pretend I'm a pretty butterfly? Floating in the air, changing shape with the breeze; I can do or be any darn thing that I please!"

This was sung as she skipped and twirled about, just happy to be moving and thinking of ways to have fun....until something caught her attention that made her stop, turning her heterochromic eyes to see the young Naiad making...mud? What on earth was he doing that for? Was it for something fun, like making mud cakes to decorate? Mind already a-buzz with questions, Aurelia skipped her way over to the little mud-maker with that perpetual smile on her face. She stopped a little off to the side of where he was and bent herself over sideways so that her face was semi-upside-down.

"Hi!" She said quite brightly, waving at the Naiad before clasping her hands behind her back, still bent sideways. "Whatcha doin'? Gonna make mud cakes? I tried doing that once; I had them decorated with pretty flowers so they looked like those fancy cakes you see in those magazines and I set them out to bake but they just got all crumbly and lost their shape and the flowers started to get all wilty....but it was fun anyways!" It was pretty clear that the little Nixie had a tendancy to ramble a little bit.

Had slowly started to turn herself so that she was bent more backwards than sideways, arms held out to the side so that she could keep herself steady as she waited for him to respond. Hearing him call mud cakes 'stupid' made her balk a bit, staring upwards with her brow furrowed just a little as she thought about it; true, they weren't the prettiest things to make and they kind of fell apart too easily. Maybe he was right? He mentioned making action figures and Aurelia bent herself backwards more, reaching her arms back to hold herself up with her back arched like a bridge. She looked at the naiad, now totally upside-down to her, and smield brightly when he offered her to join him.

"Sure!" She exclaimed, dropping down to her back with a little 'oomf' sound so she could roll onto her belly and push herself up. "I'm gonna go get the water real quick!" And with that, Aurelia was dashing back inside so she could grab a water bottle much like he had. It didn't take long for the nixie to be skipping back outside, clutching the water bottle to her while excitement shined on her face....and yet again, she was singing softly to herself. "Gonna make, gonna make, gonna make some things; gonna make them out of mud.." That was about as far as she got with her song till she was back to where the naiad was busy making his mud-clay. She plopped herself onto her knees in a spot just across from him, leaving enough room so they each had their own space to work in, and was already opening that bottle. She was about to start pouring it till she saw how he was working the mud in his hands, seeing how rolled and twisted it and the thickness of its consistency; definitely not the same as her mud cakes, which were admittedly too runny. She looked at the figure he had started, fascinated by how it seemed to be staying together like he wanted. "Oh wow, that looks good already..."

Aurelia smiled as she wondered what exactly it was going to be, then turned her attention to her own water/dirt situation. Thinking for a moment as she pushed up her sleeves, she poured out a little bit of the water and started to mix it with the dirt, frequently glancing back up at his work space to check and see if what she was making was close to what he had. She'd add more water, just a little at a time, and try to work it in a way that mimicked what he did. Even though it wasn't quite right (still a little too soft) she was already starting to gather it into a lump so she could shape it....but into what? Tail thumped the ground a little while she was in thought until she got an idea, making the lump a bit more egg-shaped. She frequently had to keep pushing it together to make it keep its form, her tongue sticking out of the side of her mouth just a bit while she started working on a pair of what looked like fins at the narrow end of the lump. Already, she had gotten mud all over her hands up to her wrists and was sure to get it on her knees, the water having seeped a little further out than she had intended.

Aurelia looked up at him when he explained what his figure was going to be, eyes wide with fascination and practically sparkling; just the word 'specterfox' made it sound so much cooler. "Whoa....that sounds awesome! But why can't you just make the mane and tail out of something else?" The little nixie inquired innocently, looking around them while tapping muddy fingers on her chin in thought (and getting little mud prints on her face in the process.) "Liiiiiiiike....oh! What about flower petals? Or leaves? You can find some pieces that are wavy or peel some so that they look like they're wavy and use a stick to poke holes in them so they look more smokey or....what's the name of that stuff...plasma?"

She was lost in thought for a minute when the naiad's words about her mud snapped her out of it, looking down at what she was trying to mold as it started to lose its shape again. He suggested to add more dry dirt, so she did....just a little at a time. She worked it in carefully until it was obviously thicker and seemed to be staying the way she wanted it, giggling happily. "Cool, it worked! Thanks!" She smiled at him as she reshaped the lump in that egg-like form, adding the fins at the narrow end so it looked more like a tail. "This is gonna be Gabby, my sealpup! She looks a lot like me; same colors and she even has the hearts on her like I got on my frills, see?" She pointed at her frilly gills that had the little hearts on them, giggling again as she began to shape the front flippers on the sides. "I could draw those on her with a stick or maybe find some flower petals that look like hearts to put on her....then I might make another one of Gozu; he's my nezubat! He's got stars on his wings." The whole time she was talking, she was still working on the sealpup, now trying to shape the face a bit. Gabby had such a cute, silly face when she wanted attention. Aurelia bent down lower so she was practically resting her chin on the ground, looking at the face up close while trying to remember how it looked.

Aurelia looked up at him when he talked about what happened when you stuck things like petals and leaves into things like these, a thoughtful frown on her face as she recalled her mud cakes that had gotten all crumbly and cracked where she had stuck the flowers in. "Huh....maybe that's why my mud cakes got all cracked...oh well, I can always try something else." That smile was back in place again as she listened to him as he said he was going to make pretty things like these when he was bigger and even make them out of glass?! "Whoa, that sounds so cool! If you made these out of glass, I bet they'd look super pretty! I remember seeing some things that were made out of glass and they had all sorts of colors swirled in the glass so it looked like flowers and jellyfish and all sorts of other shapes! I bet you could do stuff like that to the specterfoxes and make them look amazing!" Aurelia was practically bouncing with enthusiasm as she sat on her knees, listening with awe as he said he was even going to paint and be famous! "You can paint, too? That's so awesome! I draw a little sometimes and I've done some fingerpainting but I haven't tried to paint with a paintbrush yet. I bet you're pretty good if you like to paint a lot." A definite tone of admiration was in her voice as she looked at him, smiling so much that it's a wonder her face didn't get tired.

The pout on his face when she told him about her familiars made her wonder what was wrong, not sure if she said something bad somehow but when he asked if he could see her familiars, she smield again and nodded. "Yeah, of course! Gabby loves people and Gozu is a little shy at first, but once he starts flying around you then you know he likes you." Aurelia giggled happily as she remembered when she met Gozu, using a small stick to help carve out some of the mud so the face looked a little better. She was trying to make the eyes and the nose, though one eye was a little bigger than the other and more elongated while the other was more round. In fact, the tail fins and flippers were a little disproportionate, either one bigger than the other or a little longer. Apparently Aurelia hadn't noticed yet.

"Whoa....maybe when you're famous, I can come see your gallery." She said with a dreamy lilt to her voice, already trying to imagine that kind of future and seeing all the wonderful paintings he would make. "I saw someone painting with water colors the other day and they looked so pretty; all the colors were mixing at the llines where they came together, which made them look like they were painted on there together instead of separate. Sometimes two of the colors would make another color when they mixed on the paper, which looked pretty cool." She was now using the stick she had to draw a little wave pattern on her sealpup to mimic what Gabby had, carefully carving in little lopsided hearts; the end result was a slightly lumpy sealpup that seemed a little too fat, with a pebble for a nose and a big goofy smile....because, well, Gabby always seemed to smile a lot. "I like when it rains. You can do all sorts of fun things inside, like make forts out of pillows and blankets and pretend you're hiding from enemy spies as you're hunting for an ancient treasure, or reading a super fun book and acting out all of the action scenes; sometimes I go outside, too, and get to run around so I can feel the dirt squish between my toes, or dance with the rain drops to se how many of them I can miss..."

She trailed off a bit as she started a new sculpture, this time trying to make a ball out of the mud. She set the mud ball down and was already trying to think of what to use for the nezubat fur when he mentioned how he was going to have a bunch of specterfoxes and other familiars. "Wow, you'll end up having, like, a whole ZOO of familiars in your house! That'd be, like.....a million hugs and cuddles a day!" Her arms spread out big and high above her head to emphasize how big of a thing that sounded, smiling as she wondered how he would remember all their names. She saw him smear the mud on his forehead and then reach out to her so he could fingerpaint some mud on her cheek, the nixie leaning forward so that he could. At the same time, she reached up to make some lightning bolt-like lines down his cheeks with her own muddy fingers.

"Oh, I'm Aurelia!" She said with a sparkly tone, looking at her handiwork. "What's your name?"

Aurelia's tongue stick out to the side as she squiggled on his face, the 'lightning bolts' looking more like wavy wiggles. They both sat back and when he started laughing, she couldn't help herself and soon caught the giggles as well. "You look silly!" She pointed out as they both were overcome with laughter for the moment, the nixie grabbing her shirt as she tried to contain herself. She would have muddy handprints on it, of course, but that didn't matter; he told her his name and she smiled, her laughter calming down to a light chuckle under her breath. "Meadow; I like that name."

She was back to her second sculpture, looking around for a couple of big leaves so she could make them the wings and stuck them in before the mud started to get more dry. Hearing him sigh, she looked up at him as he said that he didn't have any familiars yet but wanted one someday soon. She was distracted for a moment as she watched him make his little specterfox fly, smiling as he talked about having a familiar that could be flown on. "That.....would be amazing! Like, if nezubats were a hundred times bigger and you could ride on their backs while they flew over the Academy! Or or or....I remember reading somewhere about these horses that had wings and could fly; what if we had those? They could even be kid-sized so we wouldn't be scared to ride them and we could even race each other or play sky tag! That would be so fun!" She described these with such enthusiasm as she imagined what it would be like, the idea sounding really cool....but also, she wanted to cheer him up since he seemed a little down suddenly. "Sometimes I'll run while Gozu is flying and pretend that I'm flying with him, racing him from one end of the garden to the other. I close my eyes and I can see myself looking down from the sky, seeing how small everyone looks and the tip-tops of all the buildings; it seems like it should be scary, but it's really cool. Sure, I'm still on the ground, but some day there might be a way to do that for real. Probably when we're bigger, though." She looked up in thought for a moment and then back at Meadow, smiling brightly. "And then, if we do find a way to fly over the city, you can make paintings about it and show them at your gallery! I bet they'll be really pretty."

Aurelia smiled and nodded enthusiastically when he said that they could fly all over Below, maybe even Above, if they had flying horses or big birds to ride. She watched him lie down as she found some dandelions to make the mud ball fuzzy like Gozu's fur, using her fingers to pinch some of the ball into little ears. She smield when she thought it looked done enough and flopped onto her back on the grass, making her little mud bat fly above her. For once, the little nixie was quiet as she listened to Meadow describe what flying would be like; she absolutely agreed that it would be like swimming in the air.

"I'd love to see it." She said gently, smiling genuinely as she stared upwards while she made her little bat fly. "Swimming through the air.....just imagine if you were in the lake and you close your eyes while swimming and you just imagine that you're swimming through the clouds....or even the stars...you could even race a comet." Her voice had a wispy, dreamy sound to it as she spoke, like she was already imagining what it would be like. In her mind, she could see the two of them breaching through star clusters.