Welcome to Gaia! ::

Tonight, a large portion of the city was probably crammed into dark areas, staring at the sky; some people were at the park, some in their backyards, and others were probably in city-crafted gathering spots. All of them intending to kick off the Star Shower by giving it the attention it was due. Probably. Giulia hoped so, anyways; if not, they'd just wasted someone else's chance to appreciate it. Giulia, Aidan, Lucas, and Jada were all gathered on a hillside that was more sparsely populated; there were only a few others nearby, perhaps because there was a little light-pollution nearby? Trying to figure it out was a bit beyond the scale of Giulia’s care-list for the time being. All that mattered was that there were meteors, and few enough people that she could run around freely, following the paths of the shooting stars overhead.

She was going to make a wish on all of them. Or all the ones she could manage to wish on, anyways. She had a list of wishes tucked into the pocket of her lime-green denims, which she had prepared carefully; she had even worded them so that she could say them extra fast, so she could get out as many wishes as possible before she ran out of air and had to take a breath. Some of the wishes were selfish- she really wanted that new saddle, after all, but she didn’t NEED it- and some of them were wishes that she had glimpsed during her time at the Wishing Tree. She had a small keychain that lit up that she would use to read the wishes by, when she needed to look at the list.

Giulia Montgomery had a plan. She wasn’t a baby anymore, after all; she was Almost Eleven, which was more than half of the way to being a Grown Up. And her best friend was already Thirteen, which kind of made Giulia more mature simply by association. (Or so she decided, anyways. Her Opinion, however, was frequently disregarded as Fact.) Quite pleased with her written display of maturity, the blonde pre-teen made her way leisurely apart from her family- to further make herself feel mature, of course. But no amount of faux adulthood could hide the childlike delight in her actions when her eyes finally adjusted to the lighting- a shooting star blazed across the sky and her small squeal escaped, hands clasping tightly before her chest.

Her fingers, still painted with bright rainbow colors, dug anxiously for the crumpled paper in her pocket. She dragged it out, fumbling it to the grass, her noise of dismay more squawk than groan. She should have had it at the ready! But pockets were safer than carrying! But now she was losing time. She dropped to her knees anxiously, lifting her small pocket light to check where it had fallen. “No, no, no, no,” Giulia uttered frantically, and began to try and list off the wishes she could remember one by one, staring between the sky and the list. “I wish for that new saddle, and I wish for some new rooms to get built for the homeless shelter, and I wish for a new- some thingy for the food bank.”

Had her list blown away already? Was she standing on it? She spun around frantically, and missed her feet- stumbling over them and falling towards some people sitting nearby.

Oh, no!

The paper had to have blown away. Giulia chewed on her lower lip, trying to figure out which way the wind was blowing- the list was important, after all, and she couldn’t waste tonight’s meteor shower. Yes, they would be falling all week, but tonight was the first night, and she wanted to get her wishes in ahead of all the ones that would be certain to follow. That was how it worked, right? (Probably not.)

She determined the direction of the wind, after a moment of thought, by trying to follow the way her hair blew. Then again, wind could change direction pretty easily, so what if- no. There was no other choice! She needed to stick to the path- and wish on a star to find her list. Luckily, there were lots of stars, and one twinkled happily as Giulia muttered her wish.

It was with no small delight that the ten- almost-eleven year old- soon came across the person who was apparently to be the savior of her list of wishes.

No mind had been paid to the majority of the other people in the area, Giulia’s line of thinking that no one was going to pay much attention to a lone hunk of paper wandering crumpled across the grass. But as she approached someone who was near the path of her wind-blown hunt, a hand lifted, a piece of paper tucked in slim fingers.

“Ah!” the pre-teen rushed over to the person, carefully avoiding the pot next to them as she approached. “Yes, I was looking for a paper, thank you!” she grabbed at it thoughtlessly, already trying to pry it open to make sure it was the right one even before it had been released from the person’s hand. Weight shifted from foot to foot her cell phone lifting enough to let her read the words scrawled across the paper in neat pastel pink print- and hopefully not blind her paper-finder in the process.

This looked right! After all, what were the chances that there would be multiple notes written in this distinctive ink rolling around in the park? “Oh, good!” without hesitation, Giulia plopped onto the ground next to the person, and tilted her head back to squint at the night sky, watching the stars spill across it and trying to figure out how best to recite her list.

Long, skinny legs sprawled to the side, obnoxiously lime denim stained brown from her note-hunt around the knees and where small hands had been wiped on the legs. Her attention on her paper-saving hero was, at first, negligible at best; their purpose as her hero appropriately served, all that remained was to be rewarded as her Paper Knight.

But her attention was pulled away by the young person moving- grabbing something?- and asking a question. Blinking her eyes owlishly, Giulia pulled her attention away from her list. "Me? Oh, I'm with my siblings. They're around. My name's Giulia, by the way." her hand waved airily, unconcerned, but she finally remembered the manners to introduce herself. "I had to come find my paper and didn't want them to hear all my wishes. Some of them are for them, after all."

Blue eyes drifted curiously down to the plant the stranger had collected into their lap. "That's a big flower," she said with interest, "What is it?" Making small talk with a stranger didn't bother her or make her nervous in the least. People weren't bad just for fun, after all- and someone who carried around a flower and saved wish lists couldn't be wicked. Probably.

And on the off-chance they were, Giulia ran fast.

Ahri's person nodded to her, the light from her cell phone illuminating the space enough that Giulia was able to make it out. "Ahri's a pretty name." Giulia considered it for a moment, lips pursing as she took in the large white lily. "It suits her." How did they know that Ahri was a girl flower? Did flowers even have genders? Or were flowers like ships, where they were all girls?

She shoved her face forward a few inches, sniffing in the direction of the pot- not enough to like, creep them out, she hoped, but enough to get a better whiff- before her eyes brightened.

"Oh wow, that's awesome. Ahri does smell good. We don't have a lot of flowers like Ahri in our garden, it's mostly boring stuff like roses and some bushes that are good for butterflies and hummingbirds, and a lot of hedges and I think we have some honeysuckle?" They had a lot of stuff in the gardens at the Big House, but Giulia didn't really spend a lot of time trying to figure out the plant names- they were mostly there for parties and good smells, and to like... feed bees and stuff.

Glancing down at the list in her hand, Giulia let it scrunch up tightly in slim fingers so she wouldn't lose it before lifting her phone and moving it a little closer to Ahri's pot. "So why did you come to watch the meteor shower with Ahri?" her brow furrowed. And then Giulia realized- "Oh, you must be waiting for a date! Is Ahri a gift for your partner? Cause she's gorgeous, I bet they'll love her."

Giulia considered the idea of adding more flowers to the garden outside. She probably could- it wasn't like finding space for her to have a little garden with some of her own favorites would be difficult to do. They would have to check out what flowers were poison for pets, like poinsettias were. Her head bobbed thoughtfully. "Maybe we could grow some flowers that are good for bees, or some that attract butterflies and stuff. We all like butterflies." And Hope would be going into second grade next year. She'd probably need something to do for science projects and stuff soon.

The adult-seeming person in front of her wrapping their fingers around Ahri's pot and pulling it closer as if they were sulking made Giulia giggle, and smile brightly at them. "I was wrong then." the admission was bright and no apology was given. "It's nice to take plants with you. I like to carry around big fuzzy purses and stuff. But what if you meet someone allergic to flowers?"

The question about her sheet pulled Giulia's attention away from Ahri, and she looked away from the potted plant, holding up the long list. "Yep! I got some wishes from some of my friends and my siblings and stuff. Since meteors probably don't know a lot about Earth they probably wouldn't be very helpful with vague wishes, so I wrote them down to be very specific about what we wanted."

She opened her mouth to say something else, to start reading off the list of wishes and offer to add his own to her list, when something shook, a crashing sound almost painfully loud assaulting her ears as the world shuddered underneath her. Wh- What was happening? Or what had happened- the light pollution from the city seemed to be shivering as well, the stars briefly flashing even brighter as the city dimmed and darkened.

Giulia's new friend was a hopeful soul, but his optimism at being left alone was met with a snort that Giulia had clearly learned from someone older. She couldn't know what he was thinking exactly, but the note of hope when he thought he wouldn't be spoken to made clear that he probably wasn't as outgoing as the blonde ball of energy next to him. A grin grew on her face at the stranger's raspberry, and she reached up with a slightly-dirtied hand to cover her mouth and hide her giggle. "At least they didn't tell you to leave the flower and stay."

But that line of thought was to be continued another night, it seemed; Ahri's parent leapt to their feet as the ground shook, and even Giulia couldn't help but quake in fear at the way everything seemed to have happened. She pulled out her cell phone, a bright sapphire star charm dangling from the back, and checked frantically for a signal. "Yeah." her response was concerned. "I can't even text my sister, it looks like maybe a cell phone tower is down?" She was getting NO bars right now, and that was bad. And she couldn't power up to Charybdis to go and find her as a senshi. She probably wouldn't need to though... right?

After all, it didn't look like anything was on fire; in fact, everything apart from the stars still falling across the night sky above seemed almost suspiciously dark.

Giulia scrambled to her feet, shoving her phone back into her lime pants. "I'm gonna go find my family. Will you and Ahri be okay?"

Stay safe, kid, the stranger told her, and she nodded. "My name's Giulia," she called after him, "Nice to meet you, Ahri and Ahri-parent!"

Her hand shoving the paper deeper into her pocket so she wouldn't lose it again, the girl booked it back towards where she had left her family, trying not to stumble in the dark. Luckily, the stars and meteors overhead twinkled brightly, guiding her path.

So she only tripped like... twice.