Welcome to Gaia! ::

On a day when the snow had lessened some, Naeria found herself heading back to the lake. Many of Earth's natural features had caught her interest, and the presence of expansive bodies of water was one of them. The fact that all of the people in Destiny City could drink and bathe and make fountains using water from this reservoir that had just happened, that had not had not had to be carted in from other worlds or even protected, really.

She wanted to see how it reacted to the changing seasons.

When she arrived, she saw that like much of the rest of the world, it had frozen. Right now she could still see some water out towards the center, but thick sheets of ice were forming around the edges, and from what she understood, the coldest part of winter was just beginning.

Naeria wondered what the people would drink if the lake froze completely.

A buzz on her ComTech stopped that thought short. She checked the screen to see a dot moving closer to her. She looked up to see a person drawing near.

It was a Knight, the screen said, and Naeria remembered Knights. She remembered how they swarmed around Lyndin, how they'd hurt and killed the Velencyans who had chosen to protect them.

Naeria did the first thing she thought of. She skittered to hide behind some cattails. The cattails, however, dried out from the winter, were not very good for hiding behind, and Naeria gave a gasp as she slipped on the ice that farther revealed her position.

Oh. He'd seen her.

It wasn't truly surprising, given the sad state of the reeds she was hiding behind, but Naeria gave a small gasp anyway.

He was warning her, too. Was this going to be like those other times? Was the ice going to suddenly turn into a sticky trap? Was she going to get an unexpected bath?

Deciding she preferred the first option, she sprinted off of the lake ice and onto the regular snow, although she kept moving her feet so she could see if it was turning into marshmallows or not.

All the while, she watched the knight through wide, nervous eyes.

He didn't seem like one of the ones who had turned against her people.

She found that she could talk. "How do you know when the ice is going to shift?" she asked.

If what she'd seen was a common enough Earth phenomenon that he was warning her about it, then the humans must have observed it before.

Hidden weak points, she understood. Physics, she understood. She did not understand solid asphalt cracking and turning to water under her feet, just as she did not understand soft snow turning into sticky sugar, but she decided not to press the issue.

He had his own questions, it seemed.

"The disaster was a disaster for us, too," she said. She was careful about what information she shared, but she did not see any issues in explaining this.

"We did not have enough energy to return afterwards. The Negaverse offered to give us some, for a price, but-"

The way Naeria's face twisted made her views on the Negaverse quite clear.

Naeria blinked again, first at the wisp and then at the man.

"I don't think I am offended," she said.

Was it considered offensive here to question people's actions? She would have to try to remember that, although with everything else she was trying to learn, that tidbit might slip through the cracks.

"From what I learned afterwards, Commodore Lyndin allied himself with the Negaverse soon after we arrived. His plan for the trip was always to retrieve Caedus's starseed."

Her voice was flat, even if thinking about what had happened that night made it feel like insects were crawling over her skin. Her emotions about the whole thing were distant, and strange.

"If we're able to return, I will report him to the council for his actions against the King and this planet."

She might have spoken more on what was going on with Caedus and Lyndin, but if this Knight was not interested in the details of her planet's political systems, Naeria understood. She respected that, in some ways.

If the Earthlings had stayed out of their politics on that hilltop battle, less of her people likely would have lost their lives.

Earth seemed to have plenty of politics of its own to deal with, anyway.

"Our weapon worked in their favor. That was the deal. The Negaverse is always seeking more deals with us. I do not trust it, but some of the others seem to," she said.

Just talking about it made start to stiffen up again. Her words came out weak.

Her eyes flicked to his and then away again, and she managed to ask, "What do you know about the Negaverse's deals?"

That sounded unpleasant. It was also not really a surprise given what she'd learned about Earth.

"Is that something that only happens in the Negaverse?" she asked, and her shoulders actually relaxed some, her nerves replaced with a stronger curiosity.

"From what I have seen, humans are terrible at collaborating. They are always betraying and cheating each other for money," she said the word like it was distasteful, "Or power, or whatever is desirable in the moment."

She was not surprised that this Dark Mirror Court would do the same. She would not be surprised if Order would do the same.

In fact, she had seen the way they had turned on each other in the very battle that the Knight had brought up.

"I have heard of this capitalism," Naeria said, and nodded. After she'd talked to that first Knight about the problems with money, she had found that some humans had made documentaries on the subject. "It seems terrible."

Although, according to the videos, countries that tried other ways of dealing with money seemed to have their own problems.

Humans all seemed to have their own problems.

"But, capitalism was not my introduction to humanity. That battle was."

She inhaled and turned out to look over the frozen edges of the lake, tracing the cracks with her eyes.

"You say there is kindness, but after that, I am nervous. I do not think I can trust humans."

Naeria looked at the Knight and then looked where he was looking. The skyline broke above the horizon, but she didn't know exactly what it was that he saw there.

"Why?" she asked, and there was not bitterness in her voice, simply curiosity.