Welcome to Gaia! ::

She'd been crying onto the ghost of her father before Soleiyu had even come into the room. Her emotions had been high since she'd stepped foot on this planet, and it had taken its toll. It wasn't like she didn't want to keep screaming, or sobbing violently, or hitting whatever she could reach, but the exhaustion was creeping through.

The sobs quieted, and after a few seconds of squeezing Soleiyu like the lifeline that he was, her grip loosened somewhat, too. Somehow when she'd been hugging him, her tail had wrapped around him, like she always did with the people she cared about back at home, like she'd done just now with her father, but the rest of her was dead weight against him.

She felt hot. She felt like she weighed a thousand pounds.

"He said it was all a dream," she managed, quietly, because he'd come for her. He deserved to know. "The thousand years. The war on Daphne. The war on Earth."

The two pieces of the Chaos gem were still in her hands. With Soleiyu's help, she'd broken it, but she didn't quite have the strength to let it go.

"That's what I want," she said, staring off at some point in the distance. "What I really want. I want to wake up. I want it to all be okay. More okay than this."

She half-nodded at the fortress around them. Dozens of people had risked their lives for this. Whatever they'd seen had probably broken their hearts, too. They'd fought anyway. They'd overcome. They'd won. Daphne could tell by the way the air felt lighter that the Chaos was gone. Something about it felt hollow, though. In the room around her, the ancient things were still ancient. In the distance, the ruins were still ruins.

Everywhere, the ghosts were still ghosts.

"It feels like I'm waking up," said Daphne, against his chest, "But from the good dream, not the nightmare."

Although, his warmth seemed to be helping somewhat. The sobs were starting to level off even more.

"On Earth, it was easier to ignore some of this. Most of the time I didn't think about this stuff, but if I did, I said I'd be able to take an army back, and fix things." She'd been making friends. All sorts of people were offering to help her. Her loose, stupid plan was working, but that didn't change the fact that it was based on some very wrong ideas.

"It's different here. A wake up call, like I said. There's no getting around the fact that it's been a thousand years."

That triggered a fresh wave of tears, and she gripped his shirt tightly. It took a few moments before she was able to choke out, "How am I ever going to be okay if everybody's dead?"

There weren't easy answers. Daphne knew that. It was why she was crying. It was why she had been so taken up by the shadows that had promised her that all her problems would go away.

"I want to go home," she said, stubbornly, one more time, with that childlike tone of someone wishing for impossible things. Then she sobered enough with Soleiyu against her to add, "Not tonight. That's too much, but, sometime soon. This not knowing, I don't think it's actually good."

It had been sitting awkwardly in her chest for months, and with everything that had happened tonight, it had decided to explode into something awful.

Earth was tempting. Bed was tempting. As the emotions ran their course, it was just the heaviness that was left. She might not even have nightmares about her family if she let herself rest right now. She shook her head, though.

"Adria's here," she said, because he was probably the one she was closest to in this time. "And I know there's others you want to see. Maybe I should try to talk to Alastor."

She wiped her arm across her face, not that it helped much, but it was the closest she'd been to not being collapsed into some kind of heap that she'd been in for a quarter of an hour.

"We can go see them. That was the plan, I remember. Meet in the hall."

She wasn't okay, but she didn't want to worry her other friend.

Soleiyu wiping at her cheeks was the sweetest gesture, but it only did so much good. The violent sobs had stopped, but there were still tears in her system, and they were still coming to wet her face all over again.

The water helped more. She had to hold both of the gem shards in one hand in order to drink it, and she didn't know how much she'd needed it until it touched her lips. It wasn't a miracle cure, but with as hot as she was, and as salt-soaked, it was something necessary, and grounding.

After the second long sip, she put it down again and focused back into leaning her weight into Soleiyu's chest. She focused on how warm his tail was, how soft. She'd never seen him in this form before. She hadn't known that he'd be so good at giving hugs.

"Can you come with me?" she asked, "When I go to look at my world? I don't think I want to face it alone."

She took another breath, and then another sip of water. She wasn't okay, but she was trying. Being around as many people as possible sounded better right now, and so did not being a total mess when she saw them.

"If you hadn't been here just now I might have done something very stupid."

"Thank you, Soleiyu," she whispered.

She wasn't sure if she was proud of herself, or her actions. He didn't know how close she'd been to letting everybody else down.

At least now, with the Chaos gone from the air and Soleiyu holding her and saying the things that he was, she felt that maybe she'd done the right thing, choosing the future of this world and her friends over a shadow that could only repeat a few empty things to her.

Maybe. Her heart still hurt if she thought too much about it, if she thought about what she'd almost had.

She went silent for a few moments, simply leaning against her friend until her breath caught enough that she could peel herself up and go head towards the others.