Welcome to Gaia! ::

"Aella is Aella." He welcomed her into his arms, one side much more welcoming than the metallic otherside. "No one wants anything other than that from you. Meillikki accepted you are you are, and enjoyed how you bettered yourself. Not for survice to herself, but for the fact her precious Aella was becoming stronger."

"I am possitive that Meilikki did not intend to leave so suddenly, and I am shure that she is aware of your great love and affection for her. I hope that your strong conviction never ceases, never dies out or becomes stanite. The fires within your soul should keep burning... Even if you are to serve only yourself... For now." He was not going to force her to pick any alligencies at this moment, she would ally with whom she would, and he could do nothing short of preventing her from being herself to stop it.

"Let me tell you something my mother once told me, six hundred years ago. My great uncle fell in battle, and he was my closest tutor. I could not accept the fact that he would not be teaching me anymore, and I raged in my own house. She took me aside, and said to me this: 'Life is like a fire, it burns, and one day it will burn out. As long as that fire catches hold, and starts new fires, there is no reason to laiment the dead flame. For, each fire it has started, retains a breath of the first flame.' By being alive, you keep Meilikki alive, as long as you continue to burn. Honour her life, by living honourably."

A shuddering sigh, and she felt strangley comforted though her tears still came.

"Live honourabley."

"I guess I couldn't expect anyone to come up with any answers for me. I need to find my own path right?" Which was difficult still, because she didn't know her strengths and how to play on them.

She decided it was time for a change. She could no longer afford to be the frightened, unsociable little half-elf that she had been since her release from captivity.

She demonstrated this decision by lifting the bridge of her nose under his chin, so that their skin touched. "Thank you."

She stayed like that for a time, then stood and straightened her clothes. (Right now she was wearing a black, sari like dress.) "Excuse me, Cedric. For as much as I would like to morn longer, I must spread the word so that the Meilikki's funeral attendance does her justice."

She grabbed her staff, checked her ankltes, whipped her tears. "I'll have to figure myself out when I return."

Leaf pulled Fin by his sleeve, excited to see home for the first time since they were gone, and shoiwng more emotion than she had in a lifetime. Perhaps because she finally had sometihng to express about who knew.

Around the next rock face, and they would be able to see the Peninsula. But when they rounded that corner, all Leaf could see was a thin, heavey mist that smelled vaugly rotten, almost sulfuric. "What's...." she didn't understand.

Leaf was still staring. "Wait...what..." She didn't understand, nor did she understand why Fin had reacted so harshley. But she grew frightned and her rbeath quickened.

"What do you mean 'some of our people yet remain.'? Our poeple are here, it's just...misty...out..." The realization fo what the mist was creeped in on her like remembering a long forgotten bad dream.

"No...that's not...it's not..." She sprinted ahead into the mist, she had to see for herself....

Leaf cept her hand over her mouth, using it as a filter. If the mist had been as potent as it was on the surface, she would have already been dead. It stung at her eyes, but as long as she didn't breath much of it in.

She had hoped..was still hopeing...that the gas was just a leak form somewhere, too thin too do much damage. But it was clear, from nearly the moment she disapeared into the mist, that this was not true. The whole peninsula...at had been flattened as if by some giant foot. A waistland, not even bones left to makr the dead here.

There was nothing for it but to turn back. Stepping back through the mist, to where Fin had shouted at her, and collapsing.

So, two uselss purian elves passed out before a wall of poisoness gas. It would be some time before they would wake, and travel to Deep Water to find what was left of their people.

"I never said I would of tried to do anything, and I know how it is for humans...I've been around them long enough to know how they work, how long they have and even long enough to turn more than one a phrase from thier times." Shaking her head lightly. "I'm just a little more than angry that the one thing she asked me to do, never got done. Mostly in part of selfish gods above that care not for the mortal world at all." But a dismissive wave of her hand at all of that. "I don't want to talk about it, least I want to drown myself in this tub." A sigh at that before looking to him. "Grab me a towel before I do?"