Welcome to Gaia! ::

"Might work... have you spoke to your other selves about this? They willingly underwent the process of rejuvenation, correct? Whereas Shia died rather horrendously. Luceil... I... I hesitate to correct you as this seems to be your area of expertise... My dark magics, combined with that I stole kept me alive... even as it ate at me. I merely had to keep refueling the process. I didn't have to undergo the whole reconstitution process... Heck, even this body I now wear is a reincarnation of a sorts, a gift from the on high though I hardly deserved it at the time. You might say I died and was reborn seeing as I came as damn close to it as one could possibly come and still walk away. But my mind never lost it's connection with the flesh. Perhaps, had I been thrown as far back as a hatching I'd be in the same boat, but for some odd reason I wasn't."

Emnast pauses and looks down at the floor. "Still, what I'm trying to say is Shia has some aspects to her now that your other lives don't have... memories she may not be able to control... things that will haunt her. Though you, yourself... if you dig deep enough have them as well." He is as pale as a ghost and shivering. "Would that I could undo the past, but as your kitsune friend is so found of saying, the past is cut into stone, it cannot be undone. What I did to you...." he falls silent, waiting.

"Be that what it may... I still worry about merging the two so fluently... there is a whole range of problems here... does she even know I live? Her goal, I suspect was to cleanse me of my wrong doing... that doesn't necessarily mean I would survive the process." sighs Emnast testily.

"Then she doesn't know I live." he says softly in a thin thready sigh. "Probably for the best. For all she knows then, I'm someone different... another Emnast completely unconnected to the first. As you merge the memories, she's going to know I'm here, but not who I am... And she probably thinks I died. You do realize her goal wasn't so much as to keep me alive but to prevent me from doing something further down the road. She held nothing back from me, Lucy... Strange as that may seem. So it is best she not realize just how much I have in common with that oh so familiar name until she's on more stable ground."

"Em... Ari calls me that all the time and it was Shia's nick name for me as well. And Shia did know my name, Lucy... we weren't exactly strangers, you know. I've never changed it. So no reason to do so. To change it would have been to deny who and what I am... and was." says Emnast with a twisted smile, wondering if Kero had been thinking too hard about this. Surely he knew which name he was talking about.

Emnast rolls his eyes, but a hint of a smile returns to his face. "Very funny..."

"And missed and got Dad right in the face, I know... I know... Dad was furious... but not for the reason you all thought he was." laughs Em softly, winking.

"You don't remember because I never told you. He was mad because he's the one that put me up to it..." laughs Emnast merrily.