Welcome to Gaia! ::

Aerin nodded curtly to Cindy before her eyes moved back to Caranthir. She stared at him for a few seconds, and then she nodded to him as well, a different sort of nod, the kind of nod that was meant to give information, rather than a greeting.

Immediately, Caranthir seemed to relax, and his smile grew slightly wider, more genuine.

"Maybe you should sleep," Rhea suggested to Aerin, her eyes filled with worry now. "You look really tired ..."

Caranthir chuckled softly at Rhea. "She is asleep," he murmured, "or rather ... as asleep as she will ever be. She doesn't sleep like most people. She hasn't truly slept in over three hundred years."

"There are things that need to be done," Aerin said softly, her green eyes hard and cold.

Caranthir smiled lazily and put his hands behind his head. "You live at Haven, the ranch famed for its fight against slavery, who fights so hard to return children to their families and end the torture. This isn't the only problem this world knows."

Rhea's mind was literally echoing Cindy's thoughts. "Three hundred years?" she questioned. "That's ... a really long time."

She bit her lip anxiously for a moment, and then added, "You two don't look that old ..."

Rhea looked up at Cindy and blinked. "Well ... he's just so smiley," she said as if it were the most obvious thing in the world. "and if they were big troubles, then he wouldn't be so smiley, right?"

Though even she realized that his smile was not always genuine, and that there were secret worries hidden behind it. Still ...

Caranthir seemed amused by the thought, and even Aerin, in her sleeping state, cracked a bit of a smile. "Well, I myself am nearly five hundred years old," he winked at Rhea, "and Aerin is almost four hundred. So while we aren't exactly young, I would hardly call us old, either."

Rhea just giggled at Caranthir. "Well, you're a lot older than I am," she grinned. "I'm eleven! So you're hundreds of years older than I am!"

Suddenly she looked up at Cindy. "Um ... is it okay if I ask about ..." She hesitated, then held out her palm and tapped it slowly.

Rhea bit her lip anxiously. "The ... the thing, I don't know what it is," she replied. "That's why I want to ask. You know, that ... kind of ... weird ... green thing that I made before."

She held her hand out, palm up, once more, trying to get Cindy to remember, wanting to know if it would be all right for her to ask about it and learn more about it.

Rhea giggled. "Because I'm curious, of course!" she beamed. She turned to Caranthir and held her palm out to him.

"What's this?" she asked as a glowing green cube appeared in her hand, steadily growing larger until it was as big as her head.

Caranthir was amazed. "That is a rare form of magic," he breathed, "one that I thought only I could do ... it is a barrier, that protects anything within it from any harm ... magical or physical."

But how could she have it without knowing what it was?

Rhea blushed and giggled, and the barrier disappeared without warning. "Oh ... that."

She clasped her hands in front of herself and turned to Caranthir. "I'm an empath," she told him softly. "Papa says it means I'm like a sponge ... I take in the powers of those around me, and sense a bit of what they're feeling, and sometimes a bit of what they're thinking. This morning when I met you, I could suddenly do that ... and I didn't know what it was, or what it was for."

She turned to Aerin and smiled shyly, then held out her hand again. "And I can do this now, too," she murmured, a tiny flame appearing above her palm.

Caranthir stared at her, eyes wide. "Amazing," he breathed. "Simply amazing ..." He chuckled softly and reached over to ruffle her hair. "And now I understand your earlier question as well."

Rhea pouted a bit at Cindy. That comment was a bit unfair, she thought.

"I wouldn't make it snow if it's not winter!" she protested. "Just like I don't make it warm in winter even though I could if I wanted to! Because Mama taught me that it's bad to mess with the seasons, because they are the way they are for a reason!"

Caranthir just grinned, amused by the whole thing now. "So cute," he chuckled softly.