Welcome to Gaia! ::

Kaito looked thoughtful. "But it seems ... almost as if they were guided," he said quietly. "I mean, think about it ... that's some awful good coincidences ... that they ended up in the same places, or on the same roads ..."

"How are your brothers?" Earendil asked Lin. "I haven't seen them since Aunt Elnara's wedding. How have they been?"

Earendil laughed. "Triton never really struck me as the teaching sort," he grinned. "More a father figure, or just ... the kind of person who wants to do something. I mean he's good with kids, Valar know how he was with Daeron, Daeron still talks about him sometimes ... but still." He laughed again.

Kaito looked at Earendil thoughtfully. "How old were you when you first met Triton?" he asked him curiously.

Earendil shrugged. "I was too young to remember. The first time I actually remember seeing him was when I was fourteen, the first time I met Lin. He and Donovan were going to see Uncle Gion ..."

Earendil chuckled. "Yeah ... young. I don't remember that time at all, but to be fair, who does?"

Rhea coughed and looked away.

Leyenda looked over at Rhea. "You do?"

Rhea shrugged. "My cousin Amara came for a visit when I was first born ... she inherited the gift of memory from her mother. For all I know, I absorbed it then already."

Kaito was impressed. "And here I thought Shiro was the only one with a perfect memory," he grinned.

Rhea smiled. "When I first started, I was hopeless ... I took in absolutely everything, I couldn't block anything out, I couldn't clear my mind. Your mother must have been so frustrated, Lin. Everything she did with me, I went overboard."

Not that she could help it, but she could understand how frustrating it must have been. It didn't help that she had been a bit frightened as well.

Rhea arched one eyebrow at Lin. "Who had their magic go so wildly out of control?" she asked. "You left shortly afterward, but you have no idea how many accidents I caused around home. Honestly, without Cindy's help, I would still be like that today. Totally uncontrollable."

She smiled. "But with Cindy's help, it's gotten to the point where I don't always need my staff, which is nice. I mean, it sort of became a part of me, but ... still. I feel kind of free without it. Like Mother, when she doesn't need her crutches."

They continued to sail for several hours, and when the sun began to lower in the sky, the flurry of activity began once more. Sails were lowered, anchors dropped, and immediately the movement of the ship began to slow.

"Almost there," Leyenda told the others excitedly. "We should be there within the hour." She pointed ahead. "See? There she is! The Zephyr!"

Kaito put one hand to his brow to block out the light. It was barely a speck on the horizon to him, a tiny dot in the distance. "Huh?"

Earendil and Rhea had no trouble seeing it. "She's beautiful," Rhea breathed. "And so big!"

"Still not fair," Kaito pouted.

It was odd, but now that the ship was moving a bit more slowly, it was rocking a bit more, and he was a bit more unsteady on his feet.

"I'm going to go below and check on Shiro and Ura," he told the others. "I'll be back up in a while." And he headed towards the door of the captain's cabin.

Celeb had fallen asleep curled up against Whisper, but as the boat began to rock a bit he woke up and looked about disorientedly. "Leyenda?" he murmured, rubbing his eyes.

Leyenda smiled and moved to kneel next to him. "We're almost to the ship," she told him, placing one hand on his head. "We're going on a voyage! Are you excited?"

Celeb smiled and nodded, wrapping his arms around her neck.

"Leyenda," Earendil commented suddenly, "I just realized ... your father is here, giving orders, but I haven't seen your mother since before we left ..."

Leyenda blinked up at Earendil. "She's not on the ship," she told him. She stood up and pointed behind them. "She's on the next ship, captaining that one. And Galion's captaining the third one."

Earendil blinked and looked behind them. "I didn't realize there were three ships going," he said in surprise.

"How else would we get everything to the Zephyr in one trip?" Leyenda laughed. "They'll all be going back to Namonuito tomorrow, but if we had gone one ship at a time we would have been waiting another week just here to be able to leave again!"