Welcome to Gaia! ::

Journal Entry:


Boyue is very glad that things are normal with Melody. He is worried a little for Boyan, though, because he is not feeling so well and Boyue worries it is because of Melody being pregnant.

He is pretty sure this is not true, but parts of him are still worried that maybe it is.

Either way, life is moving on. Boyue and Melody are nearly ready for the baby in the way of getting things. House is ready. Home is ready. Now is just playing the waiting game.

He is nervous about becoming a father. Melody is better with being parental type. She is good at taking care. Boyue is just lucky that Ezri was so big when he found her, because he is not sure he would have been able to care for her otherwise!

He is hoping he will do all right with a baby. He knows Melody will be a good mama. She takes very good care of Boyan when he is sick, after all. Boyue does not know one thing about taking care of others, though! It is not at all like battle tactics!

(RP: SNEAKY BAKING with Auntie Nusumu!)

Melody had known there was something odd about her pregnancy, but it was Luna who first pinpointed what exactly was going on.

She had to admit, her own memories of pregnancy being hazy at best; Grandma June was pregnant with Auntie Luna so manymany years ago, and when Melody had asked her own father what her mother was like, all he could answer was that one day, they were getting married, and a few days later, his gracefulbeautiful wife suddenly didn't feel well, and pop! Out came Tsuyoshi and Melody!

Not exactly helpful, Melody had decided.

But something was definitely odd. Definitely, definitely odd. Like how Melody was only just a bit smaller than Auntie Amena, but Auntie Amena was so much closer to her due date than Melody. Perhaps just a large baby, she'd assumed, but for it to be that large so soon? That couldn't be right, right?

That was what she'd asked her Auntie Luna during a routine checkup, and that was when Luna's eyes widened and a very strange look came over her face as she'd informed Melody in Porcelain mindspeech that no, it WASN'T normal.

For one baby.

And Luna lifted Melody's blouse right then and there and pressed her ear against her belly. No stethoscope, no doppler; just her own ear and her own mind.

To the outside observer, the silence would have been deafening. But Melody could hear the faint projections Luna sent; gentle, questioning, searching. Looking to provoke a reaction. ANY reaction. Poke, poke, poke, went the projections, and then, more silence. Poke, poke, poke.

Poke, poke, poke.

Poke, poke, poke.

Poke, poke--

And suddenly, a noise caught between surprise and triumph escaped Luna's lips. Aha! There it was! That slight variation in heartbeat. That faint dissonance.

She had been right all along.

Melody wasn't having just one baby.

She, like her mother, was having twins.

The following has been recorded and left on the dining room table:

"Hello. Bo-yue? Am... go to..." A long pause "...Place. Time... veryvery fast. I... go for day and... um.... um. Only few minute?"

There was another long pause, along with "um"-ming noises to suggest that Melody was having a very difficult time articulating just what had happened.

"Um. Just a minute."

Then, a loud CLICK as the recording device was shut off, and then again as it turned back on. This time, the voice wasn't Melody's:

"Hey, this is Arc. One of Mello's nieces? She wants me to tell you that she went to some place where time flows differently or something? Yeah, I don't get it either. ANYWAY, she met this dollmaker who gave her some dolls for the babies, and she's leaving them where you can see them. Yeah, yeah, she's showing them to me right now. They're REALLY cute. So anyway, she says she's going back for a while, and that she doesn't really know how long it'll be, but she thinks it might be good for the babies? She'll come home a lot to check in on you and stuff, but she also says that time's probably going to go faster for her than for you, so she doesn't think she'll be gone long enough for you to miss her."

And then, Melody's voice in the background: "But I miss HIM!"

"Yeah, did you hear that? It'll be long enough for her to miss you. So, uh. Step up the prep for the babies, and Mello's gonna see about bringing home some useful things and getting care from your people. Is that it, Mello? OH, and she's making schmoopy kissy faces so. I guess that's an I LOVE YOUUUUUUUUU. Okay. That's it. Bye!"

Click.

It had taken her five full days to figure out where she was.

Of course, part of this was due to just how occupied she found herself here in the so-called Silver World (Which she'd only just now realized was this space-pastry her father had rambled on and on about). So many sights to see, experiences to experience, people to observe... It was all just so new and foreign to her to see a world populated by Porcelain. To see a world where people didn't have multiple sets of wings growing out of every available inch of their bodies, where so many people claimed to have been descended from gods or goddesses that one just began to tune them out after a while, where Melody didn't look at a person and wonder if they'd be able to hear her projections, or if they'd laugh at her attempts to speak, or if they'd turn out to be some cruel demon or--

It almost scared her, in a way.

Now she understood somewhat what Great-Grandpa Setsutsu was going through! Well, except in reverse. To be so startled by a simple dress, or a pair of sandals, or to be horribly confused by yet another species of humanoid... Melody had simply accepted it all as normal. But now here she was in a strange world, with none of the modern conveniences she'd taken for granted, where everyone adhered to a code that Melody simply couldn't understand. (Except the apparent dress code; Melody picked that up VERY quickly)

It wasn't until the novelty wore off a bit that Melody had thought to consider just where this place was. (Once again, she'd taken world-hopping for granted. Not that she'd actually BEEN to her grandmother's homeworld, but she knew how easy it was for people to go back and forth between Neilan and Gaia). And that's when she realized that this was the place Auntie Nusumu had been, the place her father rambled about, the place whose dirt he'd searched for. (Melody wouldn't forget the confused look on Jin's face when she asked for a bottle in which to collect dirt to take home).

And now, Melody had something of a mission. Learn everything she can about the Space Danish. (It wasn't even REMOTELY like a Danish! What on earth was Daddy TALKING about?) Report her findings to her father. And possibly, quite possibly, be a major help to something important!

But also, while she was here...

Maybe it was a chance for her to learn about Porcelain, as well. Being born and raised on Gaia by Porcelain who barely remembered anything before their own arrival on Gaia... What an opportunity she had!

And so her focus shifted, only slightly. Certainly, she had questions about this world (most of them worded so confusingly that Jin simply couldn't answer), but those slowly became secondary to her own curiosities. Questions about space pastries became requests to read to Melody, pointing out characters and asking their meanings until she could recognize a few by shape.

She had initially agreed to stay in the Space Danish Silver World so that her children could better grow. But now, Melody decided, she would grow as well.