Welcome to Gaia! ::

.:Unexpected Discovery:.

He knew what it was the instant he saw it. But he wasn't exactly sure what it was doing in his yard. The cabbage was larger than average and it was heavy. It was also glistening with frost. Leeward leaned down and picked the thing up, a rare smile teasing the corners of his mouth. It might be interesting... he mused. Yes indeed, it might be very, very interesting.

The main sitting room was an ornate affair of rich expensive carpets and mahogany furniture. It was lush and had an air of indolence about it. Nicola liked it that way and Leeward was prone to letting her make most of the decorating decisions. The ground floor of the house, which also contained their main offices, was the only part outsiders ever saw. The catacombs below were well-hidden and very, very secret. He adjusted the large cabbage under his arm as he approached the chaise lounge where the self-proclaimed matriarch of the coven reclined. Everyone knew Leeward was their leader, but Nicola was second-in-command and vitriolic. It was better to just let her have her way most of the time than deal with the tantrums that occurred when she didn't get what she wanted.

"Hello, my dear." He placed a kiss on top of her head. "I've brought you something."

"Oh! A present! I do so love presents. What did you bring me, Leeward?" Her eyes lit up hungrily, though they never so much as glanced at the vegetable he carried. Not until he deposited it in her lap.

"It's a pet, my pet. I know you do get so very lonely." Leeward smirked, his fangs glinting in the dim light.

"It's a cabbage." Nicola replied, pushing the thing onto the floor. "What kind of joke is this, Leeward?" Her voice was rising steadily, a clear telltale of the tantrum that would soon come.

"It's not just any cabbage, my love." He picked it up from the floor and put it on a low coffee table. "And the cabbage isn't the pet besides. The pet comes out of the cabbage. You'll have to feed and water it, of course."

"The cabbage or the thing that comes out of the cabbage?" She asked drily. Nicola did not appear to be amused. Leeward found this intensly amusing.

"Both, dearheart. If you want to get what comes out of that cabbage, you have to take care of the plant."

"And what comes out of the cabbage?"

"A child."

"A CHILD?" Nicola looked alarmed. This, Leeward thought to himself, was better than anything. "You'd bring a child into the coven? Leeward, thats.. thats.. What are we supposed to do with a child?"

"I don't know." He shrugged carelessly. "Play with it. Dress it up. Just don't eat it."

"I don't eat children, you brute." This, of course, was a patently untrue statement. Nicola had no qualms about who she fed from. Then again, now that she'd said it she'd be honor-bound not to feed from this particular cabbage-child. Which was really all that Leeward had wanted in the first place.

"Of course you dont. Now, see, I've brought you a lovely little present--"

"It smells."

"So wash it off. Spray some perfume on it. I don't care. As I was saying, I've brought you this lovely little present which will turn into something nice for you to play with. What do you say?"

"I say I'd rather you bring me jewels. You haven't bought me anything pretty in such a long time!"

"Nicola..." His voice was only slightly menacing. But it held a warning.

"Thank you, Leeward, for the thoughtful gift." She mumbled sulkily.

Leeward grinned to himself. He wasn't entirely sure what had compelled him to pick up the cabbage. Perhaps it was mere perversity, the pleasure he got from pricking at Nicola. It wasn't as if he was lonely, he reminded himself. Countless thousands of years alone had cured him of any lonelieness he might have felt a long, long time ago. And it wasn't as if he particularly liked children. He had no real desire to be a caring father figure. Whatever hatched out of those leafy greens would likely be just what he had named it. A pet for the coven. Maybe, he mused, he just wanted to introduce a little chaos to their long-standing complacency. Things were going well and when things went well they tended to be terribly dull. Whatever they were, the vampire lord was not particularly interested in delving deeply into his motives. He'd picked it up and brought it inside. The deed was done. And if he was lucky, he'd get some amusement out of it. Precious little amused him these days.



Warmth. In the dark womb, the dreamer's half-formed dreams grew lighter. Warmth after cold. The dreamer's mind flitted about, passing idly from mind to sleeping mind as it was wont to do. There was nothing very interesting going on, though. So the dreamer returned to it's own dreams, content to sleep in the darkness of it's universe. Never imagining there was a world outside. Not really caring. It was warm, though, inside the womb. It was warm and it was comforted. The dreamer slept on.

.:The waking dreamer:.

Twilight came early this time of the year. The sky was just turning that pale indescribable shade of blueish purple and the household was just beginning to stir from their coffins. Leeward rose and stretched, sliding into a satin smoking jacket and his customary black slacks before making his way to the main drawing room.

Nicola rose from her own coffin and glanced out the window. What to wear tonight... that was the primary concern on her mind. What to wear was almost always the first thought in her pretty head. Appearances, after all, were most important. She made her way to her closet and looked through the massive assortment of gowns. Nicola was not much for current trends. She preferred the lavish fabrics and lace of a time long past. She very rarely wore pants and even more rarely dressed in any kind of modern fashion. After selecting something of a deep burgundy hue and sliding her pale, slender body into it, she turned to her vanity to touch up her always perfect hair. She had just happened to set the big cabbage on the vanity table, surrounded with pretty candles. And there, just where it belonged, was the cabbage. Except...

"Leeward!" Nicola shrieked, rushing towards the vanity. The cabbage appeared to have split open. And sitting in the middle of it as if it were a comfortable, leafy little nest was the most remarkable little girl Nicola had ever seen. At Nicola's shout, the little girl (who had been examining herself in the mirror) turned her head and looked at the woman. Then she smiled very slowly.

Leeward heard the shout and dashed into Nicola's room, skidding to a stop at the door. "What on..." the words died in his throat as he saw the little bundle that Nicola was holding.

"Isn't she precious?" Nicola asked, cooing and tickling the tiny girl, who smiled dreamily up at her. "And look at the little feathers!"

Leeward took a few steps towards them, not even bothering to think about how weird it was to see Nicola holding a child and acting maternal. He didn't bother to think about how long that attitude was likely to last either. He only had eyes for the little one. "She's lovely..." He said, smiling faintly. "Look at the mark on her forehead."

"I know!" Nicola crowed, as if each adorable aspect of the child were her own personal achievement. "It's like a symbolic eye, isn't it?" She beamed down at the child. The child yawned. Adorably, of course.

"We'll have to give her a name. And present her to the Oracle, of course." Leeward added. "May I hold her?" Seeing as how he'd presented the cabbage to Nicola, the little girl technically belonged to her. A fact which he now lamented.

"Here..." She handed the warm little bundle over almost reluctantly. "Look at her coloring, Leeward. She's a child of the night. She was just made for me! What a wonderful present you have given me!" She preened a bit, feeling quite important that she was the official owner of this new pet.

Leeward held the bundle awkwardly at first, though he soon got used to it. The little girl blinked up at him and gave him that slow, winsome smile. "Hello there, precious one. What shall we call you?"

"Galleai." Nicola said firmly.

"Galleai?" Leeward asked. It wasn't a name he'd ever heard before. "Where did that come from?"

"Oh..." Nicola smiled, albeit a little sadly. "Galleai was my mother's name."

Leeward looked down at the freshly named child. He didn't know what to say in response to Nicola's admission. They didn't talk about before very often. They didn't talk about the families and friends that they'd lost. It just... wasn't done. Sharing the past was more intimate than any of them cared to get. So instead, he smiled down at the little girl. "Welcome to the world, Galleai. We'll take good care of you."

Galleai gave him a sweet, sleepy smile before closing her eyes and drifting off.

.:RP log:.

Phase Shift - Galleai takes a trip through Carlisle's dreams

.:Initiation:.

"We need to take her to the oracle." Leeward stood over the chair where Nicola sat, cooing over the newest member of their household who was sitting very still, allowing her hair to be brushed and braided, then un-braided and brushed again.

Galleai turned her huge dark eyes up towards Leeward and gave him her slow, sweet smile. Nicola held her closer, eyes narrowing. "Why?"

"Are you worried the oracle will steal your pet, my sweet?" Leeward smirked. "Galleai's part of the family now. The oracle has to see her, you know. Nobody gets to live in the coven house without getting the oracle's blessing first. We might as well do it now rather than later."

"I hate going down there..." Nicola grumbled. "What if she doesn't give her blessing? And anyways... Galleai's more like a pet. Not a real member of the family. We wouldn't have to get a dog or a cat blessed."

"Galleai is a person." Leeward reminded her, his eyes going cold. Leaning down, he plucked the light bundle out of Nicola's lap before the woman could react or protest. "She's a very small person who doesn't talk yet. But she's still a person. And as such, she has to meet the oracle. Seeing as how you find it so distasteful, I will take her."

Nicola opened her mouth to protest, but then shut it again. She really didn't want to go wading through the catacombs. It was so dreadful down there! Let Leeward take her new toy to the oracle. She'd have her back soon enough. "Alright, Leeward. As you wish. Please don't get her dress dirty... she looks so adorable in it!"

Leeward sighed, shifting Galleai's weight. The little girl wrapped her arms around his neck and nuzzled her cheek sweetly against his. Shifting a book in the bookshelf caused a wall to open, revealing a long, dark stairway going down. "Now don't be scared, sweetie." Leeward murmurred as he made his way down the stairs.

They came to another door, and through that into a large round chamber. The walls were lined with evenly spaced upright coffins and in the center of the room a fire burned in a grate. There were three other openings besides the one they had come through. "These are the catacombs, darling." Leeward told his young charge. The little girl peered around curiously in the dim light. She didn't appear afraid at all. But why should she? She knew nothing of death or the horror stories associated with the undead. She thought that all coffins were merely beds. Nothing frightening about the cleanly swept room at all.

Leeward made his way towards the doorway directly opposite the room from them. The hallway it opened into was dimly lit with flickering torchlight. Leeward walked slowly as Galleai giggled softly, reaching out to try and catch the shadows. "Here we are, my sweetheart."

Through the final door was what appeared to be a small, clean apartment. The furnishings weren't nearly as elaborate as those in the main house and there was cheerful overhead lighting that made the place much brighter than the house tended to be. Since it was underground, there were no windows, but the whole place was redolent with the scent of baking bread. It was, all in all, a rather appealing and entirely unexpected little home down amongst the catacombs.

The woman bustling around in the kitchen was also unexpected in the fact that she was small, blonde and unremarkable. She looked up when the visitors entered and smiled. "Hello, Leeward."

"Hello, handmaiden." Leeward replied formally, shifting Galleai again in his arms. The little girl smiled at the blonde woman and then gave a little yawn.

"Ah, so this is a formal visit, I see?" She was only ever referred to as the handmaiden when someone needed the oracle's services. Otherwise they just called her by name, which she was well content with. She liked her life well enough, it was much much better than before. "I'm afraid I wasn't expecting you. I'm not at all mystical looking today, you see."

"Thats quite alright. We dont need anything fancy. I wanted to introduce you to the newest member of our little family, Galleai."

"Galleai." The handmaiden reached out and took the little girl, smiling into her face and rubbing noses with her. "What a lovely child. What on earth are you doing with a child, Leeward? This one isn't meant to be turned, is she? Or given over to the pilgrims in the catacombs?"

"Oh no. I picked her up rather as a lark, to annoy Nicola."

"Thats a terrible reason to adopt a daughter."

"Yes.. well.." If Leeward could have blushed, he would have.

"I take it your seeking the oracle's blessings, then? You mean to keep her?"

"That was the idea."

The handmaiden smiled at the little girl again, bouncing her gently up and down. "Well now, aren't you a sweet little thing? A little dreamer, aren't you?" She looked at Leeward with her impenetrable green eyes. "I'll give her my blessings. But you'd better be careful with this one, Leeward. You have no idea what you're getting yourself into. Trust me."

Leeward took Galleai back into his arms and frowned. Always cryptic, he wasn't sure he liked the sound of her words. "Are you telling me I should get rid of her?"

"Oh no..." And the handmaiden giggled very slightly. "I think she'll be very good for you. Just... be prepared for unexpected outcomes dear Leeward."

"Sure.. sure. It was good seeing you, you know. Thank you for the blessing and all." For once, Leeward was at a loss for smooth, clever words. Instead, he beat a hasty retreat. "Well, Galleai my love, it looks like you really are part of the family." He looked at the child a little suspiciously. "I certainly hope you're not too much trouable. You sure don't look like you could be."

In response, Galleai gave him her sweet, slow smile and fell asleep on his shoulder.

.:Nicola:.

Can a house dream? Galleai hadn't thought so, but it seemed that she walked the very walls of the estate. As if the crown molding and ancient carpets were singing her a story. Like a ghost, she transparently wandered the grounds following that song. Sang in a high and thready voice, as if the singer were long out of practice. It pulled her, like a thread tied to her wrist. It led her through the forgotten upstairs hallways, the rooms full of sheeted furniture. Here and there, she thought the sound might be growing louder but it always faded away again.

At the very top of the house was a room roofed with a stained glass cupola. Galleai couldn't remember ever having been up there, but as is the nature of dreams, she took her discoveries in stride. The song grew more confident as she pushed open the door to the round room. The stained glass threw a kaleidescope of color onto the floor, breaking it into geometric patterns of red and blue and purple. It was impossible to tell what color the walls or the floor really were, so saturated were they in the light. It was then that she knew that she was both in her home, and in another person's house entirely. Two estates, superimposed over one another. Existing in the same space but in different times.

And, like a fairy-tale, in the center of the circular room awash in blue light, stood a spinning wheel. Galleai didn't know any fairy-tales, but if she had this scene would have been sharply reminiscent of the tale of the sleeping-princess. She took a step forward. And another. Strangely, this dream lacked the sense of awareness she usually posessed. At least, that awareness had fled the moment she entered the tower room. Sitting at the spinning wheel there appeared to be a young girl. She sat straight-backed and graceful, her long hair pooling on the floor around her. She was the one singing, her voice high and trembling. She sang and she spun and she spun and she spun as if she could do nothing else. But the spindle and distaff were empty. There was no wool. There was no yarn.

The singer never stopped her spinning but she turned her head to look at the place where Galleai stood, only a few small steps away. Her eyes were glassy, they both saw and did not see. Galleai felt a sense of dread wash over her. She knew this woman.

"Look..." Whispered the singer in a cracked voice. "See how it bleeds." And she held out her hands for Galleai's inspection, the palms of both bore gaping circular puncture wounds. "See how it bleeds!" She cried again, and then fell to weeping.

Galleai woke with a start, her heart pounding and her breath coming fast. Nicola! "Nicola!" She gasped out, clutching at her blanket. The first time she had really uttered a full word. "Oh..." It hadn't been the house's memories after all. Something about Nicola's nightmare made Galleai's heart ache bitterly. "Oh..." She whispered again, and crawled from her napping space, padding her way to the main sitting room where the household was spending time before the fire. The twins were playing chess, Leeward was reading and Nicola was looking sleepy and disheveled as if she'd just woken from a nap. Galleai made her way over to the vampiress and climbed into her lap, seeking to give comfort as much as recieve it. Nicola petted the child's hair absentmindedly. "It's okay..." They both whispered to one another. "It's okay."

.:RP log:.

Sweet Dreams - Galleai takes a trip through Joshua's dreams

.:RP log:.

Counting Stones - Galleai takes a trip through Merroth's dreams

.:Remember:.

The moon was high and reflected over the snow with a luminescent glow that was almost bright as day, but held that element of magic that only moonlight could imbue. Boots fell softly in the snow, leaving footprints behind in a clean, neat line. The air was cold, but Galleai was wrapped up in a warm, thick cloak of the same old-fashioned style that Nicola enjoyed. She was warm, clinging to Leeward's back as he headed through the trees behind the estate. Her eyes reflected the moon and the snow and she felt perfectly, completely content and safe.

"You must remember those who have been left behind." Leeward was saying. "You'll have to remember for all of us, my love. When you get as old as we have gotten, you begin to forget things, you know."

"But not everything." Galleai added, her voice a little muffled but her speech perfectly clear. She had finally gotten the hang of talking. "You remember whats important, don't you?"

"Yes. Yes, I remember whats important. I remember what I lost, at least." They came to a small man-made clearing. An ancient little wrought-iron fence surrounded a square patch of what would be grass in summer but was now a smooth expanse of white. There was a path paved in old stone that led to the center of the area where a small, short building stood flanked by statues of cloaked and hooded angels, their heads bowed. Here and there were small crosses and cracked tombstones. "This is where the dead ones sleep." Leeward explained.

"Not you and the others, though."

"No. We're a different kind of dead. This is a place for the ones who will never wake again." He swung Galleai down from his shoulders so that she could wander the small cemetary. Immediately, the little girl was drawn to the statues.

"Who are they?"

"Marble guardians. They look after the cemetary and protect the sleepers."

"Who sleeps here?"

"What remains of Nicola's human past." Leeward smiled. "See, here." He pointed to the small building. "This is where her parents and her sisters rest."

"And the rest of them?" She looked at the crosses and stones.

"I dont know." He responded honestly. "I wouldn't ask her about them either, not just yet. She doesn't come out here. Even after all this time."

"Something very terrible happened to her, didn't it?" Galleai asked softly, returning to Leeward's side.

"Yes, precious one. Something very terrible happened to her."

"But she's better now?"

Leeward swept the little girl up into his arms and hugged her close. If they could, his eyes might have shone with unshed tears. "Yes, cherie. She's probably as 'better' as she's going to get. She just doesn't like to talk about it."

"And you? Something terrible happened to you too, didn't it?"

"Yes, my love. But thats another tale for another night. When you are much older."

"It wasn't as bad for the twins, was it? Living, I mean."

"Living was never the problem, my dear. It's death that made things hard."

"Living was a problem for Nicola, though. And death was a problem for you."

Leeward paused, wondering how someone so young and innocent could have such remarkable insight. "Yes, love. That sounds about right." He adjusted the girl in his arms and the two looked out over the pale cemetary as the snow fell silent and clean.

"I love you, daddy."

Leeward paused, a catch in his chest. He hadn't heard those words since he had been human. It had been a very, very long time. Finally, a tender smile crossed his lips hesitantly as if his muscles had forgotten how to form such an expression. "I love you too, princess."