Welcome to Gaia! ::

It was hard to hear what was going on when two busy little blue hands were grabbing at and manhandling her ears. "Let go." Ayanne growled, jerking her head back out of her daughter's grasp as Tasi gave a whine, struggling in the mage's arms. She didn't want to be held, she wanted to go see what Mal was seeing.

And speaking of Mal'kyor....

Red eyes flicked upward and Aya felt herself tense, watching the stranger lay hands on her baby. Fingers twitched, the beginnings of an incantation in mind as she watched Rhiannon very, very carefully. For someone as unwilling to be a mother as she, it had done nothing to quiet the protective mama bear that dwelt within her.

Mal, however, did not seem to be in any distress. On the contrary, he seemed to be having a great time. As soon as Rhi had put herself within his reach, little hands grabbed eagerly for her fingers, stuffing them in his mouth to gum on.

The halfling giggled around his mouthful of hand, continuing to chew. There were no teeth yet, but the slightly-pointy firmness beneath his gums indicated that soon there would be. Meaning the same was probably true for his sister. Meaning soon Ayanne and Qwello would be dealing with teething pains in stereo.

Mal liked this new person. She tasted like fur and had a nice voice like the elves back home.

Mal'kyor did not, indeed, understand a word of what she'd said. And he did not know what the patting of her lap meant. He DID, however, know that he was suddenly very curious about the wiggly furry thing behind her.

He began to move forward again, slowly on his belly, his body giving a jolt when he was about within pouncing range, had he been in-control enough of his limbs yet to manage it. Instead he succeeded only in splaying his arms and legs out from beneath himself in a tangle once more. Though infantile and cute for the moment, it was the vestigal beginnings of what would later be stalking and lunging.

Ayanne watched the display with a clenched jaw as her son made a mess of himself on the woods floor, deciding that was enough. They'd wasted enough time. However as she moved to retrieve Mal from the presense of the odd wolf-girl, Tasi gave a twist in her arms with a defiant squawk, making her have to stop and flail to catch her.

UGH. Kids...and these two weren't even at the age yet that arguing did her any good.

"Joo want down? Fine." she grumbled, dodging another snatch at her ear before setting Sai'tasi on the blanket of leaves and mulch as well. "G'wan. Make a feckin' mess."

That was all the encouragement Tasi needed as she began to drag herself toward her brother on her stomach like a strange snail.

Rhiannon's distraction was fully to Mal'kyor's advantage, even as she helped him to right himself again. With an infantile crow of delight, he seized the tip of the lupine tail, exploring the silver fluff with his fingers in curiosity before deciding to see how it tasted.

By the time Tasi caught up with her brother, he was already happily making the once-plumed tail into a soggy mess. That, however, did not seem to concern her, just as long as he was where she could better-see him. That business out of the way, she could worry about more pressing things....like grabbing up handfuls of leaves and twigs and listening to them squish in her fists.

At Rhi's statement, Aya said nothing, heaving a frustrated sigh instead. "Ah been stuck on dis rock fa de last three days..." she muttered. "Ah seen demons walkin' round like dey was people, ah seen whelps wit tentacles, an' ah seen enough eyesore clothes in dis place ta make me wanna wear black fa de rest'a mah life."

A hand that had clenched into a fist as she'd spoken forcibly relaxed and reached up to smooth back her harried mane of blue hair. She really MUST have been in a state if she was making conversation under these circumstances -- letting her kids play in the mud with a complete stranger who had happened to be lurking in the woods at the right moment. "Ah jus' wanna find dis ley line an' go -home-."

Seeming oblivious to the fact Rhi was being devoured by her son, or perhaps just used to recieving the same sort of treatment, Ayanne did nothing to intervene with the girl's plight as she focused irate eyes on Rhi.

It was not that she was angry with Rhi specifically, so much that she just seemed angry at -everything- at the moment.

"No. Ah ain't." she said. "Ah dunno where 'here' is, 'xactly, but ah come from a very -different- 'here'."

She knew 'here' was Gaia....that Wasa-woman had explained that much to her, at least. .....or that was all she'd chosen to retain of it, anyway. At Rhiannon's question, she locked eyes with the younger female for a long moment.

"All sortsa people in dis place, an' joo ain' neva seen a troll?" she inquired, arching a brow. It really was kind of hard to swallow that she might be the sort to stand out here. But, by that token, she also had not seen any of the other people she'd come to be familiar with. Plenty of elven sorts, but none of them looking anything like kaldorei or sindorei. Plenty of animal people, but none that looked like any tauren or furbolg she'd ever laid eyes on...

"Ah dunno...." she grumbled, sinking to her knees to sit for a moment. "Ah was angry, ah tore open a rift not carin' where it took me, an' next ting ah know ah'm standin' on a roadside wit two screamin' kids in DIS place where ain't nobody even HEARD of Azeroth!"

That was, really, the long and short of it.

Having suitably wetted Rhiannon's tail with his munching, Mal attention was grabbed to Tasi nearby where she seemed to be shampooing herself with leaves and he gave a shrill giggle as he moved to do the same.

Aya opened her mouth to answer and then cast a look at her children in obvious distaste as Mal stuffed a handful of mud in his mouth to sample it, only to spit it out, coughing and gagging. Thankfully, it was ONLY mud. Small children and dirt, she'd learned, shared an odd fondness for one another.

Sighing, she opened her palm, a small crystalline blue orb of water winking into existance in it and growing until it was roughly the size and shape of a hen's egg. No sooner had it formed than, with a faint crackling noise, it froze over, becoming solid ice.

"'ere." she told her son, stuffing it into his grasp as Mal blinked at the strange new toy. "Joo gotta chew on somethin', chew on dis."

Tasi had stopped what she was doing to regard the ice in fascination as well even as Mal gave a squeal at the coldness on his fingers. Obviously the only cure for that was to stuff it in his mouth.

As he gummed on the frozen globule, Aya returned her attention to Rhiannon. "Gods willin' it'll be possible. Like ah said, dere be a ley line 'ere someplace. Once ah find it, ah kin leave."