Welcome to Gaia! ::

"Ohmmm... We must be one with the universe... Breathe in, breathe in, breathe in, uhm... what comes next?" Cerena was so perplexed with this sudden mystery that she paused in the middle of meditation (it was important to make sure that the lanterns were wellbalanced and moral characters that would not produce bratty Animas!); it may sound hard to, well, stop in the middle of thinking of nothing at all and sitting crossleggedly on a cushion with fingers pressed in a circle to consider what sort of nothing one was supposed to think of next, but Cerena was well-versed in doing things that didn't require to use of one's intellect.

The reason for her particular difficulty in meditating today, she realized, was one particular lantern. They all had their different sounds and feelings (and Cerena was the kind of Valkyrie that was particularly in-tune with the spirits of inanimate objects, as she was arguably one herself), but one was currently feeling like a particularly bad toothache. Which wasn't to say it hurt, but there was definitely something preventing it from taking part of today's meditation session.

And now that she thought of it, as she uncurled herself from her meditating position and climbed up on a chair to take a closer look at it, it was growing a bit more brightly than usual. Of course, the aura of color that usually signified a lantern had 'activated' was not present, but she wouldn't be surprised if it did fairly soon...

Morgan had been wandering absently for the better part of the day. She had decided early on to find a place to read, the problem was she had started reading as she walked and got so lost in the book she hadn't bothered to stop walking. This realization rose to surface and she stopped looking around, completely lost. The raven-haired woman stared at the only building in the area, a large japanese style house.

Hoping that someone was home and they could at the very least tell her where she had ended up, Morgan trotted up to what she assumed was the front door and knocked. She waited then trying to figure out something to say to explain her situation without sounding like a complete lunatic... so far she was coming up with nothing.

A sudden noise tore Cerena's attention away from the lantern, and quickly sliding it off the hook it was hanging from, she jumped down from the chair to investigate. "Hello?" She called out, figuring it must be an Anima guardian, and she approached the corner of the porch-area and peered around.

Hnnn.. No, not familiar. Someone new, then?

"Hi!" Cerena greeted cheerfully and waved, allowing the lantern to hang from her unoccupied hand. "Can I help you with something?"

Morgan blinked and jumped, she had been paying more attention to the door then anything else. She looked from the girl to the lantern and then back to girl and shook herself. "Hi, sorry. Actually, yes... how to explain this... well I was out walking, and reading," she lifted the book in her hand, "and... I'm lost." She finished, giving up on any sort of reasonable explanation.

"I'm sorry to bother you and barge in like this, but could you tell me where we are exactly?" She asked sheepishly, blushing slightly. It was a bit embaressing to be as old as she was and getting lost on something as simple as walk.

"Oh, it's no problem!" Cerena waved away her apologies, scooting past her to tug at the sliding door with her free hand. It was rather hard to do it with just one hand, but Cerena worked at it steadily. "I do that all the time! I mean, well, I don't always read 'cause it's kinda hard, reading and walking, but I manage to get lost just the same! --Anyway, we're called the Anima Gardens, we're about a half hour's walk away from Barton..." She sighed and finally paused, only managing to have pulled it halfway open by this time.

"Could you hold this for me, please?" She turned towards the young woman and held out the lantern. "This door keeps getting stuck and it's rather tricky to open -- it'd be easier to do with both hands..."

"Uh, oh. I figured I had managed to get farther than that." She murmered, mostly to herself.

"Sure..." Morgan took the lantern hestitantly, giving it a closer look. She wondered why on earth someone would need a lantern in the middle of the day, but thought better to ask. She had seen stranger things since she had gotten to gaia.

Cerena, thus freed, went back to working on opening the door and hummed cheerfully under her breath as she did so. She'd just managed to get it all the way open several seconds later, inwardly thinking that she should bug Chai about fixing this, when a sudden surge of spirit energy crackled through the air, causing her head wings to droop down and press against her head protectively and simultaneously fluff out as if she'd just been shocked.

Cerena, carefully, turned and looked at the lantern. A pure white aura surrounded it, whisps of energy dancing around and spiraling upward, and Cerena shifted her gaze from it to the young lady and back again.

"Well, seems like you're our new Anima owner! Would you like to come in? I've got some tea and doughnuts if you're hungry, and you might like to look at some of the brochures I've put together... My name's Cerena, by the way, what's yours?" And in true Cerena-fashion, all of this was said all in one breath.

Morgan was now officially very alarmed. This thing just buzzed to life in her hands, she had to resist to initial shock to just drop it, as that suddenly seemed like a very bad idea. Things that glowed, as a rule, did not respond well to being dropped. "Anima?" She asked hesistantly, her eyes, which had flickered gray a moment before, returned to their normal deep blue as she recovered from her surprise.

Brochures? Why on earth... "Oh-okay. I'm Morgan. Nice to meet you." She replied after taking a second to properly process the barage of words that was just flung at her.