Welcome to Gaia! ::

"Oh, these are books?" Lazarus's eyes went wide a little as he lifted the heavy backpack up. No wonder it is so heavy, and judging by the weight, there are quite a few in there too. "I think we should lay them out to dry in the cafeteria. there are more tables there." Pondering for a moment, he wasn't sure if using his fire powers might help. Nah, he might burn the books by accident instead, and that might be worse than being wet. "I'll get some hair dryer and we can blow dry them, Eiry could come help too when you're dried up?" He looked at Rivener, perhaps hoping that the scorpion would help too. But somehow he doubted it, in the current mood that Rivener is in. Stopping in front of the cafeteria, he motioned towards the tables inside. "I'll get to lay the books out first then." And with that, he left the group and entered the cafeteria, there are books to save!

Kyou could only smile politely as Isi dried himself. Aphismet was right, the young boy is quite cranky! But he was glad when Isi thanked him. "It's no problem, I do my best to help." Whirling around, he realized most of the baggages had been picked up by Rivener and Lazarus. How helpful, he thought happily as he looked at the departing figures of both Sigel boys.

"Well, go on and warm yourself up." He said cheerfully. "I'll be in the cafeteria if you need me." The apple pie should be done by now and he needed to make the hot chocolate as well. He vaguely remember that they have some hazelnut syrup in the cafeteria too, that would add some flavor to the hot chocolate. Smiling as he headed into the kitchen, he is liking the idea of it already.

Feeling quite obviously as downtrodden and unhappy as Rivener, Isikoro felt almost suffocated by the kind fuzziness everyone else seemed to be emitting in warm bursts and gushes. The only way he was going to be able to lighten up his foul mood was to take a long, uninterrupted sleep, where he would wake up from this god awful nightmare. Isi was about to mention this fact to Aphi when he thought better of it, idly watching out of the corner of his eye as the cheerful Doctor practically skipped his way down the hallway to the cafeteria. Before he had much of a chance to say much more on the matter or spew his issues with the world and its complexities against the Delaran family, Aphismet's arm was wrapped underneath his arm and around his torso. He snapped a glare as hot as the nuclear fission going on in the center of the sun at the unwanted touch, but it was quickly dissolved through Aphismet's honest and worried explanation. The glare immediately melted away and, with it being just him and Aphi, Isikoro felt alright to be himself, his honest self unwrapped with tense and hard coils of prickly defense. He slumped, unwound, and with a lost kind of glance and movement of his moist eyes, he focused with a weak intent on climbing the stairs with Aphi's help. At the top of the stairs though, as soon as he was able to stand again on his own two feet and lean against the wall for support, he returned to his defensive and tense self.

Eying the room he was shown, Isi leaned in the doorway, with every intent to just sit in a corner and brood for the next twenty four hours. But Aphi's voice had a melting effect on him, the kind of soothing that trainer's coos might offer a spooked horse, and Isi slumped again, not moving from the door frame.

"Yeah, it's nice...Better than the hotel," he was at a lack for better words, "Eiry and I will stay here then, he'll like to be sleeping near someone after all this s**t and stuff. Just as long as he doesn't start trying to put me to sleep with memorized passages, I won't have to kick him out onto the hallway floor."

With that settled, they meandered into Aphi's room, Isi slower than the man. He stood against the wall, quite obviously leaning his whole weight upon it, as Aphi set up the facilities and with a quiet mumble he asked, "And can I have my clothes? Dry ones? If you wouldn't mind." He was melting again into his normal self, without all the prickle and fuss. And when Aphi left the room, leaving the door half closed, Isi began to take off his shirt, exposing a body that looked more malnourished than it should be for the amount that he ate with Aphi's cooking. His arms were still strong from the years long use of crutches, his shoulders and upper body more toned than they ought to be for someone his age, but at the same time there was a kind of sickness there that was visible to the casual eye. Isi sat himself on the tub's edge, carefully balancing himself before he folded his wet shirt. He would hang it up to dry when he got up again.

He checked the water of the bath. It was warm. "Thanks, Aphi," he mumbled again.

Eiry nodded his head energetically at Lazarus as he lifted the backpack as if it were for heavy weightlifting. Off the top of his head, he could recollect exactly which books he had managed to save, "Edgar Allen Poe's Complete Tales and Poems, The Black Cat, the Brothers Grimm Stories and Collections, Shakespeare's The Tempest, Romeo and Juliet, Othello, Hamlet, Comedy of Errors, Much Ado About Nothing, Tidus Andronicus, Midsummer Night's Dream, and the Paranormal Encyclopedia. As well as Great Expectations by Charles Dickens and another favorite, Grendel, and my special copy of Shakespeare's Comedies and Tragedies." he gave a sorrowful smile at Lazarus, his ghostly flame flickering with the anxious twitching of his wings. "What wondrous help it would be to have you aid me in the saving of my precious friends, my faithful friends. They are my only good friends, you see, Lazarus, I need them like I need death." And with a short wave, he waved off to the Sigel who ventured off to begin the procedure.

Eiry, then followed up after Rivener, his eyes wide and red. Ever since Zul left, he had been feeling free, as if the entire time that raevan was around, he was suffocated and stuffed into the walls, hardly recognized or called upon, locked away and unwanted. It wasn't the same when Zul was around, Rivener wasn't his brother when Zul was there. Rivener was Rivener, Zul's Rivener, Zul's Lenore. Not Eiry's brother, not like he was before. So, simple mathematics suggested that, with Zul gone out of the equation, it would be back to what it used to be: Rivener as Eiry's brother. Or so went the logic in Eiry's forever whirling mind.

So when Rivener mentioned that they wouldn't be sharing a room, Eiry was no less daunted. There still wasn't any Zul to get between them, no Zul to tip-toe around and dodge. Eiry's mirth did anything but subside, "With my faithful guardian, I will be! But during the day, we can be brothers, can we not? You can teach me the ways of board games, or of charming others, or in defense! That is what we can do, brother. We can!" And as he rambled on, Rivener simply turned his back on him and returned down the stairs. Again, Eiry was nothing but ecstatic. He fluttered into his room, and with the mad scrubbing at his head, began to dry himself off as best he could. Though, as he rubbed and folded the towel about himself, he couldn't help but feel a little sadness tint his mirth.

He did have to admit that he wished there was someone helping him, someone to hug the towel about him or scrub his wild locks of hair until they were dry, make him warm again and giggle into the muffled fabric. Eiry's shoulders slumped a bit underneath the towel as he pulled it over his head, like a hood, and for a single moment, the ghost Sigel was incredibly sad and lonely.

Hotel, Lab, or Friend's House, Eiry still felt dislocated and lost, more lost than he had ever felt before. And, sorely, he recalled the marsh home and its dancing will-o-wisps...He wanted to go back.

But he couldn't, he was here now with his family, and for now, and for always, family was always more important. They were a unit, and Eiry knew that he wouldn't be lost as long as he had a place with them.