Welcome to Gaia! ::

God, this was stressful. Was this child really human? Had being here changed her to... be more like a termite? Did she have termite endosymbionts to digest wood? Juvenile members of the colony acquired those from adult poop. Had these insects fed their poop to an infant? Jesus ******** Christ. Leila had no idea what was the right thing to do, and this palatable weirdness had become a complete nightmare.

"Okay. I'll... take her to the safe place. And keep watch over her for a few days. Is that okay?"

And now she'd just committed to spending the weekend in the horror dimension. <******** class="quote">

Leila supposed that meant 'yes' in some capacity -- so off she went, out of the basement, up the stairs, mindful of the termites even as they moved out of the way to let her pass. It felt like days had passed already once she was out of the house. The path she'd been tasked to take was still clear in her mind, etched in like an old memory, and she followed until the images the queen had given her matched what she could see.

The scenery shift was more felt than seen until another human figure made itself visible -- then it all came to Leila's full awareness in a shock, the crowded stars and lower treeline creating a space unbelievably more vast than the cramped room she'd left from.

"...Hello?"

In spite of herself, Leila broke into what would have been a characteristic, lopsided grin in normal circumstances. "Was it that obvious?" she answered. "I'm white as a bleached skeleton, and besides that --" there was an abrupt pause, seemingly to correct herself -- "I'm not royalty... and she's apparently a princess."

In a move that she was going to kick herself over later, regardless of the outcome, she offered the child over to the other seeming human. The familiarity was too much of a relief not to oblige.

There was a tangible sense of ease and closure as the child changed hands -- or was reunited with the girl? -- and the two disappeared. Hopefully that meant all was well and the Princess was going to be safe, as the queen had insisted she would be earlier. A small part of Leila was already starting to panic over whether she'd made the right decision, but honestly, ******** if she knew better than any of the variously sentient beings who lived here.

To the small, diligent soldier termite, she could only reply, "Yeah."

It took a good few minutes of hard, nervous thinking before Leila could come up with a reply.

"There's a lot of other sentient -- beings in other Ashdown, who can speak or communicate," she started, hesitantly. "Could you keep track of those? Give me an idea of which are safe for me and which I should avoid... or how I should act around them?"

"Oh. Um. Come with me? Might be more practical." There was likely a lot to learn, and since she couldn't control when she showed up in the Otherworld, it was probably best to keep the ommatidium of the multitude handy in case she stumbled that way again. "Do you have a name?"