Welcome to Gaia! ::

‘It’s the thought that counts.’ That's what everyone always said, meaning if you were flat broke just the simple wildflower would be enough but as much as Nate recognized this it still smarted. He wanted to give Dessie the world. He wanted to give her gems and shower her with flowers. She wouldn’t give a flying ******** but he still wanted to do that. He wanted to show her just how much he cared for her. He wanted to but his budget sure wouldn’t let him. The few graphic design jobs he was able to get helped pay his bills but it wasn’t a gold mind, not by a long shot. He had been lucky to get a steady gig but it went fully towards his rent, it didn’t exactly provide him with much more then just the bare minimum and with Mother’s Day coming up he really wanted more than an empty wallet.

The little bit that he was able to save was going towards a few flowers, a card, and a cupcake. Nate figured she would put up with the flowers and the card but anything bigger than a cupcake might not get eaten. Besides, with holiday pricing he couldn't afford anything more extravagant. He was also planning on spending the day keeping Sarah entertained while cooking for Dessie. Allowing her to spend the day doing anything and everything she wanted to do. It was Mother’s Day afterall. He wanted her to be able to just relax and chill out.

His mother spent the day cooking and ordering her family around, not like she did anything overly different then normal, a real busy bee kind of day for him and his siblings. As much as he would be willing to repeat such antics with Des he suspected, with quite a bit of certainty, that she would more likely than not prefer the quiet and solitude that came with him watching their daughter. Never an imposition for him and even less so on a special day like Sunday was going to be. Their first Mother’s Day and next month was Father’s Day. His first Father’s Day where he was the father.

It was still mind boggling that he was a father. That Dessie was a mother. That they were parents! After years of being friends, years of his one sided affection, one night was all it took for them to be forever tied together. Having a kid would do that for you, although he still held out hope that one day he and Dessie would have more than just Sarah between them. He might not have the job, the house, or the ring but he had the heart to propose. Hell, he did it once before only to be shot down. Maybe he should try again, now that that main misunderstanding has been worked out. Then again any time he tried to show any significant affection she pulled back even further. Waiting her out, that likely was the best strategy.

If the way she fussed over him that night when he learned why she was such a good fighter maybe he wasn’t quite as far away from the end goal as he feared. Maybe.

He had finally gotten back into his wonder, with the Code’s help that is, and now the challenge was to locate the piece of the Code that every wonder apparently had. Sig hadn’t really gotten a chance to explore his namesake… or was he the namesake? Either way, he was glad that there was a glowing trail he could follow. When the Code mentioned that they could just ‘feel’ a tug from the piece on their wonder the page was quite skeptical. He hadn’t felt it the other time he had been here but then again it might have lost to the general wonder and awe he still felt every time he stepped foot in on this rocky plateau. So Sig was happy to see the trail lead off into some distant buildings, he quickly started to follow it only to realize it wasn’t going to be quite as easy as he thought since the trail went through the buildings… like it went through the walls and other immobile objects.

The page figured this out when he went into the first building only to encounter the trail leading right through a wall. It took him quite some time to locate the trail after puzzling his way through the building using any access he could find from a window to a door. After quite some time he came to a much larger complex of buildings, the Knight’s residence. The complex of rooms that he had actually found his ring in. Making his way through this building was much much harder since there were some spots that just didn’t have entrances! At least not that he could find.

Finally he opened a door and stepped out into a courtyard that had seen some better days and saw the Code sitting there in the center of the space. Green eyes took in the area, noting withered vines climbing the walls and arching high overhead, dead plants in boxes and planters scattered around the space, and a few crumbling chairs tucked into various corners. It wasn’t a very big space but Sig suspected that at one point in time it was a veritable plant haven. He even spotted a fountain, dry now, in the back. What he really didn’t understand was that he had been told by the Code itself, that the knights of old were tasked with protecting the Code pieces as well as their wonders. So why was he left out in a courtyard? Where any kind of weather or damage could be done to it?

What Sig had missed were the remnants of some kind of glass or force field that had once stretched across the entire roof of the courtyard, held up by those vines he had spotted. Now though there were just remnants. The majority of the protective structure had broken over time, much to the detriment of the space. Instead the young man settled on the tiled ground after shifting plant debris clear, and started to sink into a meditative mindset.

The page eventually connected with the Code. If he saw anything during the resonating he didn’t remember by the time he opened his eyes, tired but oddly exhilarated and feeling a bit too big for his skin, magically speaking that is. What he did remember was the knowledge that he needed to relocate the small little ball of magic into a much more secure location. Unprompted by any force that he really understood, Sig knew he needed to move it. He had to make sure it was protected. After climbing to his feet, and brushing himself off, the page carefully approached the Code piece. Gingerly the young man picked the ball up and started his search for a more secure hiding space. Or at least someplace out of the weather, completely forgetting that nagging little feeling that he had ‘woken’ up with. One that made him feel as if something was just a bit too constricting. Not uncomfortable but just… tight.

Sig finally settled on the series of rooms that he had determined were ‘his’ or at least his ancestor’s… or maybe past life. He still wasn’t quite sure what ‘he’ was or why it really mattered. It might not be the most elegant solution but it was one of the more safe areas and besides he had the perfect spot for it! He quickly found the hidden nook that had been tucked away in the ‘study’, as Sig thought of it, and started to shift the small little trinkets and decorative boxes out of the way. He was nearly done when one of the smallish carved squares slipped out of his one handed grip, the Code was in his other hand, and clattered onto the floor. The page winced when he noticed several shards of wood had splintered off. “Bloody hell… I just broke a museum piece.” He put the Code down into the nook and made sure it wouldn’t move, he really didn’t want to damage that!

With that done he slid the little nook back into its hiding space, or rather moved the shelf that had been hiding it back over it, before bending down to pick up the broken square. Sig eyed the damage, sure that the little hunk of wood would need some real TLC, but spotting a glint of gold hidden beneath the polished wooden carvings. Its not solid? he mentally thought as he tried to figure out how to open the box. He had assumed the small thing was just a square of wood that had been carved, not some kind of box. There was no obvious seam or anything that screamed ‘open me’ like a hinge or a latch. He had already poked through several boxes that were obviously boxes, even some that were in the nook with this thing, but he hadn’t ever thought to check this one. A bit of fiddling, and a thought, but he finally got the box open. “It’s a puzzle box,” He muttered as he eyed the interior of the doohickey. No wonder he never even suspected! With that mystery solved he turned to the box’s content and with delicate fingers he extracted the golden bracelet. He studied it before an incessant chirping from the timer he set informed him that he needed to go!

Pocketing the bangle he exited the suite and headed back to the ‘entrance’ of his wonder before heading back to Earth. Heading home. Back to Dessie. Back to Sarah. Back to his family.

“And what about Uncle and Auntie?” Nate asked while he stirred the pot on the stove. He kept an absent eye on the bubbling stew, nodding along with the ‘news’ currently being shared to him via his headphones, and making a face at his daughter when she looked up from her nest of stuffed animals. He grinned when the toddler giggled before making her own face. The two devolved into a silly face war until a rather aggravated, ‘are you even listening to me?’ could be heard clearly over the headphones he was mostly using. “Of course Mum. I’m just cooking and am trying to remember how Nani always instructed the spices to be added.” It was a lie of course. He definitely wasn’t making a family dish since that always seemed to take hours on end and after an entire day of work he didn’t want to put in the time. Over the weekend sure but not on a weekday after a full day of stress and soul numbing meetings. His grandmother’s food was absolutely delicious but it took too much out of him to cook it on any normal day.

Nate was able to distract his mother when she started to probe a bit too deep on the meal he was currently working on. It was a simple distraction, one that basically put her back on the topic that she was waxing on before… his Aunt and Uncle’s trip ‘abroad’. They had taken a long vacation down to Spain and his mom just had to share every little detail with him, like he hadn’t seen the pictures and posts on social media over the past several days. But that wasn’t the point. The conversation in general was the point. It was one of the few calls he tried to make over the month to keep the connection between him and his parents. Especially since his mother wasn’t overly happy about his current move. She had been rather vocal in her displeasure when his folks learned about him quitting the job that he had tried so hard to get and moving to Destiny City without a single prospect.

He was giving all the general platitudes one gave while on a long winded phone conversation. All ‘yes’, ‘sounds nice’, ‘that's great’, and ‘tell me more’. Nothing of any real substance. He didn’t even break from the conversation when Dessie came into the room, using a rag to wipe paint from her hands. Instead all Nate did was smile at her and nod when she mouthed ‘mom?’. She knew exactly who he was talking to.

“And that's why we are going to visit you right after the New Year.”

“Sounds good,” He murmured as he pulled the pot of stew off the stove. But then it clicked. “Wait, what? You're coming here? Why?” Nate scrambled for his phone, figuring he had just misheard her but oh no, no he had not.

“I knew you weren’t paying attention!” His mother sighed and repeated herself, “Like I said, your father and I will be visiting for a few weeks after the New Year to celebrate the holidays and to meet our grandbaby. Since you haven’t had the time to visit us, we decided it was past time for us to visit you.”

“But what about the store? And your job? Won’t school be starting back then?” He tried to come up with some reason to put off the visit. He loved his parents, he really did. But he also knew they did not approve of his current situation. And he really didn’t want to put them in danger since this was Destiny City afterall.

“Oh posh! Think nothing of it. Your cousin Emile can cover the store for a few weeks and the school won’t ground to a halt without me keeping the office in order. Besides, I haven’t taken a real vacation since you were little. They can suck it up for a little while.” There was a pause and some muffled chatter as some kind of conversation was being held on the other side of the phone. All the while Nate was doing his best not to pull his own hair out. He never expected his folks to visit him here. Cajole him into returning to the UK frequently, sure but his mother hated to fly so coming to the states never even crossed his mind. “Well, it's late here darling, I’ve gotta go. Talk to you more later, you get some sleep now. Love you!” With that his mother hung up and all Nate could do was stare rather incredulously at his phone.

The urge to just ‘head desk’ got stronger as he just looked at the phone. It wasn’t until Dessie asked what was going on that he looked up and told her rather incredulously that his parents were planning on visiting them around Sarah’s birthday. Dessie just raised a brow as she settled Sarah in her highchair and returned with a simple question, “Do they know the whole family is visiting my grandparents for Christmas? We can just visit with your parents then.”

“Nope,” Nate just shook his head and dished up the stew before serving it, including a small portion of cool stew for the toddler. “She never even gave me the chance to explain. I honestly don’t even know if this plan is new or if it’s been in the works for a while and she just now let the cat out of the bag.” His frown faded when Sarah squealed and bounced in her seat some, chattering about ‘cat’ this and ‘cat’ that. The little girl really did love cats. Even if he agreed with Dessie, no feline would live with them while they resided in Destiny City or his little girl was over 18. Whichever came first. There was no way he would risk his little princess entering this mad magical war.

“I’ll just have to explain it next time we talk.” He added even as he shook his head sadly. Nate already knew that it would be like trying to talk to a brick wall. His mother really only heard what she wanted to hear. Nothing else was good enough for her. Trying to dissuade her of her plan would be a real uphill battle. One he knew he would lose but he would try valiantly at it, that was for sure.