Welcome to Gaia! ::

The final bungalow, the last one that was the furthest away from the main farmhouse, was near the small river that flowed through the property, in a little gulley on the far side of the woodlands. The area was muddy, filled with moisture trapped by the steep dirt walls that rose back up to the flat land of Texas above it.

Usually, the survivors liked to leave this particular bungalow alone. The inhabitant was…unpredictable at times, and at best a little cranky. Most of the other people on the Ranch rarely walked over to this section.

Hence, Gaius walked down the steep slope of the gulley alone while the others walked over to farmhouse to begin their interview.

Despite the years he had practice with them, he was still uneasy with his hooves, small and barely balanced with the added weight of his human torso and huge wings…not to mention the fact that he didn’t have the two other hooves that “real” horses had to balance out. Not to mention the drag on his damn wings and the fact that he didn’t have any real hands to grip with anymore…

A lot of the creations that the island had made weren’t practical at all, he had found.

Leaning a forearm against the narrow trunk of a Texas tree, he tried another step down the slope. Slowly, cautiously, he unwrapped his arm and tried his other foot.

s**t.

Gaius felt the ground underneath him shift, and then roll out beneath him. He whinnied as he tripped down, his wings, which had opened in panic, banging painfully against a few trees before his horse-face landed deep in the watery mud at the bottom.

“Well,” he heard a reptilian voice hiss, dry but distinctly feminine, “looks like you need some help.”

He pulled his large nose out of the mud and looked up. Above him stood a crocodilian woman, her legs somewhat squat against her longer and uniformly sized torso and her flat tail, long toothy snout turned upwards into a somewhat sarcastic smile.

“Hello, Mercedes.” He used his arm to wipe away some of the mud. “Yes, please.”

She reached out a somewhat stubby arm down and helped to pull him out of the mud. “So,” she said as she started to pick away off his face, “what do you want? Usually people just leave me alone.”

Gaius nodded. Considering the damage she had done to her husband, it really wasn’t a mystery at all why some of the other survivors had left her to her own devices.

He caught himself looking at her teeth. Quickly, he turned his gaze back to her eyes.

“Oh, just…we’re having a meeting.” He lifted his foot and stamped it back down nervously. Her cold gaze was unsettling. “There’s a reporter here—”

“No,” she said, cutting him off. “No reporters. I refuse.”

“Mercedes…” the pegasus began. “I don’t know how, but this man claims to have a human serum.”

She nodded back and forth, slowly and disbelieving. “No. It’s some kind of hoax.”

Gaius was a little concerned. He hadn’t really thought about the possibility of a hoax; he had been so desperate for some normalcy, he had accepted the idea at the first notion of it. A lot of the other survivors had been the same.

“Well,” he said, doubt now entering his mind, “are you sure?”

“No,” she said with a sense of finality. “I’m sure.”

There was an awkward silence between them.

“All right,” he said, slowly turning back up the slope to the main area of the Ranch. “If you want to come later, we’re all in the farmhouse.”

Mercedes made a motion, something between a wave and “get lost,” and Gaius continued back up the slope. It was time for his interview.