Welcome to Gaia! ::

As the first light of dawn crept into the valley, Ulrich made his way over to the other house to collect their guests. He knocked on the outer door to give them a bit of warning that he was coming in, then headed inside without any further delay.

"Hello?" he called out, looking around to see if anyone was up yet.


Aliya in the meantime had reached the ranch along with Feng and Ryu. They approached it from the east, which meant that the first building they saw was the enormous ranch house; but Aliya skipped it entire and headed around the south side of it, towards the path that led to the stables.

"Would you like to come with me?" she asked Feng and Ryu quietly, knowing that even though many of the hands would already be awake, there were some who had just finished shifts and gone to bed, and prefered quiet to sleep. "Or do you want to look around while I'm working?"

Meanwhile Triton was lounging on the couch as he kept an eye on Lin who was climbing the edge. She crawled along the arm and on the back of the couch to reach Triton's shoulder as she tried to reach up to touch his kitty ears. They twitched upon hearing Ulrich come up, and waited until the elf was in sight to say his hellos.

"Morning," he called out, "Donovan and Cindy should be out in a moment."

Aliya laughed and waved as Feng ran off. "I'll come find you in a bit," she called after her, then turned back to Ryu and smiled brightly. "So you're going to come with me, hm? Hatah. Come on, it shouldn't take too long, I just have to check on the pregnant mares and check with Elberon and make sure the rest of the horses are fine, too."

She beckoned for him to follow her and opened the stable door, and headed inside.

The interior of the stable was light, but not quite as light as outside, because though there were windows in the roof, the walls were solid wood so that if any of the horses acted up they wouldn't need to worry about broken glass. The stable itself was divided into two halves: to the right upon entry were rows of individual stalls, and to the left were larger pens. It was to the left that Aliya led Ryu, where the foaling mares were kept.



Ulrich grinned and nodded, and asked in general, "Everyone slept all right?" as he opened the door once more and stepped out. He didn't stop, expecting all of them to follow him.

Triton scrambled to his feet as he followed Donovan out the door slinging the bag over his shoulder.

"It was a good sleep," Triton murmured to answer Ulrich's question, "Have the twins and Aliya left already?"

Aliya looked at Ryu when he sneezed, slightly concerned. "Are you all right?" she asked him, opening the gate of the closest stall and heading inside. She moved calmly towards the mare - a tall white with a pale peach star on her forehead - murmuring softly under her breath to calm her. She patted her on the head, then the neck and worked her way on down the horse's body until she was at the belly, which she rubbed softly as well.

The horse ignored Aliya (being used to this sort of treatment) but stared sideways at Ryu, wickering softly and flaring her nostrils.



"I'm sure they must have," Ulrich replied. "Aliya makes a point of being there before sunrise, they had to have left nearly two hours ago already. And judging from the way things were going last night, there's no way she would have left without your siblings."

He rubbed the back of his neck and continued on. "Anyways, I thought I'd bring you over right away, Ulani will be along later, perhaps. Adonai won't let her out of his sight today ... he's shy, but not normally this bad. Hopefully he'll get used to all of you. Last night was just a bit too much excitement for him."

"I'm fine," Ryu assured her, "I'm just not use to being in a place like this."

At least that's what he figured, he might have lived out in the middle of nowhere but they did not own any horses, nor were they near any animals like this. He stared back at the mare, wondering what she was smelling. He actually kind of wondered if he still smelled fishy even though he was a mer and now in human form.


In the meantime Feng was poking around the Ranch House (outside that is). She walked backwards to get the full scope of the house. The young lady peered up at it, she wondered who lived in the house. Feng had recalled Donovan saying something about Elnara-chan's brother and wife or something like that.

And yet Donovan thought to himself, his sister was the complete opposite, at least that's what it seemed like to him. However he nodded and could see where that would become a slight problem.

"Well, if it's only since last year," Donovan mused, "Then there's still a lot of time to get use to the shift of people."

"We hope so," Ulrich agreed. "But then, he's not much of a horseman. Prefers books. Not that that's a bad thing, it just means he really has no reason to go over to the ranch at all anyways." He shrugged. "But he is after all only eleven. I'm sure he'll grow out of it someday."



Aliya thought carefully as she examined the next mare, and it wasn't until she moved to the next pen down that she replied.

"I've been breeding horses for about eight years now," she said softly, "but I've only been doing it here for about a year. The ranch was only begun last year. My father was going to take care of the breeding originally, but ... he said I was better at it, and I needed to learn a sense of responsibility." She shrugged. "I'm responsible, I just like having fun as well."

She smiled as the moved on to the next pen down. "I enjoy breeding them, trying to figure out which breedings will produce the best foals."