Welcome to Gaia! ::

[13.03.05]

Fae's new house looked simply charming- soft cherry wood floors, creamy walls with a tint of brown, and fine furnished furniture. Linguring around the house was a pleasing aromatic of geen tea and honey. Over the small cooking stove made from dark steel and screen, Fae stood over a steaming pot of boiling water filled with torn leaves and flower buds. Through the window beside her culinary area, a ray of dusty morning light shone through the darkened room. The cherry wood counter next to her contained an empty emerald chinese tea pot (that you could have never guessed its origin) and ebony tray under it, a few handless-cups of matching set in a small stack.

On the coffee table diagonal of her cooking station, however, a small cd sterio played the soft melody of rythmatic piano music of class. A very relaxed feeling took place in the sun liten room, the front windows as well were open to allow the fresh breeze circulate the wafting aromas before it hit high sun. Fae continued to stir her concoction with a wooden spoon until she decided the leaves leeched enough and would then pour a bucket of water onto the fire below in the belly of the stove, washing away the flames with a steamy hissss.

Walking through the front door, Twizzler came walking into the house attracted by the unfamiliar scent with his book in his hands. "What're you making?" He asked curiously, walking over to peer inside the pot. Afterall, you couldn't call him exactly short.

Fae looked behind her at the waist of Twizzy's brilliant robes until her eyes climbed up him as she stood back up, closing the metal cage. "Why, I'm making homemade tea," she smiled. Taking her glasses from her nose momentarily, she rubbed off the steam on her shirt and postioned them back on her nose bridge. "Could you dig around for a strainer, please?" She kindly asked as she took the lid off the tea pot stationed on the counter.

Twizzler furrowed his brows. He had never seen tea made this way...wasnt it supposed to be smooth? There were an aweful amount of chuncks left in the pot! Shrugging, he placed his bookon the counter and looked up to the hanging rack of pots and pans. There wernt that many really, but with only a bit of clutter and banging noise to distort the melody of piano keys, he finally found a small handled "pot" with net screening. "Is this it?" He asked uncertainly as he held it out. He knew his way around a kitchen from the Orphanage, but still was no connosiure.

Noddning, Fae smiled and greatly took it. "Yeah, thank you. You're welcomed to have a cup if you want," she mentioned as she took the boiled pot of tealeaves and poured it slowly into the strainer that was over the tea pot. The leaves and flowers all collected in the screen as the brewed tea poured into the empty pot. "Lets sit over here. Hungry?" She asked him as she carried the tray over to the dinning table and begun to pour two cups of tea.

Twizzy thought for a moment and grabbed his book before he took a chair around the table. His lanky legs eased himself upon the seat and stared at the steamy substance, blinking as he pulled it closer. "No, I'm fine. Sage and I found something to eat earlier..." He then shot a glare over to the music, grumacing. Ech, that was starting to bug him. "Can we change the music, please?" He asked. He prefered hip-hop over paticent cutting class. It really didn't bother him, though, because he was just being mostly stubborn. He stared into the offinsive cup, then decided to try some of the pucker-sweet hot liquid. "Ouch!" He jumped. "It's hot and tastes bitter," he depricated.

Fae frowned a little to his reaction. Of course, he was only a kid and it was a taste you grew into rather. Fae took the ceramic green cup into her palm and sipped on it before she eyed Twizzler in her seat. "Don't like it too much? S'okay. I didn't like it when I was young either." She ignored the music comment because she knew he either didn't care that much or would eventually go downstairs. "Ah, okay. Have you seen Pueblo around?" A brow swiveled upward as she took another sip, reaching for the honey that sat on the try in a glass bottle shaped like a beehive. "Try some honey in your tea...it might make it taste better," she smiled. "Tea's really good for you, too. It'll keep your blood clean and your heart healthy. You don't want it to turn black, do you, by eating sweets all the time?" She bantered.

Twizzler's eyes widened a little before he stuck his tongue out at his guardian. "Nu-unh!" He really couldn't support why, but he knew Fae had to be pulling his leg. His attention turning capricious, he grabbed for his book and left the blant tasting liquid on the table, honey or no honey. "I'll get Pueblo," he finally answered and skirted out the front door.

Minutes later, the gryphon clambered up the porch as her claws scritched and scratched against the wooden floor. She gave a small coo to mark her entrance, only because she was summoned. If it were her choice, she ratherd have came in connively. Leaping the shorter distance to a chair, then to the table, one could observe her reserved and pre-decided moves. As the little gryph nosed at the other inhabitants upon the table, she daintly "sniffed" at Twizzler's practically full cup. Curious, she stared at her reflection, then reached down to give such the pretty creatue a gentle nibble. But when she did so, in all truth, found out that this mirror image deceved her! Her mandibles clicked in the cooled-off liquid and quickly drew back, shaking her head wildly that sent a few wet drops flying.

Fae grinned and stretched a hand out to rub Pueblo between the ears tentivley. She chuckled at Pueblo's first reaction. "I hope you tried it when you went swimming in that," she teased. "It's called tea. It's fairly simple to make as long as you have the right leaves. Then you dry and boil them until the "juices" inside of them leech out into the water- thus, creating tea," she explained to the gryph. "I wanted to introduce this lovely cultured beverage to you, Pueblo, so it will help round your personality. Of course, it's your choice to like it or not," she nodded. "Go ahead, give it a little sip!" She urdged.

Pueblo daintly dipped her beak back into the emerald cup, her round face fitting into the round saucer and pulled her ears back. The warm liquid flowed down her throat, tasting pecularily pleasant. Since Pueblo's body is mainly mammal, she was blessed with a throat to swallow instead of tipping her head backwards like a bird would do. Backing out of the cup and pawing it off her face, her head dress shook the remaining droplets free and gave a little coo, looking up at her keeper.

Fae's hand simotaniously went up to shield herself from the few tea droplets, grinning. "Did you like that? You have a much better reaction than Twizzler did," she murmured happily. "There are probably hundreds of different kinds of tea, but the one you just tasted is called Green tea," she explained to Pueblo.

As the gryphon listened and learned to what her keeper had to say, Fae took out a few packets of pre-packaged tea bags that were each a different kind. She went through and explained each kind to her and a brief fact, like their origin. They were of Fae's favorite brand- Tazo. After Pueblo insisted, Fae showed the gryphon how to make a cup of tea using the tea bags. All afternoon, they continued to talk and test tea, Fae eventually pulling a stray book off the shelf all about the origin of teas.

[15.03.05]
(Backdated)

Downstairs, the rays of afternoon sunlight shimmered with dusty particles through the opening. Since the bottom portion (and the largest area) of the house didn't get as much light as the former room upstairs, a few firm light stands of twisting wooden color sprouted forth from the floor.

At the wood/titanium desk, there were several papers and boxes of colored pencils sprawled out in front of Fae. Paper pads used for drawing on, it had a some-what rough texture to it as the nerdy-girl visualized out a scene in her head. Her imagination was at the tip of her brown pencil, shading very lightly with simple strokes of the wrist. Slightly hunched over, involved in her work, she didn't hear Pueblo as she flew down the shoot.

Pueblo's silent owl wings carried her down the hole, obvious her flight path was short as if she first perched from the edge. Her sharp eyes buzzed around, spotting her keeper instantly as her mind quickly registered where to land. Extending her paws out, they gracefully balanced her onto Fae's desk and adjusted her wings upon her back. Looking around, she gave a merciful "Peep" that was soft and welcoming. When the gryphon noticed she was being ignored, she padded up to Fae and gave the girl's occupied hand a dog-like nuzzle, unknowingly that she had messed the doomed girl up.

Fae's hand jumped as she felt the soft warmness of Pueblo's head nudge her hand and jutted the pencil northward her paper. A darker brown line now smudged the beautiful artwork of Pueblo whom Fae was drawing. "Pueblo!" She hissed, but as soon as she looked down into the innocence of her eyes, Fae couldn't help but forgive her instantly. "C'mere you, scallywag." She dropped the pencil and pulled the gryphon towards her forcefully. Fae nuzzled the owl a little and gave her a quick kiss between Pueblo's ears. "What're you up to, flying down here and messing me up all like?" She grinned.

Pueblo passively was pulled towards her keeper but couldn't help but give a small surprised trill. Her wings shivered to keep her balance when her knees gave in, then when through an act of odd ear signals. The scolding made her ears fall down, but the tease made them twitch back up, curious to know what she had 'messed up'. Woah! Her glassy black eyes examined the mirror image of Pueblo on the paper, jerking her head this way and that to get the full picture. "Peep?" The gryphon's head finally rose in question.

Fae scracted Pueblo's fluffy chest and all the way up her back. "I'm drawing a picture of ya, Abby," she thought. This would be a great chance to introduce the basics to her. Perhaps, if she gave Pueblo a head start towards art, it will guide her down that path of culture, and maybe the basics would stick with her. "You know what? I'm going to teach you about art today, Pueblo."

And with that, she reached for a book beside her about the fundementals of art. "This is a piece of paper," she showed the gryphon, holding up the sheet. "It comes in either a pad or notebook with lots of pages, or also known as lots of pieces of paper. They're commonly called sketchbooks." Fae reached for the brown colored pencil she was working with along with the box holding the rest. "This is called a colored pencil. They're used for drawing pictures like the one on this piece of paper," she pointed, talking slowly for her. "The color that I used is called brown." She held up the pencil, then spread the rest of them from the box. There are 3 basic colors," she told Pueblo, picking out three pencils. "Red, blue, and yellow. Those are called your primary colors. With those..." She explained and flipped open the book. It yield a color wheel. "You can make more colors." Fae watched the Pueblo blinked and struggled with all this. "Aw, I'm probably giving you too much to chew on already," she chuckled. "Here, pick a color to draw with, and I'll tell you about that color."

Pueblo calculated this all into her mind- paper, sketchpad, colored pencils, primary colors: red, blue, yellow. How come this all felt...familiar.. when's she's never heard these terms before? She ran this through her mind a few times making sense of it. Shivering, she fluffed her feathers and stepped up to the piece of paper Fae offered her, eyeing its blank space. Looking gingerly down to the assortment of 12 colored pencils, she learned to count, and gently craned her neck down to fumble around a slick purple pencil. It was harder than it looked, of course, though, she had to use her beak. Struggling, Fae helped her the first time until the gryphon had it just where she wanted. Yanking away, she turned her head 45 degrees and pressed the purple lead down firmly against the paper.

But the paper slipped away! Pueblo meeped in surprise, but learning from her mistake, she smartly place a paw onto the paper and tried again, re-positioning her head. This time, she applied almost a little too much force, and the purple lead dug into the paper as she lunged forward. "Peep!"

"Not so hard!" Fae grinned, but it faded before the frusterated Aerandir could see. "Use the movement of your head- not your muscles. You have to learn to adpat the feel and flow of pencil movement," she explained. "Like this." Fae took up a randomly picked pencil; red. She then placed her wrist down beside Pueblo and drew a perfect circle sketch, light in color and smooth in texture.

Watching her keeper's example, she admired her wrist movements. How did she make is look so feathery soft?! Motivated to try again now, Pueblo waited patiently for Fae's hand to move out of the way and tilted her head again. Not being able to control the pencil so much, she managed to get it across the paper without slidding around or sciering the paper. A dark, grainy purple line squiggled its short distance up the paper. Stepping back, Pueblo looked at the pretty line complacently. Giving a skip of joy with her front paws, she looked triumpthaly to Fae, joy written in her eyes. She drew...something! And look at the color!

Fae's fore-finger slid her glasses up the bridge of her nose as she looked down to examine Pueblo's artwork. She grinned slightly, praising to influence the gryphon. "That's a mighty pretty little line there, Abby! And look, it squiggles right there," she pointed. "That perticular color is called violet. It's also secondary color which mean you can created this color by combining two primary colors. To make violet, you mix red and blue together." The Fae went into detail about each color and what primary colors made secondary colors.

"Now, you probably wonder about black and white," Fae brought up. She plucked the two said colored pencils and held them out to Pueblo to experiment coloring with. While the gryphon did this, Fae reached into a drawer that was interior of the desk. From there, she pulled out what looked like a crystal pyramid. Fae leaned over the table and turned a lamp on while holding up the pyramid. "This is called a spectrum. When exposed to light, and held at the right angle.." She positioned it under the lamp, and with a flash of white light, the rainbow appeared on the wall behind them. "It makes a rainbow. White and black arn't really "colors", however. This is hard to explaine, so stay with me," she asked. "White is all the colors reflecting. White is reflected light. Black shows up when all the colors are being absorbed...."

As Fae continued to explaine all this to her, her eyes sparkled avidly at the rainbow on the wall. Sitting down on her hind legs, her tail swished once or twice, showing her keeper that she was still following. Though it wasn't something she could understand right away, it seemed she tried her best when she nibbled the white and black colored pencils.

As day turned to night, they took a break to eat supper. Twizzler, Sage, Pueblo, Ombre and Fae all sat around the table, talking about each others day and what they day. But as soon as they settled down for the evening, Pueblo had gone back to the art book herself to stare at the pictures (since she can't read yet). As Fae climbed the ladder down into the basement, she caught her little one staring into the pages of a book. Grinning, she decided to test the gryphon's memory by doing a few quizzes and tests based on the information she gave her earlier.

"Pueblo, I'm soo proud of you," Fae would praise her. Though, as hours grew on, Pueblo's mind grew weary after a days work. Finally slipping into a trance at the book, Fae stroked the soft feathers on the snoozing gryphon. "You did a good job, Abby. Now it's time for bed."

(3/19/05)

Morning was earlier than usual had not the previous night been so long. Spring was practically here as a misty fog swirled over the waters and early morning grass.

Fae had passed out on her bed last night in her day-clothes that were covered in a thin layer of sand and salt. She continued to sleep, her dream rather satisfying, it would be one she wouldn't ever speak of. In her mind, she re-played the rescue scene from last night until her subconcious played the CPR part more dramatically.

As time went on, Fae's hand twitched and her heart gave an excited leap which caused her to sit up in bed. "Wha!" She gasped, her face beaming. She panted to the exhilaration of her heart and looked around the room. Good, it was all a dream. Or...was it? She laid back on her pillow and stared groggily at the snoozing Fenthry in their matchbox like beds, thinking of other things. She had been last in her dreamon the couch upstairs with a man named Orian Ironfist. How did she know a name? It all started to drift back to her until she got excited enough to go see for herself. Sneaking past her sleeping family (it was still only about 6am), she crept up the ladder and just barely poked her head above the shoot to examine the room..

Fae's eyes soon enough caught sight of the man sitting on the sofa. Her bright green eyes quickly widened then squinted. She had almost forgotten about his cyborg counter part.. Silently escending the ladder, she stood up straight and kept quiet until he would notice her.

She waited, in silence, examining his arm. Fae couldn't keep to herself anymore, but it still felt awkward seeing him there. A half naked man, sitting in her living room! She bit into her lower lip, but put a brave face on. "I see that you're awake too," she smiled, her nervousness abating. Eyeing his arm, she said nothing, but held a distinct question in her eyes. Quickly turning on her heel, she walked over to the front windows and opened them to allow the fresh morning breeze in. It would make the house less stuffy once she begun to cook.

Then, to her little culinary spot, the smell of green tea and some sort of meat, perhaps sausage, filled the home with a lovely aroma. "I hope you're hungry," she grinned, setting a couple plates down on the table.

Fae motioned for him to sit. She knew it was too early for everyone to wake up, so she didnt worry yet. Serving him first since he was guest, she poured him a steaming cup of caffinated tea. She smiled and thought. "Well, for starters, maybe you could tell me a little bit about yourself, Orian?" Afterall, he did owe it to her, and the curiosity of his arm killed her. She sat down in a chair across from him and sipped at the tea.

Meanwhile, stirring in Fae's room, Twizzy had caught wiff of the tantilizing aroma. 'Food!,' his stomach lurched. Fae must have gotten up earlyto make them a special breakfast, deciding this after he lookd to her empty bed. Standing up on his wobbily feet, his wings gave a few flutters to balance him. Quickly, he ran up the stairs in a gust of wind, waking the Fenthry and gryphon up as well. "Miss Fae, Miss Fae!" He cried out, running up, but stopped in mid track. There was a stranger in their house! But Fae was serving him food.. Shyly, he stood there quietly in embaressment.

Fae's head was suddenlt stolen from Orian as Twizzy came screaming up the steps. "Goodmorning, Twizzy," she winced. "Orian, this is Twizzler. He's..." She stoped. He wasn't exactly her child, and she never considered herself as a mom. "My kid?" Was the only thing that could come out. And did it sound awkwardly funny. She blinked a few times.

Twizzler was an unnerving young boy and stood there as Orian 'pulled a coin from his ear'. He blinked, finding it not all that impressive, but looked to the silvery coin fondly. "Thanks, Mr." He murmured politely, flipping the smooth coin around in his hand. He then looked to his guardian for any words.

Fae grinned. "Nono, he's adopted. Actually, my friend gave him to me." She wouldn't go into explicit detail how Twizzler was a V-day present. "Could you excuse us for a moment, Twiz?" She asked.

"Sure," he sighed, eyeing the man as he walked up to the table. "I just wanted something to eat." He then grabbed for some of the food off the table, then opened the door to go outside.

Fae watched him out until she turned back to Orian, looking appolgetic. "Anyway, you were about to say?"