Welcome to Gaia! ::

D-chan flashes the "okay" sign over her shoulder as Azumi follows her out of the kitchen. "Can do!" she laughs, prancing cheerfully after her young charge as he walks with both book and tea across the Legend headquarters. She begins to hum cheerfully as she catches up to her young charge, ears perked and eyes bright. "I love this kind of weather," she chuckles.

"Why do we have to get candles again?" Dai asks curiously, sipping at his cooling tea as he looks up at the half-fox opening a nearby door. "We don't need them; why are we looking for them?"

"Because we can see in the dark, but Azumi and Morosina can't do that as well," D-chan replies calmly, patiently. "I forgot for a while, too, so don't worry...being allied with dark magic does have its advantages!" she chuckles, grabbing a bag of what look like sparklers and staring at them with mild interest before replacing them and moving on.

It seems that D-chan and Dai have much more luck than their new companions; soon enough the two return to the main room, displaying a wide variety of candles across the table. The fox-girl whistles cheerily as she pulls a delicate wand out of her sleeve and stabs the longest candle onto a metal candle holder. Just as she touches the delicate wooden rod to the wick, a tiny flame jumps to life...

...and the lights snap off, accompanied by a tremendous roar of thunder. "Ooh, sounds like a lightning demon," the half-fox chuckles. "Hey, Azumi! Over here!" she calls, waving the candle like a lighthouse beacon.

D-chan holds the lit candle over the table, the wand held gently in her other hand. "Well, we have three candle holders total and somewhere in the neighborhood of fifteen candles in sizes varying from about half a foot to two inches. And a package of birthday candles. And I saw some sparklers in one closet," she adds, snickering at the thought of seeing by sparkler light. The halfling looks at Morosina with concern. "Eesh...she really hates storms, doesn't she?"

Dai's eyes blink shut at the bright flash of lightning that appears just outside the windows, the thunder screaming just overhead. "It's so bright," he complains, placing his tea mug on the table and rubbing his eyes with his now free hand. He flinches only slightly at the sound of thunder...but even so, he does move just slightly closer to the halfling, his hand reaching out to find her tail.

"Yeah, it is," the half-fox agrees. "Quite a storm...I wouldn't be surprised if there was a happy lightning demon in there," she snickers. "So long as it stays up there. I'm not equipped for a demon fight," she adds under her breath.

"Well, Dai never really seemed to be afraid of thunder," D-chan muses. "Then again, Dai was always a weird little kid."

"Oh, that's nice," he mutters darkly. D-chan grins and ruffles his dark hair as she sits down on the couch, watching as the boy follows her up. "Couldn't you at least say it more nicely?" he asks.

"But that is nice," she chuckles. "You're unique that way." Turning her attention back to Azumi, she continues. "He usually jumped at the sound, of course, but he never really cried. Somehow I think he knew that it wouldn't hurt him...though, loud noises never seemed to bother him terribly. He didn't like them much, but he tolerated them remarkably well. And solitude. He dealt with solitude well for an infant, too. Surprised me to no end, tell you the truth. I swear, he broke every rule in that baby manual!"

Dai reaches out, tugging on the fox-girl's sleeve gently. She grins and offers the candle to him. He accepts it gratefully before laying the book back on his lap and opening it to a place near the end. The page is familiar by now; he has read it many times, for it is one of the few in the familiar handwriting that seems even slightly readable. He pores over this with hungry eyes, searching for anything familiar.

"That's true," she admits as Azumi drops the pile of magazines on the table. "But how will we get them to stay upright? and we don't really need all of them at once, do we? No need to waste candles, right?"

"Well, since all Legends are in some way connected to their past lives...I can only assume that his tolerance of solitude has something to do with his past," the fox-girl murmurs, resting one black-furred hand on the boy's head. He smiles slightly and leans against her, green-gold eyes bright in the candle light. "And just considering his natural talents, I'm suppose I shouldn't be too surprised. People like him...people like us...we're alone a lot," she muses. Dai frowns a bit and hops closer, snuggling against the half-fox's side.

"I'm not lonely," he mutters. "Are you lonely? Even though I'm here?" he asks quietly. As he looks up, the fox-girl smiles warmly down at him.

"With company like you, I think I'm set for life!" she snickers, ruffling his unruly raven hair. He laughs and playfully pushes her hand away as she takes up his mug of tea and offers it to him. "So long as you don't leave, of course. If you leave, then I'll be all lonely and sad and I might curl up in a corner and wither away into dust that blows away on the breeze..."

Dai just laughs. "You would not!" he chuckles. "You'd be too busy trying to keep Kaen out of the carrots."

"Well, that's true," she mumbles, seeming to ponder this matter very seriously. As another crash of thunder rolls overhead, both Legend and guardian look up. "Eesh. Quite a storm...hope it passes soon."

D-chan nods. "Considering that she's a wolf, though, don't you think she'd be reasonably co-dependent throughout her life?" the half-fox inquires. "As you mentioned, wolves are known for their packs. Lone wolves don't exist for long; most of the time they're absorbed by another pack or they don't survive. So you're lucky, in that respect...she'll probably be with you for all of her life." The fox halfling chuckles as she ruffles Dai's hair, watching with gentle eyes as he tears his eyes from the book in his lap to smile at her.

"Don't you think I'll stay with you?" he grins, sipping at his cooling tea. He glances briefly to Morosina as she peeks silently over the edge of the couch before turning his attention back to his smiling guardian.

"I certainly hope so!" she replies. "But you never know...something might happen, and you might leave to go on some grand adventure into the world! And leave me behind to keep Kaen out of the carrots," she snickers behind one hand.

Dai simply laughs and turns his attention back to his book...only to have it pulled away moments later by Morosina's quiet question. A shy smile tugs at his lips as he nods, gesturing to the empty space between him and the arm of the couch. He says nothing, though, simply waits for Morosina to take her place so that he can lay the book between them.

"Let's hope she's not an oddball," the half-fox chuckles. "But you're right...they do wind up growing fast...but the times shared when they're young will always stay, with or without photographs for memories. First words, first trips to certain places, first show of talent...lots of firsts...and then other memorable experiences. I remember our first trip to the beach...and the holey shell!! Kaen chewed me out for that bad joke," she snickered.

As Azumi asks about the boy's past, D-chan falls silent. She leans forward, resting her elbows on her thighs and her head in her hands as she thinks. "I get the feeling that it was a very lonely life," she whispers. "A life that included a lot of hiding away from other people, for fear of harm just for who he is...well, what he is. I think that book is a memento of his past life...and I'll bet that his preincarnation wrote most of it, except for those first few pages.

"And there was a girl," she murmurs. "A child younger than he was that he tried to protect...and I think he failed."

Dai carefully lays the book between them, flipping out of the neatly written front pages to the more scrawling center. Letters seem to overlap and lines wobble across the soft white pages. Though neat by some standards--all mistakes are neatly struck through with twin lines--the handwriting itself is a messy scrawl.

"So. What do you think?" he asks quietly. "Can you read any of it?"

D-chan smiles softly. "He may have me," she murmurs quietly, "but his past is still with him. 'History repeats itself,' so the saying goes, and I have the sneaking suspicion that it will come again for him. Someone...or something...has been feeding me dreams recently. Actually, now that I think about it, it has to be two somethings or someones working together," she mumbles, her words muffled by the hand suddenly covering her mouth. "But they're visions of the past and future...well, of possible futures. But they match the past so perfectly that it's not funny. And I'm certainly not in any of these visions to stop things from happening. He may not be hiding, but that doesn't mean it will be much better."

She smiles, though, green-gold eyes bright and soft as she looks over to Azumi. "But you're right," she murmurs. "He does have me, if he needs me. And the rest of the family, and now you and Morosina. It can't get much better than that, especially after so much grief in a former life."

Dai smiles softly and shakes his head. "At least you tried," he replies quietly, running a hand lovingly across the pages. "Someone wrote this...and spent a lot of time on it, even if the handwriting doesn't show it. This whole book is full, all the way to the last page." But...he does not offer to display the page in question. In fact, his hand seems to shy away from the edge of the page, as though he is afraid of turning to the end.

Because that's what it is to him. The end.

The end of his former existence.

D-chan nods. "And memories are oftentimes what sustain us, after all...through the hard times, we remember the good ones, and through our times alone we remember friends. Hopefully it'll keep him going...and me, as well. But...if you think about it, Dai did have someone in his past life. That little girl. And yet he always seems so sad in the dreams...both the past and future ones. Which begs the question...does something happen to me?"

She shakes her head vigorously. "Enough of that," she snaps. As Azumi stands, she smiles. "Right this way!" she chirps, leading the way down the hall and into another room, leaving Dai and Morosina to their own devices.

Dai is not fazed as D-chan leaves. He waves good-bye calmly before looking back to the page, carefully flipping to the next with a gentle, steady hand. His eyes pore over the words that he cannot yet understand, looking for something familiar, something to help him...

...and so he does not see the shadowy figure move to the door and open it to the storm.

Wind howls through the Legend Headquarters, catching the boy off guard. His arms instinctively fly up to cover his face, leaving the book unweighted. The pages are torn by the wind, flipping with growing speed to the very last page...

...a page splattered with copper drops and a few meager lines of text...

...before Dai realizes and snaps the book shut, drawing it to his chest.