Welcome to Gaia! ::

"Has he been getting any better since he's been here?" Earendil asked curiously. "Any changes at all?"

Progress after all, even if it was just a little, was a good sign, and meant that there would still be hope for him, even if it took a long time for him to change.

"Ruran?" Earendil asked quietly. He didn't know any of Celebor's children other than Aras, after all, and he didn't know her well at all.

Shael smiled at Earendil. "Ruran is one of Celebor's four children," she explained. "There are Ruque, Kanis, Aras, and Ruran." She looked at Lin. "They've been doing well. Ruran has his own place up on the mountain, I'm not sure whether you were aware of that or not. He's improved slightly, though I'm not sure if that's just because he's on his own and doesn't have anyone 'looking down' on him, as he likes to think."

Shael smiled sadly. "There are some people who just don't change," she said softly, "no matter what happens to them. In some ways, he has improved - in his relations with some people, for example. But in other ways, he has not changed, and though I am sad to say it, I doubt that he will."

Earendil frowned. "That doesn't sound good. Celebor is a good man, it's hard to believe that his children can be so bad that they can't even live with others."

Shael coughed slightly. "Some people like to explain it away by saying Ruran might have been dropped in his vase when he was young."

Earendil stared at Donovan. Was he hearing correctly? That seemed ... harsh.

"What do you mean?" he asked. "Freakish?"

Sure he knew that Celebor had taken a human woman as a mate, but considering Donovan and Kara had the same sort of relationship, that seemed a very harsh word indeed.

"Can he explain why he feels that way?" Earendil frowned. "Is there something wrong with being of two different races? I mean ... it's not as if he's only inherited the weak traits of both races, is it?"

One would think that with two races to draw from one would feel stronger, better, if anything. He thought back to his father suddenly. He knew his father looked down on halfbloods ... but that was a different case, he wasn't one himself.

Of course, Earendil's answer showed just how much he himself had changed. In order to accept halfbloods, one first had to accept mixed marriages, something that he himself had not always supported. Of course ... the situation had changed. After all, one couldn't seriously consider it for oneself if one didn't already accept it.

"And other senses," Shael added. "They can walk as silently as any of us ... other than me, of course," she grinned. Of course, with her limp, she couldn't walk silently, even if she wished. "But they can see, hear, smell, even sense things like all of us. If anything, I would say that Ruran inherited Niyana's temper ... but Niyana is very good at keeping her temper down. I've only once seen her lose her temper, and that time she was so like Ruran that it was actually frightening."

The door to the study opened, and Vergil wandered out, grinning. "I liked that time!" he beamed. "Because Ruran left me alone for a while after that!"

"I dunno about that," Vergil muttered, coming over and holding his hands up to Cindy so that he could sit in her lap. "I think he wants to see me go demon sometime. He does it on purpose."

Earendil stared at the boy. "Go demon?"

Vergil nodded. "I look like a human, but I'm really a demon," he explained. "But it really only shows when I get really really mad, because of this." He held up an amulet that was hanging around his neck. "Otherwise I'd be a demon all the time, I think."

Once upon a time he wouldn't have minded, but now he wanted to keep his demonic part hidden away so that he wouldn't hurt anyone. Sure, he was cranky, and sure he was demanding, but that didn't mean he wanted to hurt them.

"Not my fault," Vergil stuck his tongue out at Cindy. And that was how he saw it: demons were evil, he was a demon, so if he got angry once in a while it wasn't his fault.

Shael smiled ruefully at Lin. "Ruran is just complicated," she murmured. "There are days when he can be nice, and there are days when you wonder why people still say he needs to change. But there are just those days when you don't want to be anywhere near him."

Earendil looked thoughtful. He wasn't sure if he wanted to meet this boy - man - or not, though he knew he should. He just wasn't sure what he would say to him ... though he supposed it depended on how the boy acted towards him.