Welcome to Gaia! ::

"It's a lot different than Gaia," Lin added, "There aren't any angels, or mermaids, or nekos, or nagas... or anything like that."

She thought it was a shame that there weren't, but at least it made remembering races a lot easier than back home. Then again she only had to remember the broad catagories, which wasn't hard at all when the largest catagories of races were the races of your brothers and sisters and parents.

Elnara also noticed the queen's hesitation, and she wasn't sure why, but it worried her.

"Nako?" she questioned in a worried tone.

"A naga is kind of like a mer, but they're snake from the waist down instead of a fish, and they're very very very..." she paused for a moment, "very long. They move very fast, but it's fun to ride on the tail, we have a naga at the school Mommy teaches at, he's a bit of a grump and doesn't know how to play, but he's okay."

She grinned, she liked Shi, when he wasn't being a grump that is, he had a poorly deprived childhood she felt. Lin thought she should invite him for a tea party one day.

Elnara smiled at Lore and squeezed his hand. "Childhood friend," she explained simply.

It wasn't exactly a lie. To her, he had always been just that: a friend. She hadn't even known until her last visit here how much he had cared for her. Still, she wanted Lore to be as comfortable as possible. Surely by now Aranhil would have put aside his feelings for her. She had after all been gone for over two decades, according to her grandmother.

"Mommy," Celebor said suddenly, coming over to stand beside Elnara, "can I go 'sploring? I wanna see every place here ..."

Elnara nodded. "If you get lost, ask one of the guards how to get back here, all right?" she instructed him. And, knowing how excited he got about knights and the like, she added, "And they're on duty, so you can't just ask them questions. If you want to talk to one of them, besides for asking directions, find someone who's not on duty."

Celebor nodded eagerly. "I'll remember!" he promised, turning on his heel and running out of the room.

"Well.... he got in trouble in school," Lin told him, "For starting a fight, and the last time a big fight happened, Mommy made the person babysit Feng and Ryu, but Feng and Ryu are now all grown up. So she told him, he had to babysit him for the rest of the year."


She would have rathered gotten the first babysitter, but she couldn't do that since it wouldn't have been fair. Even though he probably deserved it more than Shi.

"He got in fight with Irvine," she explained, "And... he's okay once you stick around him enough. He hasn't ever played before I don't think because he doesn't know when I'm playing."

"To be fair," Elnara replied to Lore, her face flushing slightly, "I really don't know ... I mean, it's one thing to have friends who didn't know about me, but the friends who do, and who stick around ... look at my brothers, what happened when they found out about me."

She still found herself wondering just when Nadya had found out about her, but she reminded herself that it didn't matter. Her friend was still the same as ever.



"He scared Serenity," Storm added seriously. "He made her cry."

"Lots of people scare Serenity," Starr pointed out logically. "Not just him."

"Yeah," Storm admitted, then challenged, "but not very many people make her cry!"

"That's true," Starr conceded. "But he's a big meanie."

Lore could understand that to a sense, it must have surprised her that there was another person who would be there for her.

"When you put it that way," he murmured, "I can see that..."

"So he's one of those types of people who doesn't like people who are different from him?" Earendil asked to clarify. He frowned. "He and my father would get along, if they weren't from different races."

He entered Sir Valdemar's study and announced, "She's back! And guess who came with her!"

Sir Valdemar, looking the same as he ever did, turned away from the tome he was writing in and smiled broadly, his bright eyes making him appear mellenia younger than his age. "Hello!" he said eagerly, rising from his desk. "Welcome! Welcome! And who are these two?"




Atalya smiled. "Shall we take a tour, perhaps?" she suggested, setting her glass aside. "That way we can show Lore the castle ... and you, too, Elnara, since it's changed so much since the last time you were here. And who knows? Perhaps we'll run into others while we're about it."