Welcome to Gaia! ::

Ranza was mystified with her luck. She had a treasure map! A real, mysterious, magic kind of treasure map that appeared in the middle of the night and showed her where to go and had a big red X marking the spot and EVERYTHING. This was the REAL DEAL. She absolutely had to show Nahuel! He’d know what to do with it!

But first, she had to get ready for an adventure! She knew her brother, and if he knew about this, he’d want to go RIGHT AWAY, regardless of whether she was still in her pajamas or not. Forehead furrowed in thought, Ranza tugged open the closet door and regarded the clothes hanging neatly on the racks. Half of them were Orli’s, and half of them were hers, and the styles couldn’t have been more different. Orli liked classic stuff, and stuff that fit, and that weird leather jacket. Ranza hated sleeves and liked clothes she could move in.

What did one wear on an adventure, anyway? She thought about the treasure hunters she had seen in the movies. Indy dressed a bit like Orli did when Orli got all dressed up in her favorite outfits – khaki pants and leather jackets and boots. Ranza owned neither khaki pants nor boots, hated jackets, and couldn’t just take Orli’s stuff, because Orli was smaller than her and none of her stuff fit Ranza. Marion was an equally poor example – she usually wound up in dresses and compromising positions, though Ranza didn’t deny she was pretty cool.

The only other solution was to think about how pirates dressed, which suited Ranza in much better fashion, because Pirates wore clothes kind of like the ones she had. If given the choice between being Marion and being Elizabeth, Ranza would have gladly been Elizabeth, because Elizabeth, at least, got to wear pants and have swordfights. (Even if, more often than not, she wound up in dresses, waiting to be saved.)

That in mind, Ranza decided to be a pirate. She found a tank top and a pair of brown pants and a vest that had apparently been Nahuel’s when he was little. She put on her sandals and tied her hair back with the elastic her mother had given her, the one with the little gold coins dangling from it. This, she decided, was pretty pirate-y. Satisfied, she grabbed the map off her bed and ran down the hallway to get her brother.

Nahuel was already in the kitchen eating a piece of toast with jelly (he couldn’t have cheese, unless it was the special soy pizzas Mom bought special. Mom said it was because his stomach didn’t work right, and Ranza felt sorry for him. She figured it must have been just awful to have a stomach that didn’t work right.) “Nah, Nah!” she cried, climbing onto a chair, “I have a map! It leads to treasure!”

Nahuel raised an eyebrow at her and swallowed. “Really?” he asked. “I want to see!”

Ranza spread the map out on the table.

“This is the real thing!” said Nahuel excitedly after looking at it for a moment. “This is a real treasure map! Where’d you get it, Ranza?”

“I woke up and it was next to my bed!” Ranza said, helping herself to his other piece of toast and smearing copious amounts of jelly on it. “It had my name on it. Someone left it for me.”

“Oooh,” breathed Nahuel, pouring himself a glass of juice. “Sounds mysterious.”

“It was,” replied Ranza, nodding astutely. “Can I have some juice, too?”

Nahuel poured her a glass. Ranza sipped it thoughtfully and looked at the map.

“It looks like the garden,” she observed. “See?” she asked, pointing. “There’s the hole in the wall, and the big tree with the cave in it.”

“I’ve never seen this part past the river before,” said Nahuel. “That’s where the path starts, see?” He traced his finger along the dashed red line that picked up on the far bank of the stream.

“Can we go already?” asked Ranza, excited to get started exploring.

“You bet!” agreed Nahuel, rolling the map up and handing it back to her. “I’m just gonna let Mom know we’re leaving.” He got up, put his glass on the counter, and darted down the hall and into their mother’s room. He returned a moment later, fixing his trusty fedora to his head. “All right,” he said. “Let’s go!”



When they got to the garden, Ranza ran ahead of her brother while he tied up his bike. She had the map, and set about orienting herself with her surroundings. There was the hole in the wall, and there was the tree with the cave in its basement, and there was the huuuuuge stump that was flat on top and made a nice stage. And there! There was the stream!

They never crossed the stream, though they swam in it sometimes, because the trees on the other side were different from the trees in the front part of the garden and Nahuel reckoned it wasn’t part of it. Today, however, was different. The creek was low and a rope bridge had been slung from one bank to the other. Ranza consulted the map. The dotted red line started on the far side of the bridge.

Nahuel caught up to her and she pointed to the map. “We gotta cross the river,” she said.

He apparently noticed the bridge for the first time. “That’s new,” he said. “I wonder if it’s stable.”

“I’ll go first!” volunteered Ranza, and dashed across. Nahuel followed her after seeing the bridge didn’t immediately collapse.

Now that they were on the other side of the river, they saw that the garden most definitely continued. Here the trees were maples, and syrup taps stuck out from some of them at odd angles. A broad path cut through them in front of the siblings, and looking at the map Ranza saw that the red line continued through it. They began to walk, and after a while the path began to narrow until they reached the tree line. In front of them, someone had painstakingly set up a labyrinth of old sailcloth. A piece of the same type of paper as the map sat in the middle of the path, held down by a rock.

Curious, Ranza picked it up and unfolded it.

“Labyrinths are easy,” claimed Nahuel. “You just have to keep turning left.”

The paper had a poem on it, in fairly simple words. Ranza read it out loud.

“In this maze, there is a beast, a… monster… known as math. Add the… numbers in the right way, and you’ll be on the right path.”

“It’s a puzzle,” said Nahuel.

“Let’s go!” said Ranza, charging into the maze. She quickly reached the first fork in the path. Written on the cloth in front of her was written



To the right was the option “2” and to the left was the option “11”. Ranza paused and counted on her fingers. It was two! She took the right path. Nahuel followed her. At the next junction, the wall read



The right option was “23”, and the left option was “5”.

“This is easy,” grumbled Nahuel as Ranza paused to count on her fingers. “The answer is—“

“Let me do it,” said Ranza stubbornly.

“But it’s so easy!”

“Let me do it!” she repeated, counting. The answer was five. She took the left path. The next junction was a bit tougher.



Loomed before her like a challenge, with the answers of “9” and “10” painted right and left respectively.. Ranza unfolded her fingers to count. Nahuel groaned.
“I can do this in like two seconds flat!” he complained.

“Let me do it!” shouted Ranza. “It’s my map! It’s my adventure! Nah, you’re always Indy and you always know what to do and now it’s my turn! I’m Indy this time!” She returned to consulting her fingers. “You can be Marion,” she added, trying to placate him. Nahuel groaned again.

“This is so stupid,” he muttered.

“Ten!” shouted Ranza, tearing off down the left path. Nahuel followed her, his ego a bit bruised but otherwise fine.

7+6=?

Ranza stared at the wall in front of her. She didn’t have that many fingers! This was a tough one. She looked to Nahuel, but he shrugged, and she remembered that this was her adventure. Heroes didn’t need to ask for help just because they were a little bit stumped, and she wasn’t stumped yet. She could do this!

She crouched down and lined her hands and toes up. Bingo! The answer was thirteen!

“Thirteen!” she exclaimed, letting the fact be known, and ran down the path with that number on it. After a few turns, the maze opened up and deposited her and Nahuel on a meadow. She’d done it! She’d defeated the monster! Ranza let up a happy little cheer and consulted the map again. If she was reading it right, the line wanted her to go towards the big tree in the middle of the field…



Someone had strung the tree up with all sorts of ladders, nets, and other climbing miscellany. Ranza stared at it, mystified with the complexity of it, and then noticed a second scrap of parchment folded at the base of it. She picked it up, unfolded it, and read it.

“The map has a…. missing… piece, and I know where it be. If you want me to share my… secret… you’ll have to… climb… the tree.”

“Looks like fun,” said Nahuel, looking up.

“It’s my adventure,” Ranza reminded him, pulling out the map and looking at it. How had she missed that before? Indeed, the red dotted line disappeared at the tree and picked up again a while later with nothing in between. She circled the tree curiously, looking for the leg up. She knew how to climb – Nahuel had taught her, and this looked pretty stable. Whoever had done it had rigged nets every few branches to catch her if she fell.

“This seems pretty elaborate just to give us an adventure,” said Nahuel.

“Come on!” called Ranza, finding a row of pegs nailed into the side of the tree and beginning to climb. Nahuel followed her at a slight distance and watched as she climbed out onto a branch and grabbed a rope ladder.

“Be careful,” he cringed, hating having to be the responsible one. But if Ranza got hurt, Mom would kill him!

“I am!” Ranza called back, pulling herself up the rope ladder. Nahuel mounted the branch and waited for her to finish before climbing before starting up it.

“I’m suspicious!” he called. Above him, Ranza started on another series of pegs nailed to the side of the tree.

“Why?” she called back.

“How do we know it’s not booby-trapped?” he asked. Ranza pulled herself onto the next branch and waited for him. She hadn’t thought of that, but she didn’t think it was. She had a feeling.

“It’s not,” she said plainly, and looked around for the next task. A net stretched between the limb she was on and one about four feet away. A rope with a few knots in it dangled from a higher branch. The end was draped over the one she was on.

“Nah!” she called down to her brother. “We hafta’ swing!”

“Like in Raiders?” he called back, scrambling up the pegs.

“Yeah,” said Ranza, picking up the rope as he climbed onto the branch. She gripped it tight, hopped off the branch, and swing, her legs kicking through space for the opposite branch…

…And they didn’t touch. She lost her grip on the rope and shrieked. Nahuel screamed. For a moment, she was falling, and then she hit the net, bounced, and giggled.

“If this was really like Raiders, you would’ve fallen in a bottomless pit,” said Nahuel, recovering his dignity.

“But I didn’t,” said Ranza happily, swinging the rope towards him and then crawling through the net to the other side. Nahuel swung and landed next to her with feline grace.

“And that’s how you do it,” he said.

“Show off,” said Ranza, pulling herself up a rope ladder. From there, it seemed she had reached the top of the tree, and they were awfully high up. The branches sort of came together in a big flat space, and she proceded to it, followed at a slight distance by her brother. There was a piece of parchment there. She picked it up and unfolded it.

It was made to overlap the map she had, showing the tree, and a beeline straight from it to the far end of the field and another lake that she could se in the distance, but no mention of how to get there.

“We made it,” said Nahuel, looking around. He looked back behind him. “Hey, I can see our house from here!” he observed with a laugh.



A bit of searching around revealed a zip line and another piece of parchment. Ranza eyed the zip-line warily and unfolded the clue. “…Climb-ing’s fun, but it’s a long way down, so here’s some time to save. …Keep your cool when you splash land, or it’s a …watery grave.”

“They can’t mean it,” said Nahuel. “They wouldn’t make us do it if it was dangerous.”

Ranza wholeheartedly agreed. That was just how maps went, written like that. She stared off into the distance… the zip line looked like it landed in the lake. Suddenly, she felt a sort of clammy fear build up inside her chest. Something about the lake, about the deep water, about the phrase “watery grave”, made her reluctant. Her chest felt tight, like she couldn’t breathe.

“I’ll go first,” said Nahuel, “Just to make sure it isn’t dangerous. I’ll wave to you from the bottom!” He hopped onto the zip-line’s swing, strapped himself in, and kicked off. Ranza watched him zoom away, and then she was alone. She could see Nahuel waving to her and calling from the bottom a moment later, and then the seat came back up to the top as if propelled by magic.

Ranza stared at it, and stared at the lake.

Watery grave.

She couldn’t do it. She couldn’t get on the zip line. It wasn’t the flight that scared her, no. She was a bird. That part was fine. That part was fun. But the water at the bottom… Ranza could take baths and swim in the pool and in the stream and in the fountain. She knew exactly how deep that water was. But she had never seen the lake before, had no idea what would happen to her.

Nahuel was calling for her. Nahuel was waiting. Nahuel had done it, and he was okay.

Watery grave.

Ranza slammed her eyes shut, trying to quell her fears. She had to do it. This was her adventure! Indy never chickened out! Elizabeth never chickened out! And by God, even if he was a coward, Jack Sparrow never chickened out! Doubling her resolve, Ranza steadied the swing, sat down on it, and buckled herself in.

There, she thought. That wasn’t so bad.

The lake was just a beeline away. She swallowed the lump in her throat and kicked off.

The reaction was immediate. Instantly, she was whizzing through the air at a downward incline, steadily gaining speed. This itself was not so bad. She screeched in laughter, trying to enjoy it—

And then there was the water, coming up too fast, so fast. In another second, she was in it, the cold water coming up to grab her like a vice. She flailed about, splashing wildly, feathers becoming heavy. This was supposed to be safe! This was supposed to be safe!

“Nah!” she screeched, not realizing that the swing wouldn’t let her sink beneath the surface. Still, she flailed. Her throat was closing up out of reaction to her fear of drowning. “Nah!”

And suddenly he was there, pulling her out of the straps and out of the water.

“Nah!” she gasped, sputtering up lake water. He slung her over his shoulder and carried her towards shore. Ranza tried to calm herself down a bit. She was safe now. She was safe now! No watery grave for Ranza Cooper! No sir!

Nahuel set her safely on the grassy bank of the lake, and Ranza stood up quickly.

“I wasn’t scared,” she said boldly. Nahuel laughed.

“You screamed like a little girl,” he said.

“I am one,” she retorted, pulling out the map. Somehow it was still dry. It should have been soaked. “X marks the spot!” she cried, pointing to the base of a nearby tree. “The treasure is right over there!”



When they reached the tree, they were greeted with the welcome sight of an ornate, antique-looking treasure chest and what looked to be a mug of apple juice. Ranza, however, was learning not to trust things based on what they looked like and found the scrap of parchment that corresponded to the chest.

“You shall have the thing you seek, if you can down the pirate’s drink,” she read.

“That doesn’t really rhyme,” scowled Nahuel, sniffing the mysterious liquid curiously. He wrinkled his nose. “Oh, yuck! That stuff smells awful. You’re on your own, Ranza.”

Ranza approached the cup and sized it up. She was of the firm opinion that she had come far too far to be defeated by a cup of apple juice, no matter how bad it smelled according to Nahuel. Glaring daggers at her brother, she defiantly picked up the cup and took a sip, being careful not to smell it. Just in case.

It tasted awful, but the clue said she had to drink it, so she forced herself to swallow. It never said if she had to drink all of it, but Ranza figured better safe than sorry. She took another sip and choked it down.

This was going to take forever. Maybe there was a better plan of action. Like chugging it. After all, you never saw pirates in the movies taking dainty little sips, and this was the pirate’s drink, right?

Ranza was an experienced chugger after all the milk-drinking contests she had with her sister, Orli. She picked up the glass and began to drink, ignoring the foul taste of the beverage. It was… bitter, a bit stale, faintly sweet, but in an exotic way she couldn’t describe.

“Done!” she exclaimed with a burp, slamming the empty glass back down onto the chest. Miraculously, the lock clicked open and the glass thumped to the ground. Nahuel hurried over to help her hoist the lid.

“That’s the treasure?” he asked, adjusting his fedora. “Lame!”

Ranza lifted her hard-won prize out of the chest. It was a well-worn leather tricorn, and she knew it was authentic because it smelled like the sea. There was an elegant peacock feather perched in it.

“You can keep it,” said Nahuel. “I’ve already got a hat, and it’s way cooler.”

Ranza ignored his sour-grapes attitude and put the hat on, adjusting it to sit with a roguish tilt on her head. It was too big for her, but she figured she’d grow into it.

“Let’s go home,” sighed Nahuel. Ranza skipped alongside him as they headed for the hole in the wall. Her shadow looked like a proper pirate, complete with a hat and an elegant feathered plume.

She rather liked it that way.

Nahuel busied himself the rest of the morning with cleaning, which presumably meant tossing all clothes on the floor, regardless of whether they actually needed to be washed or not, into the hamper, and shoving everything that would fit under the bed… under it. Ranza found a bag of chocolate chips in the kitchen and she and Orli ate half of it while watching the rest of the cartoon. After the episode was over, a show about poorly proportioned fairies that spoke with pseudo-European accents came on, but all they talked about was shopping and fashion so Ranza turned it off and put the chocolate away. At some point Orli hauled out the blocks and they constructed an elaborate ancient city, complete with a ziggurat, which stretched from the front door to the kitchen.

It probably wasn’t the smartest thing to do when their mother was about to return home with a houseguest, but they weren’t thinking of that.

Nahuel came out of his bedroom, which looked, against all better logic, surprisingly clean.

“Woah,” he said, “You guys built Akator.”

“That’s the idea,” agreed Ranza, dumping out a bin of action figures on one of the remaining empty spaces on the floor. “Orli, gimme your space ship.”

Orli was happy to supply her plastic starfighter and joined Ranza in sifting through the action figures. They produced about six different versions of Indiana Jones (With whip-snapping action! With vine swinging action! With machine-gun accessory! With kung-fu grip!) until Nahuel decided that the one they needed was not in the box and vanished into his room.

He returned a moment later with the brand-new action figures he had bought with his pocket money. Ranza and Orli hadn’t been allowed to play with these yet. They were Nahuel’s prized toys, more detailed and elaborate than the hand-me-down figurines Eshaa picked up at garage sales.

He started to hand the Marion figure to Ranza, thought better of it, and handed her to Orli, choosing instead to give Ranza the Mutt figure, keeping Indy for himself. Both sisters knew better than to argue over their character assignments,

The action figures had just ascended the Ziggurat when the front door opened, triggering a chain reaction that send the entire block city tumbling to the ground. Nahuel lead a hasty retreat for the action figures and tossed the starfighter onto the couch.

“Like a broom over their footsteps,” he quoted. Orli climbed over the couch to retrieve her starfighter. The person on the other side of the door was having trouble getting it all the way open because of the blocks. Ranza noticed the trouble they were having and ran to pull the blocks out of the way. Eshaa pushed the door the rest of the way open.

“Not smart, guys,” she said, surveying the ruins. “What happened here?”

“The aliens destroyed Akator,” said Orli from the couch, holding up her starfighter as if it explained everything.

“Is your room clean?” Eshaa asked Nahuel, stepping into the apartment and kicking more blocks out of the way. She was followed by a man who, Nahuel quickly decided, looked like Dr. Jones except a bit older and with longer hair. The man set down a suitcase as Nahuel nodded.

“Alright,” said Eshaa happily. She motioned to each of the kids in turn. “These are Nahuel, Ranza, and Orli,” she explained to the man beside her, and then motioned to him. “Guys, this is my grandfather, Nat Cooper.”

“Hi,” responded the siblings in eerie and unintended unison. Nahuel took the initiative to start putting away the blocks before their mother could yell at him about it, and Ranza joined in. Orli, who could easily be considered exempt for no really good reason, hopped off the couch to get a better look at the visitor.

He didn’t look like an alien, she decided. Ranza had been wrong. He looked human, more human than their mother. (But Eshaa had already explained to them that she was what was called a half-breed, so Orli could sort of piece it together.)

He smiled and pointed to the plastic starfighter she held in her hands. “I flew one of those,” he said.

Orli looked at the starfighter, wondering how anyone larger than an action figure could fit into it.

“A real one,” he explained, seeming to understand her confusion. “The real ones are a lot bigger.”

Orli nodded. “You fly?” she asked.

“I’m a pilot,” he explained. “One of the best.”

“You’re forgetting the past tense,” said Eshaa gently.

“How old are you?” asked Nahuel, looking up from his clean-up effort.

“Eighty-seven last month,” he said, laughing.

To the siblings, none of whom had even been alive a year, that seemed impossibly old. Eshaa lead him off to show him the rest of the apartment, and the trio regrouped to whisper conspiratorially.

“He’s an alien in a human skin,” said Ranza lowly.

“He looks like Dr. Jones,” hissed Nahuel. “I think he’s a clone.”

“I think he’s cool,” said Orli, happily looking at the ship in her hands. He’d flown a real one! Someday she’d fly a real one, too!

Her siblings shot her annoyed looks and pushed her out of the circle so they could continue exchanging thoughts in private.

Dr. Jones parked the Jeep in front of the step pyramid and shoved Nahuel out. “You remember the rules?” he barked as Nahuel found his footing, tied his shoes, and straightened his hat.

“Yes!” replied Nahuel.

“What are they?”

“Don’t touch anything and when you say duck, I duck!”

“Alright,” sighed Dr. Jones, getting out of the car. They walked towards the temple and went in. A series of younger excavators pointed them towards an area that was set pretty far back into the building. Nahuel bounced along happily.

“Headlamps on,” said Dr. Jones. Nahuel reached up and flipped on the lamp they gave him earlier.

“Is this dangerous?” Nahuel asked.

“If it was dangerous,” growled Dr. Jones, “You wouldn’t be here.”

“Oh,” said Nahuel. They continued to walk. There were lights strung along the ceiling high above their heads. They illuminated ancient hieroglyphics. The light from Nahuel’s headlamp brushed across a colony of sleeping bats that responded by taking to the air en mass and flying away.

“Shut your mouth or something’s going to make a nest in it,” said Dr. Jones. Nahuel shut his mouth. They continued walking until they turned into a side chamber. “This area is new,” explained Dr. Jones.

“Is it dangerous?” asked Nahuel.

“Any ancient site has some danger involved.”

“Like, booby traps?”

“The excavation crew took care of those,” explained Dr. Jones, turning to trail the outer wall. It was covered in bright mosaics and paintings. “They never find many, though. The ancient Gaians didn’t have much to worry about, apparently.”

“Oh,” said Nahuel, a little bit bummed out. The man was already further down the wall, and the boy followed him. His footsteps echoed far into the chamber.

“Okay, listen up,” said Dr. Jones once Nahuel was next to him again. “Here’s your history lesson for the morning.”

Nahuel nodded attentively.

“Gaia is what’s known as a hub world,” explained the older man. “Time and Space converge here, and things naturally show up. This temple complex is about ten thousand years old.”

Nahuel was not yet a year old. He could barely get his mind around ten thousand years. It seemed impossibly long ago.

“At first, we thought this site was from a transplanted Earth culture, but it’s too old. The bones we find are human, though. What do you think happened?”

Nahuel thought for a moment. “Humans settled both worlds from somewhere else?” he asked. He knew his mom’s family was human and had nothing to do with Earth.

Dr. Jones laughed. “You’re bright,” he said. “It used to be that kind of thinking was impossible, but it’s looking more and more likely that humans first arose on some other world. Earth isn’t a hub world – it’s the opposite. It’s easy enough to leave it, but it’s nigh impossible to get there. Whoever put humans all the places they are was very good at moving around.”

The light from their headlamps spilled across a mosaic on the next wall panel. Dr. Jones gasped.

“This is a creation story,” he said.

“Can you read it?” asked Nahuel.

“The language is pretty close to ancient Mayan. I can get a handle on it.”

He cleared his throat and leaned closer to the wall.

“More light over here,” he ordered. Nahuel leaned in so the beam from his headlamp focused on the patch of wall in question.

“Long ago,” read Dr. Jones, “The world was cold and dark…”

Treasure Island!

The NO SISTERS ALLOWED club

[Halloween Spooktacular]

Nahuel stepped into the apartment and pulled the door shut behind him. He wasn't sure how long he'd been in Eden, but it was winter now, and he was older than he'd been when he'd gone in. His first stop had been new clothes, and then bumming a subway ticket home - there were apparently issues with the surface roads, some kind of invasion. He didn't think about it to long.

Ranza was reading on the couch when he went into the living room. That, in and of itself, was nothing new.

She peered at him over the top of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince and said, in her most venomous voice possible, "You're back."

"What, no hug?" asked Nahuel, grinning at her.

"I was hoping you'd stay gone," she replied. "Then I could have your room."

"You better have not taken any of my stuff."

"Why would I want any of your junk?"

"I don't know," shrugged Nahuel. "Just to say you took it?" Ranza scowled at him. "Where's Mom?"

Ranza gave him a blank look. "Work," she said, and went back to her book. Nahuel stalked off to the kitchen in search of something to eat - he was suddenly starving. The calendar on the fridge caught his eye.

It was 2009. He had been gone over two months.