Welcome to Gaia! ::

Daub's fingers fumbled with the envelope, excitement overtaking him. It was here. It was finally here.

He wasn't sure now who had first come up with the idea, but by this point, what did it matter? He had gone out on the limb, sent for the information, and now it was here. Breathless, Daub tugged the contents out of the envelope and spread them out on his writing desk. He read over the proprietor's message. He readied his ink pen and unfolded the form. His fingers shook as he touched down the first stroke of the first letter of his name.

He stopped. Anthony Arthur or Anthony Andrew? He almost opened his mouth to yell for Kirkcaldy. She remembered his name when he could not. Then Daub thought of the envelope addressed to him from the dating service. He turned it over. Anthony Arthur Andrews. That had to be right. He carefully wrote it out, just as carefully tucking in the most important information: "Daub/Double-A." Heaven forbid someone use the full name Spork had given him.

He gave his age as 30-ish or thereabouts, because, like most temporal regulators, he had no idea of his age exactly. At the time, losing track of his age hadn't seemed that big an issue. Now he kind of wished he had been paying a bit more attention. Gender was easy enough (and he was quietly impressed that they had not made the mistake of listing the field as "sex" -- he would have been compelled to write down "only if she's willing"). Species -- still human. He smiled to himself.

And then there was a problem. A big one. The words "Any Children?:" jumped out at him with an almost comical cheerfulness, and Daub accidentally wrote down his knee-jerk response: "Myself, maybe."

That was not a good answer. That was, in fact, a terrible answer, and Daub quickly scribbled it out. He tried again.

Ink puddled on the paper. Daub blotted it away with his sleeve, then swore lightly a having created an ink stain on his nice, clean shirt. "Bugger and cluck." He sighed and wiped his forehead, smearing ink across his brow absentmindedly. He put the pen down and planted his chin in his hand thoughtfully.

The thing was, he wanted to be honest. Far be it for him to deceive someone he might be spending a lot of time with and have them find out about it later. He wrote out, "I have an adopted daughter, and possibly," but could not finish the sentence. He crossed out the whole half-sentence and took a deep breath.

His diary was sitting on the desk next to him. Daub glanced at it. "I'm sorry, Spork," he said aloud to the book, and scribbled "I have an adopted daughter" in the form's margin. It wasn't a lie. It was just the only answer anyone would ever understand.

After that was resolved, the rest of the application was easy. He tried not to brag (leaving out Oxford as his university) and work in a bit of humor (his allergy to bees and scatterbrained cooking). It wasn't much, but hopefully it would be enough. Daub sealed the form in a new envelope and stamped it. That was that, then. One little envelope, and sealed in it, a universe of possibilities.

He dropped it in the outgoing mailbox without regrets.

The only thought in Daub's head as he left the café was that he couldn't, he simply couldn't, not after how far he'd come. It was terrible enough he'd been in such a dark place to begin with, the last thing he needed was a constant reminder of it. He desperately wished he had n'Barit here to direct him, to chastise him or protect him or just so something that would serve to erase the echoes of history now rattling about in Daub's head.

He ran rather without any good idea of where he was going, so after a short while he became completely and thoroughly lost. Worse, this was Gaia, a massive place like no other, and his chance of running into anyone familiar was slim.

He tried to retrace his steps for several hours, the sky darkening into evening, and by the time he found someplace familiar it was quarter past ten and he looked as bad as he felt. His desire for n'Barit's unfailing guidance had been replaced by a running cycle of memories of Kirkcaldy and happier times, the only thing that could truly carry him through this ideal. It was nearly ten-forty when he finally managed to reach the gateway and later still when he stumbled up the stairs and into n'Barit's waiting anger.

"I got lost," was all he said, and n'Barit frowned instead of yelling and let him go upstairs and collapse into bed with exhaustion. When Daub woke the next morning Kirkcaldy was there with him, and he was almost tempted to pretend the whole evening had just been some bad dream. Kirkcaldy was giggling even before breakfast, and when Daub heard that it no longer seemed like the world might be closing in on him. It was just a mismatch, he said to himself, nothing more. I filled out the form and got matched with someone who was too much like me. The more he thought of it that way, the better it was, making it seem as if the matchmakers were just a little too good at their jobs. He would just have to tell them to match him with someone more different.

Daub stared at the empty sheet of paper, quill in hand, mentally composing himself. He began to write in scripted, archaic hand, the result of two terms of Period Penmanship at university.



When Laceana asked a few days later, she was pleased to hear him report that he had indeed apologized. No one, she reasoned, ought to be treated badly on a first date. She did not care to ask him what had happened, and he never mentioned it again, the incident become one more of the many that checkered Daub's colorful life.

Daub's first response was to go, "Uhm." His second response was to turn the letter over, check in the envelope to be sure he hadn't missed anything, and sit down. He set his chin in his hand and drummed his fingers on his cheek. He opened his mouth to yell for n'Barit, but n'Barit had no significant relationship experience and Daub didn't think that this was an occasion for one of those severe passages from the Teaching. Anyway, n'Barit had made it clear that on his world relationships were only to be initiates by women, which simply wouldn't work for Daub. He wanted to meet someone in his lifetime.

He would have liked to have ask Laceana, the only other mature adult he regularly spoke to, but he knew better than to call her when she was at home. She had made her wishes clear in that respect. He would simply have to deal with this on his own. He could do this. He could totally do this.

It took four drafts to get a usable one, but he managed. (Why hadn't Georgina done the same? Was her house as much a mess as her writing? Was her life? The poor girl.) He almost didn't send it at all. She had said she didn't want a rejection letter, but Daub could simply not stand by when someone was suffering. Not any more. Not after...



He read it over a dozen times to make sure it said what he needed it to. He hardly wanted to be responsible for sending a broken child over the edge by either flat-out rejecting her or rejecting her by omission. It was cruel to lead her along, yes, but if he didn't say something and she... He couldn't live with any more blood on his hands. Better to give her some hope to live for than nothing at all. When she was in a more stable place he could break it to her, though by then he hoped she wouldn't feel any need for him whatsoever.

Daub's hand shook a little as he put the letter into the envelope. This was a risk. There was a time he would have done it just for the sake of riskiness, but now he had other people to worry about. N'Barit, Kirkcaldy. Spork, I hope this doesn't come back to haunt me.

The sinking feeling in the pit of Daub's stomach became so large it threatened to encompass him completely. His heart fluttered in his chest. He dashed to the rubbish bin, but it was empty. Laceana was good at her job.

In a panic now, Daub flew down the stairs and out the front door, looking. Laceana had emptied the bins, but the trash had not yet been picked up, or disappeared off wherever it was that trash went in this ragtag neighborhood. He untied the bags and tried to identify the source of the contents. There were only three small bags. When the maid came two or three times a week and the trash service just as often, there was rarely much to be thrown out.

There, in the third bag, were the former contents of the bin next to his writing desk. The rough drafts of his last letter to Georgina were in the middle.

Daub seemed suddenly to realize where he was. His head shot up like a meerkat from its hole and he looked around, suspicious. Then he ran for his life back to the door, papers in hand. He passed a very confused-looking n'Barit and Kirkcaldy, who had been attracted by the commotion when he ran downstairs and out the door, and did not even notice Ami Mitsura was visiting. Daub had no time to answer their questions. He nearly tripped over himself in his desperation to return to his writing room.

Daub laid the drafts out on the table. Here, recorded in ink, was his entire thought process, from written sentences to little note snippets designed to keep his mind on track when he was writing. How many times had he drifted off and nearly lost his place completely in the letter? Daub did not even try to remember.

N'Barit appeared at the doorway. He elbowed his way into the writing room, crutches thumping hollowly on the wood flooring, and stood behind Daub as Daub reconstructed history. From the notes, Daub was able to figure out exactly what he had written in the letter to Georgina, and he rewrote it on the spot.



"I don't understand this," Daub finally concluded. N'Barit just frowned, no more than usual, but enough to make clear he was really frowning and not just wearing his usual disapproving face. He patiently waited for Daub to jump into whatever train wreck of thought Daub was having, but all Daub did was sit there with mind racing for a good two minutes. "Has... has anybody been in our rubbish?"

N'Barit's brow furrowed. "Binnin?" he repeated. Sometimes the fact that he was not a native speaker got in the way of his understanding Daub's more rapid speech

"You know, like, rummaging around, looking for things."

N'Barit happened to know quite a bit about rummaging in the trash, having spent quite a considerable period of his life homeless, but he had not bothered with such antics since moving into Daub's house. "No."

Daub tried again, so desperately hopeful his voice was cracking. "Hanging about? Nosing around? Perhaps at night when we wouldn't see her?"

There was clear evidence of confusion on n'Barit's face and he gave up on trying to unravel the riddle. "What are you talking about?" he demanded crossly.

Daub handed n'Barit the letters -- Georgina's and the reconstruction of what he had sent her. "Just look. Look! Oh, by Spork, this is frightening, truly frightening. Where did she get all this, if not from our rubbish?"

Thanks to Daub, n'Barit had been learning how to read English to a small extent, but he was nowhere near the level required to make sense of the letter, much less an unfamiliar handwriting like Georgina's. To n'Barit, Georgina's handwriting looked like a totally different language from Daub's. He yelled at the top of his voice, "Ami!"

"Oh, is Ami here?" Daub asked, dazed. A moment later Ami was in the doorway, Kirkcaldy a step behind. Daub began pacing back and forth, hands clasped behind his back, waiting for verdict as Ami read the letters. Kirkcaldy gently stopped Daub's pacing and sat him down in his chair. When Ami was done reading she looked at n'Barit. Daub held his hands up. "Do you see? She's nutters, innit? Stark raving. Cor blimey, what if she's stalking me?!" He rubbed his head, stretching his already long face.

Kirkcaldy helpfully patted Daub on the back, ever the optimist. "It's okay, Daddy," she said despite not knowing what the problem was. Daub was typically cheered by the vague reassurance, but the sudden thought of what someone what might do to Kirkcaldy was sobering.

"I haven't seen anyone hanging around," Ami said when Daub asked her, "and no one would be able to get past security." She was right. The neighborhood they lived in went beyond a gated community where security and access was concerned. In comparison, the average gated community looked like a public park.

Kirkcaldy was reading the letters now, because she had insisted she be allowed to, and she came to the same conclusion as Ami. "It'll be okay, Daddy. Dyadin will protect us." She gazed happily at n'Barit, her confidence in both of her fathers absolute.

Suddenly having so much responsibility shoved onto him when he could not understand the circumstances, n'Barit looked uneasy. He had no clue who or what he was supposed to be protecting them from in this instance, and while of course he protected his wards from everything, it was useful to at least know some semblance of the situation in order to mount a proper defense. Barrigaters were warrior-leaders, but central to the profession was the idea that knowledge was power, which was why barrigaters were taken for training as infants and spent fifteen rotations in school and another fifteen rotations as an apprentice. It was a sobering fact that, had n'Bart not become disbodied, he would have recently been appointed his own wardship on Yuul, having just passed his thirty-second rotation.

"If it'll make you feel better, I'll stay the evening," said Ami quite suddenly.

Daub's enthusiastic relief was immediate. "Really?" he exclaimed breathlessly. He had as much faith in n'Barit as Kirkcaldy, but unlike Kirkcaldy he had a good idea of some of n'Barit's limitations, and he was mostly worried n'Barit would get hurt somehow.

"Sure," said Ami, "I'll just go grab my bedroll." N'Barit looked positively overwhelmed at all of this, still not sure what was going on, but realizing he was probably in for a lot more than he ever bargained.

That night, all was quiet around the house, just as usual. There were no stalkers out to rummage through the trash bags and there had never been any despite Daub's fearful imaginings. The only anomalous items of any note were that, the next morning, Ami had not unfurled her bedroll, and she and n'Barit were both very late for breakfast.