Welcome to Gaia! ::

Kiri was enjoying one of her rare quiet days. Such days used to be a common occurrence but that was before Alice joined her family, her energy was infectious, it even affected Simon causing him to go out more often to the local university and major libraries. Today he was out meeting another book collector, Mrs. Potts was out shopping and Alice was also out.

After watering her new pot plant Kiri settled down to focus on some of her personal art and projects. The plant was a relatively new one, given to her at a Halloween party by an old friend of her grand-uncle. She had known him since she was just a little girl and saw him as some sort of honorary uncle and as far as she knew it was reciprocated.

Uncle was originally from Scotland and the flower he gave her was White Heather, it represented good luck in Scotland and was supposed to be not only pleasant to have around but also nearly impossible to kill. A long time friendship meant he knew Kiri had no green thumb and often forgot about plants, still this plant had been given to her with his feelings and she was fond of it hoping that it would survive and continue to fill her studio with it’s sweet scent.


Frustrated Kiri ended up giving up on her drawing, for some reason all she found herself drawing was this dark haired youth, he looked about 19 and came in lots of different costumes, everything from smuggling smocks to formal wear suited to a noble. She liked the look of him, a kind of lovable rogue but he wasn’t what she had intended to spend this valuable time drawing.

Hoping to vent some of her frustration she got up to stretch and was surprised to see something that looked like a colourful pile of clothes in her backyard. It reminded her of what she thought Mrs. Whatsit from ‘A Wrinkle of Time’ would look like, layers of clothes which suggested a nice but crazy old lady hidden within, mostly in bright colours with lots of patterns. She had no idea how the lady had gotten in her backyard when it was locked but was soon distracted as the old lady pointed at either Kiri or something just under her.

It was then she realized that her ‘good luck’ present was on fire, panicking she focused on trying to put it out, the logical thing would have been to just push it off the windowsill and let it smash on the ground but that didn’t even occur to her. Hurriedly she looked around for some water or sand or anything she could put on the pot plant to try and salvage it.

In her hurry she didn’t even notice that the old lady had disappeared and the backyard was still locked up leaving no means of getting into the backyard or out of it and when she turned around all thoughts of the lady were wiped from her mind, there sitting where her burning bush should be was a small child.

In the days following Alvar's birth Kiri became increasingly convinced that he was not at all like Alice. Alice while full of energy and likely to get into mischief was an obediant and open girl. Alvar seemed almost like Peter Pan to Kiri, rebellious, mischievious and cautious around people older than himself. He also seemed to have Peter Pan's ability with people, despite constantly causing mischief for the sake of being mischievious everyone he met still seemed to like him.

One thing he wasn't like Peter in was he couldn't seem to decide if he was scared of heights or not. She thought that he probably was because he was always pale when he climbed to high places but the devil in him which caused him to do anything he thought was reckless or against the rules continously caused him to climb anyway.

Kiri puzzled Alvar, even if he couldn't explain it he expected adults to be like Mrs Potts, possibly nice but very firm on what was allowed and not, this is what make defing them fun. Kiri was different. She had some iron rules which she wouldn't budge from but for the most part she let him make his own mistakes and deal with the results, occassionally she would give advice but she would always then stand back and let him choose if he followed it. Because whenever she made a rule or suggested something she was nearly always right and came out on top it made going against her not nearly as fun.

Many would think this was very bad parenting and in some ways it was, most of her rules were either for her convinience or because it the danger wasn't obvious and was likely to cause permanent damage. The fact was that Kiri believed that despite everything Alvar was a clever kid and that the best way to deal with him was to give him the facts and let him make his own decisions. Direct battles of will only caused trouble if they happened too often.

Mrs Potts was of mixed feelings, she was happy Kiri had a proper male heir but didn't understand or get on with Alvar who alternated between conning her and directly going against her. Simon simply took to locking his door, like Kiri he didn't have much in the way of rules but woudn't risk his books getting damaged in a ill adviced prank.

Alice and Alvar puzzled each other. Alice was good natured, friendly and wanted everyone to like her but above all else was a good girl. Alvar was cunning, sneaky, mischeivous but rarely meant real harm. For the most part they got on but both were very stubborn in their own ways.

Alvar once again explores the great unknown outside the house, this time the park, including lots of things to climb.

Playground Antics

He meets:

Clara
Nero

Alvar goes to the library. He discovers magic tricks and talks to a fish about flying.

A quiet place (prp)

Meets Nero again.

A trip to Uncle Sinclair’s

Two sets of eyes weighed each other up while a third looked on in concern.

Today was the first meeting between Alvar and Uncle Sinclair, his godfather. Sinclair Wood was old, austere and an academic, he was also every inch a gentleman. He had been surprised but thrilled when his favourite honorary niece, the grand niece of one of his closest friends, had called him to inform him that the white heather that he had given her had not only spontaneously combusted but also turned into a young boy, who she had named Alvar after her grand-uncle. She had wanted him to know what had happened to his plant and also ask if he would be the boy’s godfather. He had been happy to accept, glad that he had had any part in Kiri having a proper heir. Alice her older daughter was a sweet heart but wasn’t a suitable heir. Frankly like most Labradors Alice lacked dignity and wouldn’t survive long as the head of an old and well-off family like the Faesons. What had puzzled Sinclair was that for a long time Kiri kept on coming up with excuses for why she couldn’t bring Alvar over to see him.

Now looking looking into dignified but highly suspicious eyes he was starting to get an idea. He had heard many stories of Gaia’s ‘children’, strange children who could come from the oddest of starts, and often carried baggage with them from previous lives. It appeared that Alvar was one of them and didn’t like adults.

“You’re mother said that you enjoy high places. If you go up those steps you’ll find yourself at the top of the tower, there is a telescope there as well if you wish the look at it.” Sinclair informed Alvar watching to see how he would respond.
Alvar thought about this, been raised by Kiri and Alice had gone a long way to removing his instinct to automatically go against anything that sounded like an order and this man wasn’t like Mrs Potts, there was something impressive about him in a quiet way. In the end he decided to follow the suggestion even if he didn’t know what a telescope was. “Thank you” Alvar replied with his sweet smile before heading for the stairs. Sinclair noticed he hasn’t once glanced at his mother for permission.

“Well that was interesting, I half expected him to refuse.” Sinclair commented to Kiri.

“Go back a couple months and he probably would have. He doesn’t deal well with order, rules or authority.”

“Still he has a good air around him, I think he will grow up to be a good heir for you.”

“Well I agree so long as I can stop him from entering the life of a con-man. He doesn’t seem malicious but he can be ruthless and loves fooling people.”

Sinclair considered this, Kiri, her grand-uncle even he were the types to avoid getting involved with people, academics who enjoyed their ivory towers. It appeared that Alvar was much more a people person than they were. “Been a rebel and manipulative aren’t necessary bad things, especially in our world but he will need to learn cunning as well. Perhaps once he’s school age you should send him to your old school. He will encounter plenty of authority, hard-headedness and people to interact and con there.”

“Perhaps,” Kiri agreed, “But first I want to ground him in good ethics and morals. He can be odd, sometimes I feel that he already has baggage that isn’t part of his original nature. He strikes me as not been reckless but rather a good tactician but he is constantly doing silly things without thinking, like a little devil is constantly on his shoulder. And I won't have him ruined by a group of high-handed idoits” Kiri had made nearly no friends during her school years.

Both of them knew that Alvar had not in fact gone up the stairs but was instead sitting at the bottom of them eavesdropping but didn’t care it was good for him to hear these things and it wasn’t the kind of thing that could easily be said to a child’s face.

After Alvar decided to show up again, with a very credible story about the tower, clearly he had gone up for a while at least as he described the telescope, they had a nice afternoon tea with Alvar on his best behaviour but asking many searching questions about his godfather. And also showing him some of his card tricks, he was bored of only having his family to tes them on. Kiri smiled and sat back to watch the old man and the child verbally fence. It ended in it been agreed that Alvar would come around once a week for lessons in chess and Go. Which uncle Sinclair loved and that Alvar thought sounded interesting.