Welcome to Gaia! ::

It was summer, it was fall, it was winter, it was spring and Gullien was barefoot in the garden measuring out her steps in the morning dew. It was the first morning that there was dew, in fact. Winter had unkindly overstepped its bounds and the garden had been cold hard frost for much longer than it should have. But spring had finally trumphed and Gullien was out early to enjoy the cool wet grass between her toes and to water the first buds in her container garden.
It's nice to be able to rise early again. she thought. Winter took its toll on her just like any other animal and she often found herself sleeping the dark mornings away. It was bliss to be able to get up in the mornings and see the sun again.

The flowers were coming up well. They should; Gullien didn't have a green thumb but she was trying and three years of trying (and failing) had to amount to something. They were only buds so far, but they all seemed to be coming up nicely. There were daffodils, peonies, tulips, rosemary and Byron flitting about and screaming his fool head off over one of the flowerpots. Wait... what?
Gullien dropped her watering can and sprinted over the Spiritkin.

"Byron! What is it? What's going on?"
"Augh!"
"Byron!"
"Augh!"
"BYRON!"
"Augh! Augh! AUUUUGH!"

Still screaming, the Spiritkin hovered empathically over one of the empty flowerpots. Gullien eyed him nervously before crouching on the ground and slowly tilting over the flower pot. Rather than what she expected (a giant bug, a hamster, nothing or a dead Nim) a small green egg rolled out of the pot and lay glowing in the yard.



"What... what is this thing?" Gullien asked Byron, poking the little egg gently. It was squishy, like a water balloon, but it didn't seem dangerous or too fragile to pick up. She carefully lifted the egg as Byron whizzed about the garden, still screaming. Huh, must be screams of joy then. She never really knew with him.

"Mine!" He told her proudly, finally coming to rest on her shoulder as she stood up with the egg. "It's yours? You laid it?" she asked, somewhat incredulous, but... what did she know about Spiritkin breeding.

"No! Me! Noooo!" He glared in return.

"It's not your egg, but it's you... It's like you? Is it a Spiritkin egg?" She looked down at the squishy little thing. She hadn't know Spiritkin could just... appear like that. When she'd gotten Byron's egg as a gift, her friend Ed had gotten it from a store. She'd thought they were some kind of man-made creature. Looks like she'd have to go to that store herself and find out more about Spiritkin. First though, she needed to take care of the egg. It was dripping and the more it dripped, the squisher and smaller it seemed to be getting.

"C'mon Byron... let's go put this in some water in the house." She told the little cinnamon Spiritkin, patting him on the head as she walked back with dew-covered feet.

Normally the start of spring meant the end of soup. Spring quickly progressed from cool days full of buds, baby rabbits and light jackets to scorching days packed with massive dandelions, yards full of rodents and shorts. But it was still early enough in spring for the wind to have winter in it and the day was cool and wet, perhaps with showers later in the evening. There was enough sun to make the day still seem cheerful and enough cold to excuse Gullien's bringing out her largest pot to make one last big stew of the year.

Gullien hummed as she worked, her tables and counters full of opened cans and empty bags. For the last season stew she always emptied out her pantry and freezer, pulling out the assorted produce she had stored last fall. She didn't get out much in the winter. Part stew and part curry, the pot was full of apples from the atrium, potatoes, carrots and tomatoes stored from the garden, fall mushrooms gathered from the nearby woods and any and all meat she had in the refrigerator that hadn't gone green or whose smell hadn't knocked her or Byron out. It was a massive stew meant to clean out all the old food and make way for the new, and would probably last for many meals when frozen.

Speaking of Byron, he was sitting on the counter, still a bit white from his exploration of the empty flour bags and happily chewing on a carrot. Gullien kept a weathered eye on him as she stirred. He was well known for randomly and suddenly deciding to hurl himself into the stove or stuff himself into a empty can. Really, it was too the point where she shouldn't allow him in the kitchen at all if baking was going to take place. He was behaving himself for now though. He loved stew days. The fact that she had strategically hidden tidbits of food all over the room probably helped as well.

It was a rare treat to have him underfoot again. Usually he waited patiently in the bedroom, watching the eggs in the fishtank and amusing himself playing video games and drawing pictures with his tail. This morning when she'd woken him up, however, he'd simply smiled at her and followed her down the kitchen, unworried about the charges he was leaving behind. Gullien wasn't fooled though. She'd known Byron long enough to know that that particular set of his mouth and that subtle twist of his tail meant "I know something you doooooon't know!"

------------------------------------------

Byron was halfway through the treats and Gullien was halfway through her remaining clean dishes when they both heard the noises start from upstairs. It was partly an odd wet peeling sound, and partly a thick organic sound, soft and wholly unpleasant. Gullien glanced over at Byron but he merely started back at her, black eyes as wide an innocent as he could make them. Holding the soup spoon firmly in one hand Gullien started up the stairs with Byron perched on her shoulder.

By the time they made it to the top of the stairs the noise had stopped completely. There were no zombies in the hall and nothing to mark that a window had been opened or a door slipped ajar. Gullien prodded at Joshua briefly, but he just murmured indistinctely and feel back into limbo. The only presence he could pick up was hers and the only thing disturbing his oblivion was her nervousness.
Gullien scanned the hall, but if she could pick something up and neither could Josh, there wasn't really a point in checking the rooms. Byron, bored, had already drifted back down to the kitchen and the stew. Gullien shrugged and turned to check her other two charges before joining him.

The Nim egg was exactly how she left it, still resting gently on the bottom of the aquarium and bobbing slightly with the filter's current. The Wethkin egg on the other hand... looked dented. There was a distinct crease in one side and the egg's glow had dimmed greatly. Gullien hesitated over the aquarium worried. Was this a natural stage for the Wethkin egg? Byron had simply exploded out of his egg, leaving cinnamon shrapnel in her door, but this Wethkin clearly had an affinaty for water. Perhaps the egg just... melted? But if there was something wrong with the egg, she had better act now...
I have no proof that there's anything wrong with the egg... and surely Byron would be bothered if the egg got sick or something. He's so in tune with it.
Well, if it doesn't look better in the morning, I'll try to find that Wethkin Shoppe. I can just take the whole aquarium in tommorow, I don't want to risk something worse happened to the egg if I take it out now."
With that decided, Gullien nodded and left the room. Right, if it didn't get better, she was going to the Wethkin Shoppe tommorow.

Byron was waiting for her, hopping in the air in excitement. "Stew!" He cried out eagerly. Clearly, he had already forgotten about the strange noise upstairs.
"Uw, uw, stew!"
"Right, right, the stew. I'm on it."

Gullien lifted the stew lid to use the spoon she'd been carrying.

"EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!"

There are few truly foolish things one can do. One of those things is popping out of stew pot into a retired ninja's face and screaming. Even a spoon counts as a blunt object.

Gullien stared, dazed, at the small green thing she had just swatted out of the sky. It stared back with black eyes for a moment and then burst into tears. Loudly.
Byron, not to be outdone, immediently joined in. Gullien stared back and forth from stew, to Spiritkin, to Wethkin. Great, the stew had a Wethkin in it, the Wethkin had stew on it, she wasn't going to eat anything that had a Wethkin in it, and everyone was still crying. Sighing, Gullien cut the heat on the stove and went to meet her new family member.

Goodbye stew.
Hello Rossi.

Gullien wandered down the front hall stairs sleepily. The morning light was just cresting over the horizon and it was time to feed the koi. Of course, the water nim feed the goldfish that lived in the atrium, but the koi didn't live there year round, unlike the goldfish. Now that it was summer, they were outside in the large, deceptively natural-looking pond in her backyard.
When she had first moved to Gaia, she had bought a small koi at one of the stores, nostalgic for even a small taste of home. Since then her whimsy had blossomed from an interest to an obsession. She had a large koi for the growing adults and another with a waterfall for the growing fry and pregnant females, all of them filtered, ph-balanced, carefully placed for the right balance of sun and shade and routinely checked for traces of pollution, sickness, imbalance and the more harmful insect life that occasionally appeared. Matthais had also spent a day religious peeing around every one of them when he was still a territorial baby and that seemed to keep the raccoons and herons away. She kept many of the koi for herself and sold others, both to her fellow Gaians and to dealers she knew back in Nihon. It made a very tidy profit and kept her from having to use her other skills in Gaia. As a side bonus, it kept the mosquitoes down. She wasn't just proud of her koi, she was quitely smug about them. There was a pleasing irony about carefully raising the same creatures she had eagerly eaten in her past life.

She retrieved her sandels from the front hall and the large bag of scientific koi-chow from it's shelf on her back porch. Humming happily and still in her kanji pajamas, she wandered through the backyard. The fry pond was feed first, baby fish were always vulnerable and the best remedy for that was to make them adults as soon as possible. The morning remained usual until she rounded a corner and found Rossi sitting in front of the main adult pond, barely visibly in the grass and clearly focused on something.

It wasn't that unusual for Rossi to join Gullien at the koi pond each morning for the AM Feeding. It was unusual for Rossi to be there early, though. It was VERY unusual for Rossi to be... squirming. It wasn't so much that Rossi herself was squirming . It was just that various parts of her body seemed to be moving without her permission. It was disquieting and very very suspicious.

"Rossi..." Gullien began warily, "What are you up too?"
The little puff jumped nervously and immediently glanced away from Gullien.
"Mmmmph!"
"Are you okay? Is there something in your mouth?"
"Mmmph-mph."
"Are you suuuuuure?"
Gullien crouched down next to Rossi, trying to look closer. It looked like there was something...
Rossi began to edge away, black eyes darting as Gullien lowered herself to hands and knees, looming over the Wethkin.
"Mmmph..."
"Are you really sure... I think you're up to some-ROSSI!"
The little Wethkin tried to dart away, but she couldn't get her now-heavy body into the air before Gullien caught her with both hands.
"ROSSI! What the hell is THAT!? A koi!?"
"...mmm..."

It was true. There, barely seen inside the little puff's body, was a baby koi, probably from the fry pond. As Gullien watched it thrashed its body briefly, creating the squirming in Rossi's body. It quickly gave up its struggles though and simply hung inside the Wethkin, staring accusingly at Gullien and no doubt wondering what kind of cosmic joke was being played on it.



Gullien stared at the Wethkin. Were she more of a koi fanatic, she would already be screaming. But as a reformed koi-eater, she was more interested in exactly WHY a Wethkin would want to eat a koi than the fact that her koi was being... eaten.

"Rossi... exactly what are you doing with my koi?"
"Mmm..."
"Rossi. Look, firstly, spit out the koi. Then tell me exactly what you're up to."
"Mm!"
"Rossi, you're going to kill it. It's going to suffocate if it doesn't get digested!"
"MM!"
"Rossi, SPIT IT OUT!"

The little Wethkin attempted to heave herself into the air again. Grabbing her between pointer finger and thumb, Gullien gave one good hard spank with her other hand. The fish popped out of Rossi's mouth and flopped into the adult koi pond, where it would no doubt be eaten by its larger relatives.
Rossi burst into tears.

Einna walked along smiling to herself as Broll perched happily on her shoulder. "Well Broll, it's about time you saw more of the world than just that jungle." She carried a picnic basket in one hand with various food items in it as they walked along a small trail in a forest not too far from their beach.

Broll was looking around in all directions taking in the new scenary. It was similar to the jungle but not as scary. It was so pretty!! There was no ocean here but he could forgve that. Besides, he didn't like the water anyways, he was kind of missing the sea foam but it's not like he was going to be here forever. And there were so many new things to see!! Plus he had a feeling that there was a bag of sunflower seeds in that basket with his name written on them.


"C'mon, Rossi!" Gullien called. "You gotta go early if you want to find quail eggs!"
She'd been waiting for this trip all week. She loved eggs. Any kind, any species. A carry-over from her tanuki days, but one she had no intention of getting rid off. "If you're still pouting over eating eggs you can stay behind with Bryon. I won't mind." She hummed as she threw a basket over her shoulder and strode to the back gate. It was shaping up to be a lovely day.

Rossi pouted for a moment. Gullgull would never let her live down thinking that all eggs had eggbabies inside them. It was a reasonable mistake! Huh. If she wasn't so nice, she'd totally make Gull go alone and find littleeggs by herself. But there wasn't anything interesting at home and squishyByron would just spend the day asleep. Besides, she wanted to explore. "WawawawawaWA!" she called out, bobbling up to Gull and landing on her usual spot on the ninja's shoulder.


Whistling to herself she looked up at the bright clear day and grinned. Yep, this was definintly what she and Broll needed. A nice relaxing picnic. They came to a beautiful clearing and she set the basket down. "Well Broll? What do you say?"

Personally, Broll didn't care if they sat inside a cave, he just wanted those sunflower seeds! "Isgoodgoodgood!" He said as he hopped down from Einna's shoulder and bobbed excitedly towards the basket. Five feet, four feet, three, two.... so close! He had almost reached those glorious seeds! Almo--- "WAH!!" He cried out as Einna scooped him up. "Nononononono!" He complained as he tried to get to the basket.

"Calm down crazy!! Let me get them out of the basket, sheesh!" Einna exclaimed as she picked the basket up out of his reach. He was obsessed! She shook her head fondly at her little Wethkin and then went back to whistling as she pulled apples, sandwiches, chips, drinks, and of course, sunflower seeds out of her basket.


Gullien swung open the gate and strode happily into the backyard, taking in the scents of morning dew and sun. The forest's year-round carpet of dead leaves crunched under her slippers as she strode onto the overgrown tour path. Funny... usually the path was as covered with leaves as the forest floor but it looked like someone had cleared a trail. Did they have a visitor all the way out here? Closing her eyes, she sniffed for a moment, trying to extend her senses...
There. Someone was around here. Doing... something. She'd really let herself go if that was all she could tell. Still, it wasn't like a tourist could do much too her. She'd better go and give the lay of the land. It was amazing how many sightseers didn't know better than to eat any old mushroom they found.

Rossi chirped in surprise as Gullgull stepped onto the forest path. This way led out, not in! "Beh?" She asked, confused.

"Looks like someone's visiting the forest. We're just going to go see if they know what they're doing. Better hide in the basket for now."

"Pah." Rossi grumbled, but floated into the basket and wiggled under the cloths Gullien had planned to wrap the quail eggs in.


Einna rolled out a large checkered blanket to sit on and plopped down next to the basket. "Alright Broll, here you go." Taking out a hand full of the previously shelled sunflower seeds (it was faster if she did it before so that Broll wasn't trying to eat them out of her hand) she laid them down in front of Broll and grinned as he started in on them like he hadn't eaten in days.

Broll was in heaven. Sunflower seeds!! Just for him!! He gobbled them up as fast as he could, choking a little bit but refusing to stop cramming them into his mouth for such a minor thing as not being able to breath.

As Broll gorged himself, Einna took a look around the forest. It looked so peaceful and quiet. She wondered to herself if anyone lived around here. It seemed like a nice place to stay, she hoped she wasn't trespassing on anyone's property.


Gullien looked around for a second, sniffing. Whoever the person was, they weren't that far into the woods. Still pretty close to where the clearing started. She strode along the trail, making sure the kick up a lot of noise with the leaves that were left. Not quite, not quite... there. A small blob under the trees up ahead. She debated sneaking up on them.. just a little. For pratice.
No, tourists tended to be jumpy.

"Hellllo!" she called out instead.

Rossi rolled her eyes inside the basket. Boring boring boring and Gullgull would take forever. Blah blah blah.



Einna jerked her head around in surprise as she heard a hello called out from the forest. She could see what looked like a person coming their way and she turned quickly toward Broll. "Come here little one, hop in the basket."

Broll was way too busy snacking on seeds to care what Einna was saying. He did care however when she snatched him up and stuffed him in the basket. "Wa!!Hey!!" He yelled in protest.

"Shhhhh! There is someone heading this way and I just want you to stay hidden until I figure out who they are.

Broll sat in a corner of the basket and sulked. He didn't even have any seeds to eat.


Huh, interesting person to find in the woods... Gullien stode forward, tail wagging to check out the tourist. Girl, light skin, dark hair. Wolf tail? Maybe one of those human/anthros she'd seen before in Barton Town. Hopefully she won't be a snob like some of the townies. Gullien grinned and wagged her own coon tail.
"Hi! Sorry to interrupt your picnic. I'm Gullien. I kinda watch over these woods, so I thought I'd pop over and say hi, see if there was anything you needed to know. I've got some maps in the bag and I can show you where the nearest rest area is." She discreetly checked out the picnic. Nope, no mushrooms. She was smarter than the last tourist. But... a picnic for one person? "Are you alone?"

Rossi sighed. Blah blah blah. Bi, B'm Bullien ban Bi batch blover blese boods. Booooring! Just throw a map and go! Littleeggs! Other things were probably already eating them or something!


Einna smiled at Gullien and tried to calm down. She didn't look dangerous. "Hi, I'm Einna. I was worried I was trespassing on someone's land or something. I'm glad to hear I'm not." She grinned and was about to politely decline a map when Gullien asked her if she was alone. "Oh well...." She glanced towards the basket and wondered wether or not she should bring out Broll. There was a chance she wouldn't be able to see him anyways. Sometimes people weren't able to see Wethkin, or so she had heard.

Broll rolled his eyes and decided not to leave this decision up to Einna. Plus he was bored. And it was dark. AND he had no sunflower seeds!! He popped up out of the basket and stared up at the human. Why was he hiding in a basket? It's not like she was a cat or anything.


Gullien jerked, her tail bristling like a cat when the creature popped out of the basket. Not so much that she'd never seen anything like it, but that she hadn't sensed it at all. Her hand lowered, fingers brushing at the switchblade she kept in her pocket for a moment as she crouched slightly. The hell was it? Wait... the size. The antenna. The forehead jewel. The faint smell of ozone. Huh. Well... that was cool. "Is that a Wethkin, then? Or a Spiritkin?" She asked, easing from her crouch into a slouch. She lowered one hand into the basket, gently pressing down on Rossi. She didn't want the little dew popping out before she had evaluated the situation.

Rossi made a muffled noise as a gentle palm covered her. The staydown symbol. This wasn't blah blah blah. What was Gullgull doing up there? Maybe there would be running. It was always fun when Gull ran.


Einna was just as surprised as this Gullien character when Broll popped out of the basket. What the hell? She did believe she had told him to stay in there. He never listens. She sighed and was about to figure out how to explain him when she heard the word Wethkin. She quirked an eyebrow and looked back at Gullien. "You know what a Wethkin is?" Well that was an obvious question. Einna rolled her eyes to herself and tried again. "He's a Wethkin, his name is Broll. And he was supposed to be staying quiet in that basket." On this last sentence she looked at Broll and gave him an annoyed look.

Broll grinned back at her and looked at the new human. Gullien, Einna had called her. She looked different than Einna. He had just assumed they all looked alike since he had never seen any other humans before. Huh. Waving his antennae around he tried to figure out what was in her basket. Maybe she had Sunflower seeds!!


Gullien raised an eyebrow as she studied Broll. He didn't look particularly like Rossi. More... fluffy? Certainly less sleet and wet-looking. Well, that pamphlet she got with her Spiritkin egg did say that there were a variety of Wethkin and they could appear to anyone who could see magic. Broll certainly didn't look particularly dangerous, and neither did this Einna-person. Hell, why not. "Yeah." she said wryly, lifting her hand off of Rossi and using it to scoop the little dew into the air. "You could say I know a little about Wethkin."

"WHEEEEE!" Rossi cried as she was tossed into the air. She loved that! The blah has stopped, the tourists must have went. Good! Without even checking she turned to Gullien. "Buuha?" Littleegg time, right?

ch-ch-ch-chaaaanges!

(Hello again, Matthias!)