Welcome to Gaia! ::

Oqaia was weary but awake when she answered the knock at the door. She'd been dragging through the books Valelldia had given her: did the gypsy trade ever end, or even ever make sense? She'd settle for a little clarity- just seeds of them, that possibly she could sow. But every time she thought she had an answer, more weeds cropped up, more complications. More magic.

"Caroline!" A bleary smile matched her eyes. "You've no idea how glad I am to see someone. Please, come in."

"Off?" Oqaia shook her head, feeling somewhat dimwitted for the blunt repetition of the word. "I'm sorry. What about it seems off? Where did you get it?" It was a normal looking parasol, if not a bit... pink. ...And frilly.

Oqaia staved off a yawn. Her eyes carried hefty, ugly bags beneath them. Those couldn't be staved off.

"May I see it, please?" She didn't quite know what she was to do with it when she had it, but figured that if there weren't any identifying marks, the least she could do was take it to Val.

Oqaia was about to nod and agree that she was a bundle of frayed, sleepless nerves, and to remark how ironic she'd always felt that it was perfectly innocent a thing for one woman to say to another... but never a man to a woman, when the parasol touched her fingers. Then she woke up quite a bit.

"Good lord, sister, it's a Fortunette." She blinked. "How did I know that?" She asked herself, Caroline, and no one. "Who did you say gave this to you?"

"Half sister..." Oqaia said, mostly to herself, and very quietly, before turning the parasol over in her hands and handing it back to Caroline.

"Seems like you have another one. Quite a destiny you have, Caroline. ...Would you like a reading?"

Oqaia hesitated at the cabinet with the fortunetelling implements. She wasn't very good at the runes, yet. And sometimes the cards confused her. But they were the best bet. She took the cards, ancient and supple, that Valelldia had given her, and shuffled them. Then she lay three on the table before Caroline.

"The World. Family. The Lovers." She examined them for a moment, and how they fell onto the other, and then explained it to the gypsy mother.

"The world is your world, the caravan, family means that this child will need to know that it has lots of family waiting for it. And the Lovers just means touch. I think what will do it is to have four or five people to touch... the parasol at the same time, and for you to 'introduce' it to some of its future family."

Caroline pokes her head into her wagon, looking for Ro. "Och, Ro!" she says. "I've a surprise for ye. Vaya conmigo."

Rojiza, curious, follows her mother out of the wagon. Mother has that outrageous parasol--she wonders what Valelldia had said about it.

Baptiste hangs up the last of the laundry on the lines strung between his wagon and an obliging nearby tree. He looks in the direction his companion was starting to disappear toward. He notes a swarthy young woman and a teenaged girl. And a frivolously ornate pink umbrella. "Alright, I'll come," he says to Tamlin's back as she walks away. He wipes his damp hands on his pants legs and follows her.

Caroline smiles and waves at Tamlin. "Och, I'm in need of some help," she says. She gives the parasol an experimental twirl. "This ridiculous thing is a Fortunette, it appears," she says. "I've just spoken w'Oqaia, and she says the thing t'do to aid its transformation is have several people touch it at once, and for me t'introduce it to members of its new family."