Welcome to Gaia! ::

Gulzar smiled as he sat fishing in the glade where he made his home with Mia and their adopted children. He was catching trout, and planning on cooking some for dinner.


Dionysus sat playing on the bank with some leaf boats, and was doing a great deal of splashing and giggling in the process. The sight of the trout was making him hungry.

Celine stepped into the clearing, a bundle in her arms, and watched her family from afar. There was her father, her... mother, her cousin, all of her siblings... she hesitated to disturb the happy scene, and buried her face in the bundle. It was all Gulzar's fault, she decided. None of this would have happened if he hadn't insisted on adopting every single taur in all of the Cein Isles.

((So very, very tempted to have Celine say it's her illegitimate love child. xd ))

Celine smiled down at Dionysus, glad to see him despite herself, but frowned when Gulzar spoke. Was it that obvious that the shape wrapped up in a blanket was a baby? Crap, that was bad. "This is Geraldine," she said softly. "My... my daughter." She paused, waiting for Gulzar's reaction. Or Mia's, for that matter. She had rather hoped she could get her alone to ask for some advice before she broke the news to Gulzar.

Celine held Geraldine close. "I... don't know dad," she said, trying not to cry. She wanted rather badly to scream at him that this was all his fault, and she was only following in his footsteps. What else could she have done? Just leave her there? She started to grow angry, and glared at her father. "I'm telling you now!" she shouted. "And it's only one! Look at you! How many do you have? Ten million?" She stopped, and chewed at her lower lip, shocked at her own audacity. How had she dared yell at her own father? She loved Gulzar deeply, and wanted nothing more than to take back what she had said.


Still wrapped up in the blanket, Geraldine began to cry, woken by all of the yelling. Celine held her close, rocking her gently, but didn't know what to do. After all, she had only found Geraldine a few days before, lost and abandoned in the woods. And hungry, very hungry. She seemed to like rabbit, though, which was good because that was one of the few things Celine knew how to catch.

There were few things in this universe that Syem had been granted the knowledge of as of yet. The one thing he knew, however, was that outside of this warm and cozy shell, things were happening. And he had yet to be a part of them. He squeaked inside his plain white egg, long fingers clawing in the space that had been getting smaller since he gained consciousness, tail lashing best it could in the small space.

Finally, he felt the soft shell of the egg give way beneath his incessant scratching, and his long-fingered hand broke through the shell. He squeaked happily and shoved himself -eyes closed- through the hole, squirming in frustration to get the egg off the lower half of his body. Finally the small naga was out of the egg, and he looked down at it, and then to his own body, eyes squinted against the light. How could he have ever fit in something so small? Then, however, he turned his eyes on the rest of the forest around himself and his eyes widened, pupils shrinking. He shrunk back down and pulled the blanket that had been wrapped around his egg around his still-a-bit-damp self. He didn't recognize any of this four-leggeds, and they were all bigger than him...!

Syem gasped when the centaur trotted up to him, and he almost completely flattened himself beneath his mother's blanket, only his eyes peeking out as the other lay down in front of him. When the boy started talking however, he peeked out a bit more, flicking his thin tongue at his sibling-person. "I know who you are!" he said happily, though his voice was a rough whisper, and was very high-pitched. "You're name ith Dionyth- Dionyth- Dio-ny-thith!" he managed to get out finally, finding it impossible to keep his tongue behind those two elongated fangs. "I've heard mama talking to you before..."

Celine started to cry, but laughed nonetheless. "I'm sorry dad," she said, and wanted so terribly to give him a hug, but couldn't while she held Geraldine. "I found her in the woods, hungry... I think she was abandoned."

Geraldine squeaked happily and grabbed hold of Gulzar's thumb. Celine smiled. "I think she likes you."

Celine smiled, even though she was secretly afraid that Gulzar would drop Geraldine. "Of course dad," she said, and handed Geraldine to him. She leaned against him, both for the comfort of his embrace and so that she could snatch Geraldine back at a moments notice. For her part, Geraldine was completely unconcerned. She reached out at Celine at first, but she did rather like this new stranger. She squirmed around in the blanket, trying to get a good grip on his hair. Fortunately for Gulzar, it was out of her reach.