Welcome to Gaia! ::

Every so often there came a night in Lindy's work-week where she worked quite late; she preferred to have a whole evening devoted to getting her lesson plans done, to organising units and completing reports, to tying up the loose ends of her counselling folders -- these nights Casca stayed with her and saw the school during the evening with the apathetic eye of someone who'd done it many times.

He of course saw it from a slightly higher view now. Casca had grown. This had been a cause for minor celebration, some exquisitely awkward Talk between him and his mum, and general derisiveness from Aunt Mia. Aunt Mia liked derisiveness. It was her usual setting. He was taller than both his mother and Mia by far now -- he had been stretched out, skinny, awkward, new. Had gone wardrobe-shopping. Skinny jeans. Hair wasn't worth cutting -- he just put it back in an elastic and hoped for the best and for tranquil expressions, a riot of blue-grey curls now, awkwardly enormous clawed hands and feet that rose back on dramatic arches.

He'd bumped into things. His wings bumped into things. It was another natural state, that of bump.

It was around six-thirty that he wandered down into the carpark with a pocketful of change and a distinct boredom about lesson plans, having lost forty out of sixty-three games of Solitaire on his mother's desktop. Teenagerhood should have been about sociability. What did he have? he thought gloomily, de nada. He'd left Carl behind. He'd left the twins behind. Pretty crappy all around, really.

"Get a coffee!" his mum had said, a hopeful fob-off.

"Hey," said Casca, who did not look that surprised to see her. Ophelia was another teacherkinder unfortunate; they had passed like ships in the night in the realm of pedagogical childhood, left to their own devices occasionally after staff meetings, though Casca as ever liked to spend these in classrooms reading magazines out the library. He raised the ridges of his eyebrows in a kind of extra hello, hi, though good God his body was awkward, everything felt out of place. Ophelia could tell. He knew it.

"Daddy left you late?" he said, and approached her. "Quelle horreur. We should start a union of teacher's children, get the government to cut back on our hours. You in?"

He obediently touched his (larger) knuckles to hers, and looked her over top to bottom: there was the enchanting smell of cleaner to go along with the paint-scrubbing story, and he took pity on her. At least he didn't have to do that. "I got let out to go and get some sustenance," he said, "spelled C-O-F-F-E-E, might grab a burger if I'm inclined. You inclined," and it wasn't quite a question.

"Err," said the gargoyle, who hadn't thought about it. He looked her over again, grey eyes like agates. "That's where the plan trips up, Prosper. I'm my own transportation, sweetheart, running on biofuel. Short story is I fly. On account of not fitting into any car smaller than a van -- let me guess; you were driving."

Casca scratched the back of his head a little, obviously bemused but not wanting to ask the obvious: the how? Why? When? Who? of redundant statements. His eyebrows had shot up into his hairline, though, and he simply said -- "I can't do a jump start like that. Uh. One second."

The other boy turned away from her and immediately made for the fire escape up the side of the tech building; rather than mounting the stairs, he clambered up it with a minimum of screaming metal -- climbing up without digging his claws in for hold, which made things a little slippery -- until he was at the top of the building. It wasn't too high, but there was a stiff breeze that would work enough.

He waited for her to follow; one hand was shading his eyes as he unfurled his wings. "There's a burger place by Starbucks downtown that's adequate," he said, and -- "How fast are you, Mary Poppins?"

All Casca did was laugh. "Okay," he said. "Point, fair enough. Well. I can only go so slow -- I could carry you, you know." This was accompanied by a few eyebrow wiggles that meant nothing more than, hur hur! "I am impressed by your ability to, um, be a magical Superman? But following me is a bumpy ride, pumpkin."

At least the patronizingly cute nicknames were something he seemed to do to everyone. He liked to drawl them out. In his accent, it curiously sounded like punkin.

"Well, I'll promise that it's platonic transport, you don't do me in for sexual harrassment, and I get a burger sometime in the next ten minutes," he said, "If I talk any more about it I'm just going to lie down here and nap on the gravel, okay?"

Casca offered her his arm in a genteel fashion. When she took it, though, he made a hup! sound and dropped her into his arms like a sack of potatoes. He did seem like the casual chic type who could carry a girl without really intending anything by it; but then again he said, "Hey, nice shampoo, I've used that," before promptly dropping off the side of the building.

They caught a gust of warm air that launched them far up above the school; his wingspan opened and Ophelia saw what he meant by can only go so slow -- it wasn't just that he caught the wind and took off so fast that the wind ripped at her hair, but that they would be unexpectedly lifted by gusts, that he would lean to the side and they would suddenly be in a side-dive -- they soared over the light industrial neighbourhood that the Liberty Center was in, the evening plunging everything just enough into darkness.

Cascati was, after all, a teenage guy: when she hadn't screamed, threatened to puke or generally demanded he go slower, he'd tucked his wings in a little and gone into dive mode -- opened them up so that they took all the thermal heat from the hot, tarry road at the end of the day, launched them up into the air, kept them at a safe distance above the buildings and the traffic.

"It's kind of unwholesome seeing the sunset," he said, though he had to shout it a little -- "it's waking-up time."

The sunset was pretty; it was streaked in deep tangerines and scarlets on the horizon, quickly sinking into dusk but pretty while it lasted. The industrial area turned into downtown; there was a moment of sickening uncertainty as he rammed them straight into a tall building -- then as, at the last moment, he flipped and sank his claws into the steel-reinforced concrete like it was Play-doh, taking them up on one arm and two legs (the other arm was still belted around Ophelia) until they were up to the roof.

"s**t," he said a bit regretfully, looking down at the damage. "I'm not meant to do that. Oh, well, what the hell."

He launched them off the other side of the building, eating up the distance in easy, loping, dipping strides -- simply jumped down into the parking lot, wings held aloft in a controlled drift, hitting the ground again with a slight stutter of steps and a huge thwok!. A few nearby car alarms went off.

"Okay," he said, letting her down lightly and brushing himself off. "It's down the street."

Despite being cool with a capital unconcerned, Casca still had a s**t-eating grin: he knew how fast he'd gone.