Welcome to Gaia! ::

“Bella!” My head snapped up when my roommate shouted my name. Well, her version of my name, anyway. My real name is Isabella, but most people call me Izzy. Abby was a fan of a book series where the main character preferred ‘Bella’ to ‘Isabella.’ Well, bully for Bella, but I like Izzy. Nothing I could do, however, would get Abby to call me that.

By her expression, I could tell that Abby had been trying to get my attention for several minutes. I’d been staring into the mirror propped up against the wall under my bed, musing and attempting to remember being younger than thirteen. I used to stare at mirrors then, too, but I also used to pretend that they would let me go places. I got all kinds of grief from my family for this, but I didn’t mind being the butt of all manner of “self-involved” jokes as long as I got my “pretend time.” I used to pretend that there were magical beings there, and that I was one of them. It was fun enough that I kept at it until I was thirteen or so, long past the time when most kids let their imaginary friends go. I guess I needed a creative outlet to balance the math and science that even my junior high emphasized.

Although I wasn’t pretending to be somewhere else anymore, I still devoted a lot of my attention to the mirror if it caught my eye. I seemed to be doing more of that lately than usual, perhaps because my dreams had been filled with half-remembered faces and familiar voices for the last few weeks, and my thoughts had therefore been about seven years in the past.

“Sorry, Abby,” I said, shaking my head to clear it, “I was daydreaming.” Thrown together freshman year by the computer at the University of Minnesota, Abby Connor and I had bonded over a shared love of cult 80s movies and Brendan Urie. She was going into the U’s Carson School of Management (though I think she could have just skipped college altogether and been a model; tall, blonde and graceful, Abby was absolutely stunning) and worked part time in the café in the library basement. I, on the other hand, was a mechanical engineering major who spent too much time daydreaming.

“You’re always daydreaming, Bells.” Abby smiled indulgently. “I wanted to let you know that I’m going out with Nick tonight after work, so I might not be home until late or even tomorrow if I’m lucky.” She smiled and waggled her eyebrows suggestively. Abby and Nick Berg had been dating for nearly two years. They met in their freshman orientation session, and they still went out often.

“Alright,” I replied, giggling at her expression. “You do know that it’s a school night, right?”

“Yes, mom. Just because we’ve been roommates for the two years we’ve been here, it doesn’t mean that you’re in charge of me.” I was surprised at how quickly Abby’s mood had changed from playful to annoyed.
“Sorry. I was just kidding. Force of habit from growing up with a sarcastic family.” I was backpedaling as fast as I could, and would have kept going if Abby hadn’t interrupted.

“Gotcha! You should know that my family is just as bad as yours by now.” Her brown eyes glowed with suppressed laughter, and I slapped a hand to my face with a groan as I realized that I had missed her intention, and it wasn’t the first time in the last two years. I was often amazed that I could completely miss when other people were joking, even though I did a lot of it myself. Maybe it goes with the sarcasm territory…

“Ah, I see. Well, you two kids have fun, then.” By now, neither of us could contain it any longer and we both burst out laughing. As she turned to leave, Abby somehow managed to call “Yes, ma’am!” back to me between giggles, and then I was alone once more.

Deciding to take advantage of the solitude for once, rather than stupidly attempt to resurrect my childhood by staring into a mirror, I pulled my calculus book from my bag and turned on my computer so I could check the assignment we had been given in class today. Twenty problems on improper integrals, due on Monday. Goody. I had five days to finish it, but I wanted to get it over with. Luckily, it was early yet, only about four-thirty, and I didn’t have anything else due for a few days, so after this, I would have the whole night to veg out. Or so I thought.

Despite my efforts to the contrary, my head kept trying to turn to the mirror. I even went so far as to move it across the room, but as the sky grew dark, it seemed more and more like it was watching me, calling to me. Finally, around seven, I had been staring at the twelfth problem for fifteen minutes without processing what I was supposed to do, and the hairs on the back of my neck were prickling as though someone was staring at me. That’s it. I’m going to cover the stupid thing.

I got up and pulled the comforter down off my bed and approached the mirror as if it were a rattlesnake. As I moved to put the blanket over the glass, my hand brushed the smooth surface, and I was suddenly staring at a man with pale blue eyes and long black hair who was seated in a dark, high-ceilinged room lit by a candle instead of the white walls and fluorescent lighting of my dorm. He smiled as though he had expected me to be there, and that smile startled me so badly that I jumped back into one of the posts my bed was lofted on, the comforter over half my head, staring in shock at my bloodless face in the mirror, which looked all the more pale thanks to my dark hair.

The man had had fangs.

A million thoughts started to fly through my head at once, most of which were wondering whether I was insane or merely hallucinating. That or cursing. ‘s**t’ came up a lot. About ten of them were thinking that the guy was hot. Aside from the fangs. Five said that he looked very familiar, and one of those five suggested that maybe, just maybe, he was real. “Remember?” It said, “You used to see him almost every night.” But that was one thought out of a million, and I was busy listening to the other nine hundred ninety-nine thousand, nine hundred ninety-nine.


I don’t know how long I sat there before I drifted to sleep. All I know is that one moment I was staring at the mirror as though it might attack me, and the next, I was wandering half-forgotten streets in a city I hadn’t seen in seven years. There was an urgency in the air, and I felt like someone was calling to me. I searched the streets for the source of the feeling and turned several corners, closing in on an unknown destination.

“Izzy!” I whirled around as the sound of my name faded on the wind, but no one was there. All I could see were the buildings that lined the road and the storm front that was rolling in from the east. The voice was familiar, but I couldn’t for the life of me remember the person to whom it belonged. The last time I’d heard it, I was thirteen, and had just about finished growing out of playing pretend.

“Come back to us. We miss you. We need you.” I spun again, though I knew that I wouldn’t see the speaker. Need me? Who on earth needed me? I really didn’t do much interacting with actual people aside from Abby, and she was gone half the time.

“Why?” My voice echoed off empty walls and fell flat to the concrete of the sidewalks before I got a response.

“Remember…” The word slowly dissipated as the scene slipped away into a herd of dancing lemons, which made a hell of a lot more sense. Well, it made more sense as far as dreams go, at any rate.

It seems incredibly cliché to say, but my day passed in a blur. I couldn’t focus on physics, neither in lecture nor the discussion that followed. I don’t even want to think about the number of times my discussion group had to attempt to return my attention to the problem we were supposed to be solving.

In fact, I was so busy attempting to decide whether or not the events of the last twenty-four hours had actually occurred, it was half an hour after everyone had left that I realized that discussion had ended. Luckily, my German class wasn’t for another three hours so I had enough time to get lunch before needing to be anywhere.

I was still attempting to come to terms with the existence of my alternate reality even as we got lectured on the genitive with phrases like “das Auto meines Onkels” and “der Computer meiner Schwester.” I was now mostly sure that I hadn’t been dreaming or insane. The main question was what the hell I was going to do about it. I could go back to pretending that it wasn’t real and forget again. I alternately loved and hated this option, but every time I came back to it, my stomach twisted into a guilty knot for even considering it. Rokar was depressed enough already without me abandoning him. Besides, our conversation this morning had got me worried about Altia; no, there was no way I could just ignore this.

With pretending this was just going to go away on its own out of the question, two alternate courses of action presented themselves. One: provide moral support. Goodness knew they would need it. The second option was to do what they wanted and “help.” The downside to that was that I really had no idea of what exactly that would entail.

I glanced around the classroom only to find that, again, I had missed the end of class, this time by a whole hour. Crap. I still had decisions to make and my time frame for making them had dwindled from the whole day to the hour or so that I had before evening. Where on earth could the time have gone? I hardly noticed as my body went through the motions of packing my books and returning through the snow to my dorm until I was once again searching in my pockets for my key. The daylight was on its way out, and my mind was now a total blank. It looked like I wasn’t going to be making many decisions for myself that night.

I had just drawn my key out of my pocket when I glanced up and the door was suddenly gone. Abby was standing in its place, trying not to laugh.

“Oh, I didn’t realize you were here or I would have just let myself in.”
“I’ve got the night off, remember, Bella?” I grimaced at the nick name, but she didn’t seem to notice.

“Right. I’ve been kinda spacey all day.”

“You’re usually spacey. How is this any different?” Abby was nothing if not blunt. I sighed and pushed past her into our room so I could set my things down and take off the myriad coats and scarves that were requisite for February, not to mention the snow boots. Those took forever to get off.

“I, ah, had a bit of a blast from the past this morning. I spoke to a guy I haven’t seen in about seven years, and it was… an odd conversation.” To say the least. The very least if you threw the circumstances in with the conversation.

“Ooh, is there something going on there?” Typical. Of course she would jump to the conclusion that since there was a guy there had to be romance or some such involved.

“No, Ab, Ro-Rowie was always more like a brother to me than anything else. Not that I really needed another one, but this one didn’t drive me crazy most of the time.” I saw Abby furrow her brow and mouth ‘Rowie’ as I finished my sentence, but she went with a different tack as she responded.

“Oh, come on, Bella, you haven’t had a boyfriend since…well, you’ve never had one. You sure there’s nothing going on with you and… ‘Rowie’?” Abby made a face at the name, so I thought that I had better come up with something less strange to tell her than Rokar.

“It’s short for Rowan. When I was really little, I used to have trouble saying it for some reason.” The last bit was, in fact, true. For some strange reason I wasn’t able to properly say Rokar until I was seven. The explanation mollified Abby somewhat, to my relief. The last thing I needed was to explain an alternate reality to Abby because of one name. I was still having enough issues with it myself.

“The names people give their kids, I swear. When I have kids, I will never name them after trees or Disney characters.” Abby was fond of old-fashioned names.

“No, but you’ll name them Emmet or Jasper or Rosalie. Good thing you didn’t exclude stones and flowers in your list of baby names.” Abby shot me an exaggerated dirty look for making fun of her.

“Hey, it’s about five-ten. Do you want to grab dinner?” The question made me grin. That was a fast subject change, even by Abby’s standards. I guess I had won that set of sparring. She always changed the subject whenever she felt backed into a corner.

“Yeah, sure. I’m probably going to go to bed after we finish, though. I didn’t sleep well last night.” I was lying through my teeth, but she wasn’t there, so she didn’t know. Really, I wanted to lie down because I didn’t know how long I was going to be speaking to Rokar, and it would look a little strange to simply stand in a corner all night without moving.

“Another one of those dreams? Maybe talking to Rowan today helped with that.” Abby cocked an eyebrow, and I could tell that even though I had gotten the upper hand in the last conversation, I wasn’t off the hook for dinner. Maybe I shouldn’t have told her about the dreams, even the watered-down version that I’d given her. But she was right. They didn’t need to sic Erik on my dreams any more. My mouth dropped as I realized that that was who the voice in my dreams belonged to. Of course it was Erik’s. How on earth had I not made that connection?

“Yoo-hoo! Earth to Bella! Dinner?” Abby was waving a hand in front of my face, and I realized how silly I must have looked gaping at nothing.

“Yes, sorry. I told you that I’ve been a space cadet all day. Yes, dinner would be a very good idea.” My boots had finally come off, and I was switching to slippers because I had no intention to leave the building before morning. Abby let me out first and locked the door behind us as we headed down the stairs to the dining hall.

I barely noticed what I took to eat. There was a cup of soup and perhaps a slice of pizza on my plate when I sat down across from Abby in one of the booths that lined the wall that lay between the dining area and the food.



“Oh, will you stop it? That’s incredibly childish.” I had been listening to Abby singing under her breath as I ate what did, in fact, turn out to be a slice of pizza. What was so childish about it was the fact that it sounded suspiciously like ‘Bella and Rowan, sitting in a tree…’

“Aw, Bella, it’s all in good fun. Besides, you’ll be an old maid soon if you don’t start seeing anyone.” I rolled my eyes at her. Twenty was nowhere near old enough to be considered an old maid by anyone’s standards, save the people who actually used that term.

“Yeah, well, I don’t really care if people think I’m an old maid. In fact, the people who would think that have no lives of their own and live only to ridicule others.”

“You’ve cut me to the quick. Me, your best roommate!” Abby exaggeratedly threw her hands over her heart and lay down on the bench on her side of the booth, making gurgling noises.

“You’re my only roommate. And you’re still acting like you’re four.” Right on cue, the gurgling that was now coming from under the table turned to giggles. Abby straightened, trying hard to look indignant and failing miserably.

“It takes one to know one.”Abby stuck out her tongue and thumbed her nose. Funny, but she didn’t know how right she was. I’d felt like a pre-teen all day.

“God, you really are four, aren’t you? How did you manage to get into one of the top research universities in the country, little lady?”

“Har-har. That was so funny, I forgot to laugh, Bells. Do you write your own material, or do you outsource it to the other IT nerds you have classes with?”

“I will have you know that some of them do have a sense of humor. Of course it is mostly bad math jokes…” The conversation dissolved into a fit of giggles on both sides of the table and relative silence ensued as we finished our food.

With the food cleared and the dishes dropped off in the kitchen, it was time to go back upstairs. As one final act of procrastination, I took a shower, something I had (understandably) neglected to do the night before. The hot water felt wonderful, seeming to rinse my conscious stream of thought away, and what unconscious thoughts I had drifted to Rokar. The poor guy was in a lot more pain than anyone deserved, no matter how long their lives were.

“Dammit, Erik, we can’t afford to alienate her. She said she’d come back tonight, so let’s give her time to get here.” I had slipped my mind into an imaginary conversation somewhere down the line. The strange thing about it was that the conversation had a context, which I had somehow missed. That really shouldn’t have happened, since it was my imagination. Considering this, I turned the water off, bracing myself for the coldness of the air despite the fact that the heat was on in the building. No matter how warm the thermostat is set, it’s never enough after a shower.

The strangeness of Rokar’s words was still on my mind as I put my pajamas on and returned to our room. Was he talking about me? It sounded like he was scolding Erik for impatience, as usual. But pertaining to me? Why on earth would I imagine that?

“You’re not imagining squat, darling. Didn’t your parents ever teach you that eavesdropping is rude?” It sounded as though Erik had spoken in my ear although there was no one else in the hall. I nearly fell over outside my door because I had not been expecting that. How in the world had he been able to do that?

“Because you’re only ever here mentally, you can communicate with us mentally. However, even though you can initiate contact, only someone like me can start a conversation with you, and that’s easiest if you’re either asleep or more receptive due to visitation.” Condescending b*****d. If I could see him, I would smack him. It did explain the dreams and the vague sense that my mirror was trying to talk to me at night, though.

“You don’t seem to have learned the eavesdropping lesson either.” The thought crossed my brain, but it sort of echoed as though I had spoken it aloud. Erik gave a short laugh at the comment.

“We’ve been waiting since sunset for you. How much longer are you going to take?” No wonder Rokar had been scolding him. Erik sounded rather on edge.

“Just give me a minute to restart my heart here and find a mirror that won’t look weird being dragged up into my bed, okay? You also apparently never learned that patience is a virtue.” An impatient, inarticulate grumble answered, and Erik’s presence dissipated.

Once I closed the door behind me, I glanced at the clock; it was 6:10. The sun had only been set for half an hour or so. Ye gods, he was impatient. I hung my towel and threw my clothes into the hamper before going into my sparsely populated makeup drawer in search of the compact that I never used. That found, it got slipped into my pocket and I turned out the brighter light in the room.

“Hey! I’ve got homework to finish, Bella!”

“Sorry, Abby. I did tell you that I was going to bed, right?” Not that having that light on really mattered, but this was about keeping up appearances.

“Yeah, yeah. I’ve got a desk lamp, anyway. Get some sleep tonight, you hear?”

“Yes, ma’am. You sleep well, too, if you ever get to bed.” I dodged a pencil before ascending the ladder to my bed. “I love you, too, Abby.”
I pulled the compact out of my pocket as I lay on my side, facing the wall. I opened it with a glance at the twice-used makeup within, grateful that I wouldn’t be moving around enough to stain the sheets. I would have to detach that, but it could wait until tomorrow. I took a deep breath and closed my eyes, pressing my palm to the small, circular surface.



There was a general exhalation and I could tell that I was no longer accompanied by one person. I opened my eyes to see that not just Rokar and Erik were there, but about six others, four of whom looked incredibly familiar but for whom names were not forthcoming. To my left in the far corner, one of the two women in the room besides myself, about thirty (I hoped; ages were hard to pin down here), had a mane of thick hair and catlike eyes that glinted in the candle light, both of which looked about the same color as her skin thanks to said lighting. A man, also about thirty-something, sat in the corner to my immediate right; he was incredibly short compared to most of the others here, but an exact height would have to wait until he stood. His hair was a deep brown with subtle hints of what looked like red in the dim lighting, and his eye color was either brown or black. Stupid candles. They tended to blur all but the most stark color contrasts.

In front of the cat-woman, near the window to my left, a large, brawny man with blue eyes and a wolfish grin blocked what remained of the outside lighting. His hair color was off for his age; it was all grey, and I would have pegged him for about twenty-seven.

Across the room, standing near the other window, the last of the familiar faces was sharp, birdlike, especially so because of the white feathers in his hair and the black and white wings on his back and black raptors’ eyes. He was about my age, even though most of his hair was white, shot through with black streaks. He was also incredibly slender; it looked as though a stiff wind might have knocked him over for all that he was about halfway in between Rokar and Erik in height.

Directly across from me, in front of the door, stood another couple, who I had never seen in my life, but I could guess who they were. Based on their fair hair and the fact that the man had the same emerald eyes as his children, these were Rokar and Altia’s parents.

Erik and Rokar themselves were in the middle of the room. Erik wore an incredibly smug expression, and I would have bet my tuition that he was telling Rokar ‘I told you so.’ Rokar, on the other hand, just looked relieved.

“Izzy. We’re so glad you came.” It was as though Rokar had held his breath longer than the others, and it all came out in a rush.

“Yeah, sure. Anytime.” I was surprised that I actually meant any time. Already it had started to feel like home here, even though my memories were a bit spotty. As if he could hear my thoughts, or, more likely, he was being silently prompted by Erik, Rokar made the rounds reminding me of everyone’s names.

“You already know Draco, Marius, Aya and Augro.” Rokar gestured counter-clockwise around the room starting on my right with the short man in the corner, and the names and faces matched themselves up in my head. To my recollection, all of them except Draco were able to shape-shift into certain animals.

“And these are my parents, Arna and Oter. There are a few others who’ve agreed to help, but we thought that going more slowly on the introductions would make things easier.” So I was right about his parents. There weren’t that many elven children around, so they must have been just as anxious as Rokar to retrieve Altia.

“Good to meet you both. I’m sorry about the circumstances.” I inclined my head politely to them, as I seemed to remember learning that elves were big fans of niceties. Sure enough, they returned the gesture.

“It is good to meet you as well, though the circumstances doleave something to be desired.” Arna spoke for the two of them, a rueful edge dulling the wind-chime quality of her voice.

“Now, I don’t mean to be rude or anything,” I said, returning my attention to Rokar and Erik, “But I still don’t really know what’s going on here. I get that there’s a crisis situation, and since you’ve brought your family in, Rokar, you’ve probably got a rescue mission planned. That, however, is as far as I’ve learned to deduce from Sherlock Holmes. Why, exactly, do you need me?”

Rokar cast a guilty look at Erik and I got a sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach. “We, ah, we…”

“We need a decoy.” Erik finished Rokar’s sentence firmly, and with none of Rokar’s shame. “We need someone with the ability to teleport, and distract the guards. Here, almost no one is born with that ability, but all of the manis can do it, because they are just that, manifestations of consciousness, and therefore not really here. No one we know besides you has the kind of precision we need.” I stood in stunned silence for a moment, gaping at the eight faces that were all staring expectantly at me.

“Is that all I am to you? A way to get them to look left while we’re running right like Julia Stiles flashing her coach to get Heath Ledger out of detention? What the hell happens if I get hurt or caught or killed? What will they tell my parents when my roommate finds me dead or comatose for no apparent reason?” Through my tirade, Rokar’s face fell visibly, and his eyes grew dim. Erik’s, on the other hand, snapped blue fire as he strode across the ten feet that separated us to stand toe to toe with me.

“This isn’t just about you, little girl. Hell, this isn’t even just about Altia. Even though she is the one who hit closest to home, there are others there in the exact same predicament as she. You remember Ilia? The faerie who taught you glamours? She was taken, too, a few months ago. Thanks to what little communication I had with Altia right after she was taken, we finally know where they are imprisoned. Now we have the chance to rescue some of them from the xenophobic dickwads who run the joint, and we’re going to do it because it’s the right thing, not run and hide because we’re afraid of the risks. When you start caring about more people than just you, let us know.”

Erik’s blue eyes held me captive as he practically growled at me and I couldn’t look away, even in shame. Standing directly in front of me, I could see that he was only about as tall as Abby, but the four inch height difference between us was more than enough to make me feel like I was shrinking into the floor.

“Erik, I think you’re scaring her. If her eyes get any bigger, they’ll pop.” Both Erik and I turned to look at Marius as he spoke, and he suddenly looked incredibly uncomfortable, shifting his wings around and generally fidgeting under Erik’s stare. The distraction was all I needed to shift my focus to lifting my hand off the three-inch circle of glass and I opened my eyes to the dark wall by my bed.