Welcome to Gaia! ::

Waltzing went well. It normally went well, of course, since Carlisle did not often forget that he was touching Casia since the one time that - well, he didn't like to think about it. When they weren't dancing he always remembered Personal Space, and the fact that his friend liked Personal Space to be maintained. Always. He didn't have a problem with that, not really.

So when they sat down to tea, Carlisle possessed an abnormally good mood. He smiled as he poured the tea and offered Casia the cream and sugar, saying, "It's an Earl Grey blend with vanilla," like it was the most normal thing to talk about in the world. "Sugita-san, my tutor, mixes it. She taught me how to make the cookies, too." There were chocolate chip cookies in a plate on the silver service tray that looked quite appetizing. He eyed the tablecloth just to make sure it was clean, just in case.

Sometimes Shigeo teased him about being an old housewife. Well, if that meant not being embarrassing in front of his friends, he'd gladly be an old housewife. Gladly. So he was smiling and thinking of a topic to discuss when someone else peeked into the room. Whoever it was was a beautiful lady with bright red hair in an unnatural cherry-red.

She looked around for a minute, and then her eyes finally caught Casia's wings. He tipped his head a bit to the side, regarding the woman over Casia's shoulder with a strange look. Since his teacher followed her into the room, he was about to ignore them; it could mean that she was one of Sade's other students.

"Hey," said the woman, finally emerging. With a ballerina's grace, she bounded over to the table and then stopped abruptly. "You're Carlisle and Casia? Sade said you were looking for me."

Sade shook his hair over one shoulder and smoothed the front of his dress. "I said Carlisle had asked after you," he amended for her, his masculine voice at odds with his appearance. "This is Maria, Carlisle, she's interested in meeting Casia from what she's heard."

"What ever," said Maria. "Go away, Sade, this is girl talk." With both his brows lifted, the crossdressing man exited the room. Carlisle looked rather dumbfounded, and stood to leave as well; "No," said the redhead, "you can stay."

Bemused, he sat back down. Maria leaned onto the table and smiled brightly, exuberantly, at Casia. "So, I heard you were looking for a voice teacher!"

"Are you all right," Carlisle asked, but he was interrupted by the woman.

With a toss of her red hair, she laughed - it was a silvery tone, like windchimes or bells, and it went perfectly with her appearance. She leaned on the edge of the table and said, "Is sh- he really?" For a moment, Carlisle looked affronted. He was clearly a boy, wasn't he? Sure, sometimes people mistook him for a girl, but only if they looked very quickly, right? "I thought it was just an unlucky naming accident! Well, shhh - he can stay anyway. I guess."

A slightly more formal air came over her then, though she still seemed rather out of place in the victorian-esque surroundings - whether it was because of her style of dress, which was definitely aggressively modern, or because of the casual air with which she carried herself - and she introduced herself. "My name is Maria Langlois," she said, her name acquiring a rather classy French accent, "and I'm a dramatic soprano with the Durem Opera, even though I like it a lot more when I can take different roles with different companies. Bigger role opportunities, yeah?"

This seemed to make sense to Carlisle, but he was still a bit miffed over being mistaken for a girl, so he was stirring his tea with an admirably detached look.

"I heard you were looking for voice lessons from my bff Mr. de Graves." She leaned in conspiratorially. "He was the crossdresser before, but you must be used to that since you hang out with a transvestite."

Carlisle looked up. Apparently Maria had not whispered as quietly as she could have. "Sorry," she said, "but it's true."

Maria lifted her eyebrows and smiled ruefully. "Yup, that he can be. That's the great part about Gaia, you know?" With a roll of her eyes, she said, "Probably though he should avoid my brother and his friends, they're the very prim and proper type," she paused, then laughed again. "If you know what I mean."

With a small thankful smile at Casia, Carlisle looked back to his tea. He personally thought being well-behaved was a good thing, but one did not contradict ladies. This lady seemed unstable enough already, so he wouldn't push it. Well, he would push the cookies more towards Casia and Maria's side of the table. He liked the tea better than the cookies.

He paused at his tea. Did Casia... not like his house? She'd never acted like she didn't, but he wasn't really that in-tune with the emotions thing he did lately, since Luka'd fixed his head.

Maria shrugged, and leaned in to whisper much more discreetly than before. "Don't worry, I can scale it to fit what your parentals can pay, eh? I mostly do this between shows, so it's more fun than work." She straightened and eyed the cookies, then she sighed. "I really shouldn't, I have to lose five pounds by the start of The Queen of Spades or I won't be able to breathe~" But she shrugged and took one. "I'll just skip dinner, then~ So, Casia, are you interested?"

Maria seemed to look at the dark-haired boy with new eyes, then she shrugged one shoulder impudently and eyed the girl. "You're too skinny," judged the singer. She picked up the cookie and put it back in front of the girl, ignoring Carlisle's rather surprised look (he thought Casia looked pretty just the way she was, she didn't need to do anything to change! Ever)!

She listened to the request, idly smoothing and then fussing up her red hair like she had no place else to be and nowhere to go, patient and completely insolently perfect in her patience. "Of course," said Maria, a strange look in her blue-blue eyes. "I'm surprised you didn't ask earlier."

Without bothering to introduce the song, and with a mellifluous smile, Maria sang.



Maria's voice was a perfect dramatic soprano, a little lower than one might have expected from her fluttering voice, but it easily reached the high notes and the low notes. Carlisle looked rather shocked, and then away, as Maria finished her recital and lowered her hands. "I trust I'm to your satisfaction," she said, mimicking her brother in seriousness of tone, though neither of the two children would know it for looking at her smiling face.

Maria smiled, understanding in her eyes as she bent over to wipe a tear away from Casia's eye. "I'm glad," she said, "Good music should affect you like that. That was Think of Me, from Le Fantom de l'Opera. I played the part of Christine Daae a few seasons back - I hope to get called upon to perform the role again when my company reprises it."

Then she straightened. "Would have been better if I'd had a Raoul," she mused, eying Carlisle with a scary glint in her eyes.

"I don't sing!" Carlisle scrambled out of his seat. "You thought I was a girl two seconds ago -"

"So you should play Meg, you're saying?" The glint seemed even more pronounced and Carlisle had never quite noticed how sharp Maria Langlois's teeth were before.

He waved his hands in front of him in a warding gesture. "I'm going to go find Sade, I think I have a question for him - I'll be back in a minute to finish tea, okay, Casia?" And he bolted from the room, shutting his hair in the door on the way out.

Maria sighed and took his seat. "Sorry," she said - she was toying with Carlisle's abandoned spoon, balancing it on the pad of her index finger. "but I figured girl talk would be better. So. Why d'you want a voice teacher?"

Maria was an incredibly intuitive person, you could ask just about anyone. Any one of her acquaintances (save maybe her husband) would have been incredibly nervous to be affixed with the stare she was giving Casia now. "Why hide it," asked Maria, her puzzlement clear in her voice. "Seems like something to be proud of."

It wasn't really any of her business, but when had that stopped her before?

"I'll give you that," she said simply as she fussed with her long red hair again. "I'll give you all the feedback you like. But I don't like being lied to, so don't try it with me, okay? That's the condition on this."

"You can't change who you are," snapped Maria, some sort of temper shining through. "Can't change what you are, either. There's no point in hiding something if it's a part of you." She shook her head, shimmering curtains of red hair falling out of her complex hairdo. "It's like me never telling anyone I'm a redhead, or that I'm Italian. Same difference."

Then, almost sulkily, she pushed her hair back behind her ears and looked away. "Of course, it's your life. You've got to understand what you're asking me, though. All music is a kind of trap, if you're good enough at it. Why d'you think you were almost crying back when I was singing? 'Cause I trapped you. It's something you need to do to be a good musician of any sort, so it's something I'd need to teach you."

With a smile, she settled back into her seat. "Casia, I don't lie. Ever. One day you'll get to ask my brother what I do to his best friend when he tries to lie. It's hilarious."

Maria smiled then, properly maternal. "Of course, then, sweetheart. I'll give you my address after I talk to your guardian, all right?" She picked up a napkin and wrote down the number, passed it over. "Just so she knows I'm not a creeper, of course."

She looked to the door; Carlisle was hovering, unwilling to enter the room while the redhead was still inside. "I'll head out now, Casia. Have her call me, okay?" And the woman got up and left, her ponytail bobbing behind her.

Then Carlisle walked back to his seat, smiling. A little nervously, maybe, he said, "How did it go, Casia?"