Welcome to Gaia! ::

Ever since Chaos had dropped into Caoimhe's life like a rock through a window, the selkie youth had been troubled. It was hard to sleep at night, and even swimming didn't bring her the pleasure it used to. How could she feel at ease with the looming threat of death and destruction hanging above her like the Sword of Damocles? In Aranorn, there had been this same feeling of dread, but at least there it was constant. Gaia had brought Caoimhe a safe feeling that she had never been otherwise given. Chaos was trying to take it away from her.

That morning, she left for a walk. This was not unusual for the curly-haired Fa'e. Caoimhe was a big walker, and in Aranorn she would scale mile after mile just to grab a drink of water. Back then, it helped her clear her head, and in Gaia, it served the same therapeutic purpose. Her feet slapped the concrete awkwardly in a pair of slip-on Converse. Shoes would always feel foreign to the soles of her feet, but after being denied entry to too many restaurants for her state of dress, Caoimhe forced herself to make a concession and wear them. Rounding a corner, she stopped and knelt down, tugging the tongues of the shoes straight -- left first, then right.

A man in a trenchcoat cut a sharp curve around her spot in the center of the sidewalk, bumping the petite Fa'e. "Hey!" she shouted after him, hopping back to her feet. "I'm not invisible, you jerk!" A creeping realization moved over Caoi's rounded features. Invisible. Caoimhe lifted her hands to her face, turning them over and over and searching for spots of invisibility. No one had really explained how fading would work for her, or how fast. It had been over a week since Chaos had snapped Caoi's bond with her guardian. Would it happen that quickly?

Fear made her heart flutter like a bird against her ribs. Caoimhe looked all over herself with increasing fervor -- legs, back, stomach, neck. When she was at last sure there were no pockets of invisibility hiding underneath the cotton of her cream hoodie, Caoimhe allowed herself to look up.

She saw two things that surprised her:

1) Without realizing it, Caoimhe had walked to the Fa'e HQ out of habit, which brought pangs of loss and sadness popping in her chest.
2) A semi-familiar girl was standing just along its side... reading a small sheet of paper.

Caoimhe was bad with names. Very bad. But she remembered this one, despite the fact that they had only met once when they were both very new to Gaia. A lost Fa'e. Like her. And one who felt like home to Caoimhe, though she never really understood why. "Onora?" Caoi asked, her voice carrying down the ten feet that separated them. "It's you, yeah, Onora?" The red-haired girl looked almost the same as when Caoimhe last saw her years and years ago. Was Caoi recognizable? She was grown, and there were times when neighbors would suddenly jump to see how quick her growth spurt was. The thought didn't cross Caoimhe's mind, however. If she remembered Onora, then she assumed the other Fa'e remembered her too.

It took much of Caoimhe's strength to not look at the poisoned remains of the Fa'e HQ. Like Onora, it had been her only home for a very long time. Even after she and Gristla found their little seaside condo, Caoi still felt like a part of her heart was buried up in the Blue Room where she had first learned about Gaia and what it meant to be a Fa'e. Granted, most of her education had been in the former, not the latter, but it still made her heart seize in her chest. She swallowed down the emotion, just as she had been doing since the day Chaos attacked, and instead tried to focus on something else.

In this case -- Onora.

Closing the distance between them, Caoi stopped short of hugging the other Fa'e, though a part of her wanted to do just that. "Onora. Um, a lot has happened. I'm... I'm not the best person to explain it. See, this bad guy -- a bad guy from before we were even in Gaia -- is coming back to attack the Fa'e. He attacked our guardians. And did other stuff. But..." Caoimhe chewed on the words in her mouth, fighting to be articulate. If only Sei was here... he was level-headed enough to explain everything rationally. She could only manage disorganized snippets of information that was more akin to being hit by a truck than being gently driven down the road of knowledge.

The selkie Fa'e shifted her weight, uncomfortable with how stupid she felt. So she focused on something she could explain. "I woke up one night because I felt like something was wrong. Really wrong. I found black tentacles attacking my guardian, and even though I fought them off, Gristla was blinded and our bond was broken. But I am going to fix everything." She put her hands out to emphasize this, nodding her head sharply.

Out of the corner of her eye, she noticed that Onora was holding a slip of paper. Before she could stop herself, Caoi darted her hand forward, attempting to snatch it. "I have to show this to Dustin and Sei," she said sharply, breath catching in her throat.

Reaching into her pocket, Caoimhe pulled out the chipped and cracked cellphone that she had been using ever since this mess with Chaos started. It was the best way to keep in touch with the others. "We all got these papers," she said, narrowing her eyes at the phone as she mashed the buttons. Technology was still an elusive beast to Caoi, but she was getting better. After a few muttered curses, the selkie youth figured out how to turn the camera on. With her thumb, she smoothed out the paper, holing it out from her body so she could snap the picture. It took a few tries, but she managed to capture it on the small camera. Only when she had successfully taken the photo did she read it.

What is hidden in plain sight? Vegetables? A garden? Maybe Airi's garden? Ah, who knew. "I'm no good at riddles," she said, handing the paper back to Onora. She texted the image to Sei and Dustin. Let them figure it out. Having done her duty, Caoi tried to focus back on the questions Onora had asked. Right. The papers? "I woke up just like you and had it in my hand. No explanation. My guardian didn't see anyone come or go. There are other Fa'e trying to compile all of these riddles and figure it out, but I don't know anything about that. I just know to send them on." A thought struck Caoimhe. "Have you seen anyone else's paper? If you have, try to remember it, and I will send it on to Sei and Dustin too." Despite meeting once, Caoi hardly knew Onora. It was feasible that she hung out with a whole other group of Fa'e who Caoi was not quite familiar with too.

A breeze carried down the street, and Caoi felt her eyes lift back to the HQ -- what had been the HQ, at least. Her full lips fell into a frown, but Onora's questions zipped her back to reality. "I don't know where everyone is. I don't know all the Fa'e. I don't even know how many of us there are," she said, shrugging. "Sei doesn't think we'll understand the message until we get all the papers, but that seems impossible to me." A defeatist note rang in her voice, but Caoimhe swallowed it down. For once, she actually seemed to know more about the situation than others. This was her time to shine! "Right now, we are doing everything we can to track down all the Fa'e and figure out what messages they got. You could help. You need to find other Fa'e." It was true. Perhaps if they all tried to search out Fa'e, eventually they would amass them all. But how long would that take? With a gulp, Caoimhe silently wondered if she would even be around then. Again, she glanced to her hand to make sure it was still visible.

It was.

((Lol, Hai, Pukio invited me to join the party.)

Having left Riven for the time being (apparently running headlong into HQ was on the list of Things Not to Do Under Any Circumstances), Astor began a curious circuit of the grounds. Weird crows, spooky tree, long weird shadows (he walked carefully around these, in case the wrongness that ate HQ was trying to expand its reach) - nothing particularly interesting. No. The area around HQ was, for all intents and purposes, something of a dead zone.

Or maybe not. Another look around brought Astor's attention to a pair of women standing in the driveway. It had been dark the night things went bad, but he thought he recognized one of them just a bit, and at any rate, they didn't look bad, and if the one he thought he recognized was a Fa'e, then the kind of normal looking one next to her was probably a Fa'e as well.

Safety in numbers, decided Astor. He headed over.

"You're Caoimhe," he said, without preamble. He couldn't spell it if you asked, but he knew it because Zaoll had made him yell at the girl back on Halloween. (Thank god for Zaoll.)

The unfortunate side-effect of his utter lack of tact was, of course, that he had now created an awkward silence in which he could continue to flounder while the girls stared at him, their conversation disrupted - ooh, he hoped he hadn't interrupted anything important! Well, there was nothing to do but try to keep things moving, it seemed. "What's up?"

For a moment she felt like... like Gods, she actually knew what she was doing, where she belonged in this mess. She and Caoimhe and Dusty and Sei could rally everyone they knew. They'd sit down and figure it all out and they'd change whatever had happened here. They'd fix it. They'd fix all of it.

And then came the sound of someone's voice and Onora stiffened and she whirled around, fingers itchy for a weapon, darkness looming over them around the Headquarters and now - a stranger. Common sense said 'Fa'e', paranoia said 'too convenient.' As surely as Caoimhe descended on the boy, demanding answers from him, Onora hustled the few feet to the nearest tree and snapped a branch off it - coming away with quite a few leaves, made it look slightly laughable when she came back and literally brandished the pointed end at the stranger.

"Who in the hells are you and what are you doing here? Step back, you damn fool or I swear to the Gods I'll beat you to the ninth hell and back."

Caoimhe's opinion of Onora soared when the fellow Lost Child zoomed into action. Yes! Trust no one! That is how you survive! In her excitement, Caoimhe ignored the familiar pang in her chest when she met someone cut from the same cloth as she was. As the unfamiliar boy began to name drop Fa'e, the selkie slowly straightened, though her face still sang of distrust. "Zaoll. I know her. The stone girl with the maps of Gaia," she said, as if that description would make sense to anyone but her. Her finger remained poised at Astor's chest like she might use it like a scalpel should he move an inch.

Astor, Astor... Had Zaoll said that name? Damn, Caoi didn't know. She stared hard in the eyes at him. It was like she might be trying to bore through his skull, or attempting to use Jedi magic to find the truth. You were supposed to be able to see honesty, yeah? Well, she sure as hell was looking hard for it in the black centers of his eyes.

After several tense minutes, Caoimhe relaxed, holding her hand up to Onora. "He's telling the truth," she said, though she really couldn't be certain. All that staring made her certain enough. Moments later she felt the familiar bond of the Fa'e. "He's like us. I couldn't tell at first. Can you sense it? I can sense it." She didn't wait for a response from Onora.

Only then did she respond to the boy's question. Astor had said a name that made Caoimhe's ears p***k. "Riven. I've heard a hell of a lot about that guy and how well he knows Chaos," she said, anger creeping into her voice and face. Sei told her not to blame Riven, but she couldn't help it. She needed something to blame for this, and he was the best option. "If I knew where he was, I'd be in his face interrogating him right now. What do you want with him anyway?" Caoimhe stayed close to him, clearly invading his personal space, with her chest puffed out and her eyes lit up in the corners. Typical intimidation stance for her.

"Oh, I already found Riven," said Astor, watching the stick fall. He pointed vaguely in the direction of yonder, somewhere off around the back of the building. "He's that way somewhere. He says that even if we are tempted to try to rescue Airi, running into HQ like a bunch of idiots is not the best way to do it." This was, of course, paraphrased. It was highly unlikely that Riven would have used the phrasing like a bunch of idiots.

Had he gotten a slip of paper? Astor thought for a moment, having been distracted this morning by the bizarre dream, and then nodded. "Yeah, yeah!" he reached into his pockets and rooted around. "I think I've got it here somewhere."

After finding that the note was not folded up in his cell phone, not the other note, which he would be sure to bring up, was not the several balls of lint in his pocket, he finally located the note tucked into his wallet.

"Here," he said, holding out the (very much worse for the wear) note.

"Zaoll got one, too," he said, biting his tongue thoughtfully. "It was, hold on..."

With one hand, he unfolded the other piece of paper and held it out. So that was why it had sounded familiar! "It was that first line of the second part. And then I dreamed this whole thing last night. Airi told it to me. Did you guys dream about her? Let me see your notes."