Welcome to Gaia! ::

Ennéa sat high on the dormitory roof and looked out over the endless expanse of fog that surrounded them on all sides. It was like a misty grey sea, which was funny when you thought about it because the fog also obscured the actual sea that surrounded the island. A sea on top of the sea.

Shame you couldn't swim on fog like one did in the ocean. It had been a big disillusionment in Ennéa's childhood, the day that she realized that clouds and fog didn't feel like soft cotton fleece or anything at all really. She remembered cloud watching with her brother from the apartment window as they waited for their mother to come home. Tobias used to laugh at all the funny shapes she saw in the clouds, like lobsters and umbrella stands and bowls of tapioca pudding.

What would Tobias think of the fog sea...? Ennéa wondered. But she quickly dismissed the thought. She didn't want to think about home right now. Ennéa pulled her knees to her chest and tried not to think of anything in particular. It was kind of a failing thing though, like trying not to think of purple polar bears; her mind kept stubbornly returning to things she didn't want to think about. She rubbed her stinging eyes in frustration.

At least the sun was pleasantly warm on her back and the wind ruffled her pink hair and tousled it into even more of a curly rat's nest. Ennéa hadn't been able to find her comb that morning so she had just left her hair down instead restrained in her usual bao hairstyle.

From her high perch she could see someone walking along the courtyard. The person was still some distance away still but from the hairstyle and slender body shape Ennéa assumed it was a girl. Actually, squinting harder, it looked a lot like Madison.

Ennéa scampered along the roof and climbed down the gutter drain before she really thought about what she was doing. She waved to Madison. "Hi Maddie!" she called brightly and almost too cheerfully. "Whatcha doing?"

"Swords?" Ennéa paused and really looked at her friend, only then realizing that the other girl was armed to the teeth with four samurai-looking swords strapped to her waist. "Whoa, cool!" she marveled. "Where'd you get them?!"

Impulsively, Ennéa reached out to try and touch one of the sword hilts. They looked so shiny.

"What do they say?" she asked, still focused on the weapons. She then paused as a thought suddenly occurred to her. She looked at Madison. "Why four swords though? You only have two hands, won't that be awkward?"

Ennéa pouted a little when Madison twitched the swords away before she could touch them. She lowered her hand and looked longingly at the neat weapons, feeling a bit like she was looking at pretty vases and bones at the museum; look but don't touch. Maddie is probably the over-protective type with her things, she supposed with a little sigh and one last look at the sword hilt nearest to her. Hardly surprising though considering how protective she is of her hair. Ennéa grinned a little to herself.

What Madison said next had Ennéa looking at the swords again with renewed curious interest. "Hi Kou--ki!" she said, tripping slightly over the odd the pronunciation. "You're a snake?? My mom doesn't like snakes, they scare her. I think they're cool though! There was this really awesome anaconda at the zoo I saw once and it was bigger around than I was! Are you bigger around than I am? Can you change back? I've never seen a four-headed snake before. Is it confusing with four heads? Are you all conjoined twins?" she chattered on excitedly.

"Whoa! Ten times larger...?" Ennéa tried to picture a snake that big. Kouki would be taller than the dorm building! Her mother would have fainted dead away if she ever saw a snake that huge. Ennéa's smile faltered slightly at the thought of her mom being so scared. Her mother was always worried about something, but being so scared--

She snapped that line of thought off quickly. "So," she said with forced brightness at Madison. "Kouki can hear me but he can only talk to you? That must be hard, being the go-between for everything, Maddie."

Ennéa could remember the couple times her brother and her mother had fought; they had kept a frosty silence for several days, not speaking to each other. Any time they had to talk to the other, they used Ennéa to relay messages back and forth. Initially it had been fun and Ennéa pretended that she was a passenger pigeon or a horse in the pony express, but it soon quickly got tiring and she hated the feeling of being caught between the two.

Why am I thinking of this? Ennéa wondered. She shook her head, stupid purple polar bears.

"So where did you say you got Kouki?" She asked, trying to distract herself.

"The Cove?" Ennéa asked. "Where's that?" She paused, suddenly suspicious. "It's not another test is it?" Her voice had a slight whining edge to it, like a child grumbling about having to get up to go to school. "The last test sucked even if it was pretend."

Ennéa bit her lip and studied Kouki's four hilts thoughtfully. "Though getting a talking sword is pretty cool." she added begrudgingly. She looked at Madison. "So all the weapons talk? I wonder how they do that? Are there a lot of them? Why'd you pick Kouki?"

Ennéa's excitement about the shiny, shiny, swords was starting to temper a little bit, enough to actually pay attention to what Madison was saying this time. "Oooh, at the cove." she said. "Wait, you mean that same cave as before when we..." she trailed off. "Huh."

A weapon made just for her. That sounded so cool. Ennéa's hands unconsciously flexed, remembering the wooden haft that she once had held somewhere. Where though? She couldn't quite remember and that was frustrating.

She should just march down to that stupid cove and try and figure it out already. If there was a weapon for her it should be there, right?

She should go. She should. Ennéa frowned and chewed on her lip as she looked off in the direction Maddie had pointed.

"I guess I should go sometime then." she abruptly said, turning to her friend. "Not now though." Ennéa waved it off. She grinned at her Madison. "I wanna see Kouki in action!" She bounced eagerly. "Please? Pleeeease?"

Ennéa gave her friend her best puppy-dog eyes expression. It always had worked on Tobias.

Ennéa tilted her head at Madison. "But with a sword you just..." she mimicked swinging an imaginary sword, slicing through the air, "swing." She gave Madison a reassuring pat on the shoulder. "Besides, I'm sure Kou-ki can give you some pointers. Right Kou-ki?" she directed the last part to the swords.

Ennéa carefully took a couple steps back, out of range of Madison's swords. "Come on, Maddie!" she cheered. "You can do it!"

"Oooh!" Ennéa hopped up and down and applauded. "You look so cool, Maddie!" she cheered enthusiastically.

Ennéa wasn't much of a judge of fighting skill or swords in general but Maddie looked a bit like an action movie heroine posing with Kouki's blades. Just like something out of Return of the Blood-Thirsty Fire Beasts or Cult of the Invisible Moon Insects. Even better too, because Maddie's swords were real and not made out of silver-painted cardboard or wobbly plastic foam.