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Who: Isi, Vivi, and Zeke (With Cesc and Eiry stopping in later!)
When: May 31st, 2012
Where: Lab 305
Weather: IT IS GORGEOUS OUT

Today was the day he had been waiting for since...well...forever! It had seemed like eons had passed since he had gone to Vermillion bakery right here in Gambino and picked up two filled Soul Glasses from two very lovely ladies and now, finally, one of the two had fully formed and had been born. The vet was ecstatic when he got the news over the phone and although the White Stag had been born on a Thursday, nothing was going to stop Zeke Farris from being the one to greet the lucky guardian and hand her new charge over to her.

So far, nothing had! He had already decided to take the day off work today and although Anastacia didn't want to go to the Lab with him to greet the newborn, that didn't stop the bounce in his step. Driving to Lab had been fine and dandy and now here he was, pacing in the lobby like an expectant father waiting on the arrival of his wife and newborn child out of the delivery room.

He had called Vivi personally. His words had been rushed but his tone had been full of sunshine and more delight than a person could shake a stick at. Ask him what he had said at this very moment and he'd draw a complete blank. The only thing he could assure someone who asked was that he had said "Get down here, now!" to the Frenchwoman on the other end who Zeke was certain would waste no time in getting to the pristine white building located in the same town she lived in. Until she got here, however, Zeke was going to pace like a man on death row and keep making frantic glances to the world outside through the Lab's front windows. What he would do when Vivi LaCelle walked through that front door, he couldn't rightly say - but whatever it was, it would involve a lot of fast talking and perhaps a gracious bear hug or two!

Time seemed to move slowly as he waited. Pacing, glancing to the doors, pacing, glancing to the clock, more pacing...Zeke's excitement only grew with every look and step he took. Every time a car drove past or the shadow of a person filtered in through the windows, the vet jumped, expecting it to be Vivi. Each time he was disappointed and yet his heart only continued to thunder inside his chest - a bevvy of nerves, readiness, and oh god so many things to spill to the woman who would be coming in soon.

Despite his excitement the vet had read the folder which contained all the information on the Raevan. Zeke had known for ages that the stag Raevan had antlers - they were unmistakable even in the murky din of the tank's water - but gender had been a whole 'nother story. Now he knew for real - a boy. Vivi's Raevan was a boy. But boy or girl, he was just excited. He was here after so long and after one major happenstance to the Lab that made the vet worry for the beings in the tanks' safety. Now he would be going home with a woman Zeke adored and thought only the best of. It was perfect and it would be happening as soon as Vivi walked through those double doors.

The sound of a car's engine brought Zeke to a standstill once again, and his eyes caught sight of a gorgeous red car passing by the Lab. He could only just see the person from where he stood, but the sheen of long black hair billowing in the wind had the vet locked in place like a deer caught in headlights. His expression was neutral but inside his brain and heart were going nuts. He didn't see the car park - couldn't from where the lobby was in relation to the parking lot - but he knew it was her. It was Vivi.

This feeling of assurance in the pit of his gut was only rendered as fact when Vivi herself walked in the door and cried out his name. The vet watched her walk up the sidewalk, roamed his eyes over her as though seeing her for the first time in a long time (which was the truth of the matter), but his mind didn't fully click until his name left her lips.

"Zeke!"

With that utterance of his name, the vet came back to himself, but went into autopilot. His feet left the ground and he ran to her as she ran to him, throwing his arms out and stretching his smile just as wide. In an instant all of Zeke was upon Vivi as they collided, and the vet released a whoop of delight as he looped his arms around the Frenchwoman and whisked her off her feet in a hug to end all hugs.

"VIVI!" Zeke cried, unable to level his voice even if he wanted to. Laughter left him in free and clear notes as he spun them both around the lobby with happy abandon. He squeezed the woman in his grasp tightly and fondly, only letting her down when he himself felt dizzy from all the twirling. Once the lovely lady was set on her own two feet, Zeke had his lips on her cheek - although they were unable to make nothing more than a thin pucker against the grin he wore.

"Vivi!" Zeke cried again, holding the Frenchwoman's waist and staring at her with wide, almost disbelieving caramel brown eyes. Suddenly he was hugging her again, tittering with laughter, but he kept her on terra firma this time.

"You have a boy, Vivi! A boy!" He hugged tighter before letting her go to see her reaction. "He's waiting for you and I'm gonna take you to him right now! Screw the paperwork, it can be done after you see your Raevan!"

Vivi could have spun in her hug with Zeke forever, and even when he had set her down, the both of them teetering with lingering dizziness, she felt like her feet were still off the ground. She held onto Zeke, unable to fully detach from her friend in her joy. The emotion seemed to bounce between the both of them, growing in intensity.While poor Shepard was easily overwhelmed by her excitement, as his was tinged with fear, the happiness simply flowed with her and Zeke, unadulterated. Especially because she now knew that Shepard's greatest insecurities about raising a Raevan had come to nothing.

"A boy!" Vivi's hands went to her cheeks, her eyes bright. She paused, her smiling lips parted, and was silent -- jubilantly silent, her head nodding a shallow nod -- until a laugh bubbled through her. "A boy! We had -- we had been so certain somehow, we had simply -- a boy! We had been so certain he would be a she! But, mon ami, you do not know, this will make the Shepard so -- so happy! Oh! A boy, beautiful little one!" And, with another laugh, she threw her arms around Zeke once more.

To her, the gender of the Raevan had meant nothing -- nothing had changed in her planning, or her hopes, or the way she had prepared all along for the Raevan's arrival. But Shepard, she knew, had been desperate for the Raevan to be male. He was already outnumbered by women, working in what was seen as a feminine profession, and largely depressed by the lack of masculine company in his everyday life. He had surrendered himself early to the seeming certainty a dawn-mothered Raevan would be female, and had steeled himself against the probability that he would be a fundamental part of guiding a small, probably adorable Raevan girl. And Shepard, for all his feminist upbringing, was cowed completely by small, adorable girls.

But this was all moot now. Vivi hugged Zeke tightly and laughed and laughed.

"Yes," she began, pulling back. "Yes, come, let us go and meet our new frie-- oh!"

Vivi started as Isi unexpectedly came into her view, but she quickly recuperated, smoothing her hug-spin-ruffled hair and donning a welcoming smile. "Ah, my apologies, I did not see you! I am Vivi, it is a pleasure to meet you. Zeke, this is a member of the Lab family, yes?" Happy as Vivi was, she did not bother with the introductory handshake, opting instead for the French route of smooching both of Isi's cheeks. Her glee had not dimmed, and although this newcomer seemed... uneasy... Vivi immediately chalked it up to his having witnessed such a magnificent hug.

Isi was very surprised about all this hugging and celebration, but id didn't take long for him to realize and really understand that he was the only one in the god damned building that knew exactly what was going on. Of course they would be jumping about and smiling and hugging one another like they were in the waiting room at a hospital. He wondered why they didn't sell cigars or something at the front desk. But cranky and worried attitude besides, Isi tried to open his mouth and relay the message when he was suddenly the subject of a flyby kissing which left Isi's cheeks bright red when she left them. Isi swallowed, never good with women, as fate would have it, and tried to stammer through his collected embarrassment as the kisses soaked through his cankered exterior.

"Vivi!" he said, his words stumbling out of his mouth, "Vivi, yes, hello! Uh...Yes, uh...I'm Isikoro...Uh...Etul Delaran, I uh....I'm with Aphismet, he's my family...Uh, wow, I'm sorry. Yes, hello, and nice to meet you," Oh, great, he was making a terrible impression on the peppy French lady and it had only been a few minutes. Oh, well, it wasn't like he did anything but make bad impressions. Beyond his obvious infirmity, his malformed skinny legs and the crutches upon his arms, the boys face had a hard time resembling anything other than a growl. So this wasn't anything new and any worry that he was feeling now should be irrelevant. Besides, there were much more pressing issues at hand.

Isi opened his mouth again, getting ready to start with "There has been a problem", before Zeke squeezed himself himself between the two and toted them in either arm like he was a pimp advertising his new wares. Isi's face glowed red with frustration. If there was one more interruption in the broadcasting of his important message, he was going to scream.

Luckily, there wasn't, so as Zeke pushed them down the hallway, Isi fumbled along as best he could on his crutches while, at the same time, he lifted his voice in a very worried, irritated, passionate act worthy of being dubbed the bearer of bad news. "Yeah, it would be a great party if Mister Stag was even there! I'm trying to tell you guys that Mister Stag has gone missing! I can't find him anywhere in the facility, he's gone!"

Well, that wasn't the best way to deliver the dreadful news, but at this point, Isi didn't feel like there was any gentler way to go about informing them than this. It was kind of an emergency.

"Yeah, it would be a great party if Mister Stag was even there! I'm trying to tell you guys that Mister Stag has gone missing! I can't find him anywhere in the facility, he's gone!"

The world reeled. Zeke stopped dead in the hallway, smile plastered on his face but fading from the genuine article to a thin mask that was betrayed by the sudden change in his eyes. Where there was but a moment ago joy and excitement was now misunderstanding, uncertainty that he had heard right, and a dollop of fear that was careening toward the forefront. He stared outwardly down the hall for a few heartbeats, trying to make sense of what the ornery teen had just shouted at him and his female companion.

"That..." he began, and the act of simply speaking a word brought him back to earth, making the vet shake his head before looking at the teen on his left. The mask of that dead smile was gone and instead perplexity reigned. Zeke searched Isi's face for any sign of fooling, but even though he didn't know the teen very well, he knew Isi was no joker.

"Are you sure?" The vet questioned, keeping his voice level and low as he began to recall the details of the Stag's file, including the post-it note that cheerily told the secretary what room the Frei would be in. "Maybe the rooms got mixed up. I mean, accidents happen. He was supposed to be in room two."

It was then that Vivi gripped his arm and the vet turned from the teen to the Frenchwoman. He offered her a gentle smile and squeezed her to his side in hopes to quell her fears. He was feeling the quivers of worry in his gut, but his mind was trying to be rational about this - it just had to be a case of 'someone wrote down the wrong number' or some such thing. A clerical error.

"He has to be here, Vivi. I've been here since this morning; I would have seen him float out if he had left." None of the rooms that the newborns were kept in to wait had doors that opened to the outside world. Windows, certainly, but what newborn would know how to unlatch such a thing? Even if they could, there was still the glass and the screen behind that to raise. Easy for an adult, but a newborn Raevan?

He turned back to Isi and let the teen go, waiting for details from the other male. Zeke wasn't saying he didn't believe the teen - although he dearly hoped the boy was wrong about the Stag being missing - but there just had to be another reason for the Dawn Raevan to not be where he was supposed to be.

The room was turning itself back on its axis as Vivi nodded numbly, listening to Isi speak and thankful for the anchor that Zeke was currently being. She felt annoyed with herself for having nearly gone to pieces in such a way, having only heard the news -- get it together, little imbecile! You are needed to act now, not to feel sorry for yourself! -- but this was a situation wherein she felt at a complete loss. She had no idea how newborn Raeavans acted or did not act, of what they were or were not capable. To hear that Eiry (oh, the cabbage, her mind distantly recognized) had done something similar calmed her nerves, slowed her heart, returned warm blood to her cold cheeks. But her mind was still in a state of unrest, and although she nodded along to everything Isi was saying, she still looked at Zeke periodically for support.

Tell me this will be okay, her expression read, her brow lifted and her eyes wide, her lips downturned.

"I see, yes. Yes," Vivi heard herself saying, her usual lilting tone now dry and thin. She cleared her throat and spoke again, now stronger. "We must -- look outside. You do not think he was... just trying to hide? You are certain he must have -- have escaped?" Her voice held no disbelief in it; she believed Isi, actually, and trusted the grump's capabilities. She seemed to be speaking just to speak, to get words out and air back in her lungs. Her gaze swept around the room, out of any window in sight, for any sign of her lost frei.

Why would he have left? Was he worried, alone? Frightened? Or simply, as Isi suggested, curious?

And more than that -- more than that, so much more than that -- was he now safe?

Her mind went to the stag as she'd last saw him, the massive creature of white and gold, luminescent in the dark of a storm. She'd promised him safety, the beast, in return for his sacrifice, her forehead against his hide. She'd promised him again, when she heard his hoofbeats in dreams, and again when she saw his soul for the last time, swirling in on itself, restless to be reborn. She couldn't possibly have failed already. Not for a promise made three times over.

The gardens was as good a place as any, Isi knew. There was something about plants, something about life, that for most raevans was a magnet, a place of interest. He certainly couldn't draw Eiry away from the garden when he was young, and he certainly couldn't keep him away from it now, especially since Eiry's energy stemmed from sucking the death away from said plants. They actually worked here regularly at the Lab to tend to plants and gardening, a team duo that used each other's strengths in combination. Eiry would eat the death from the plants, and then he and Isi would go around trimming them and getting them to proper order and shape, making everything look nice and sharp, just like the rest of the Lab. Clean, proper, and organized, unlike this most recent venture in the abrupt disappearance of the stag raevan.

With his heavy brows furrowed down over his eyes, Isi followed the other two worried individuals outside, already scanning the surrounding area with eyesight that had been made all the more keen since he had to keep up with Eiry's antics. He could spot if only one thing was wrong in the house, something that might lead towards hidden pranks or the like, a skill necessary for survival in the Delaran house hold. So far, though, there was nothing wrong in the gardens, nothing at all. The flowers remained undisturbed, and when he looked for signs of his own raevan, a distinct lack of dead plants, he noted that not even his own raevan had made his presence known in this part of the Lab property. His brows furrowed deeper and he spun about on his crutches, giving himself a 360 view of the property as he tried to think through the answers given to him by the resident raver at the Lab.

"Well, as long as we remain within shouting distance of one another, I suppose we can split up and cover more ground, but if we were to go anywhere beyond that then I think we should team up with one pair and then keep in contact with cell phones," he replied distractedly as he scoured the landscape around them. Nearby, he could hear the swell of the ocean as it awoke along with the dawn, a bright light that was beginning its ascent over the bay. A rosy hue lifted up over the ocean and with it, there was a distant moving on the horizon, something along the beach was drifting towards them. At first, Isi didn't pay the motion any mind, still looking around the awakening day, for any signs of...His eyes swung back to the moving objects in the distance.

"...Zeke, over there...Are you seeing that?" he scrunched his eyes and pointed with his crutch over in the direction. It looked like a soft blinking light wavering on the distance, coming in and out, a soft signal like a lighthouse out in the fog. He tilted his head, he knew that light. "Oh, it's just Eiry. He's been mopey all week, no idea what's gotten into him. Perhaps we can ask him to help us in finding the lost raevan."

Except that, within that soft blinking will o wisp light, was another form.

Eiry, holding the hand of the newborn frei in his pale hand, pulled him along the shore, floating just above the slip and reach of the waves.

"Little one, we will turn your wayward wandering wither your place belongs...We'll find your place," Eiry was telling the nameless frei, "There is nothing better in the widest reaches of the world other than knowing where you belong."

"Well, as long as we remain within shouting distance of one another, I suppose we can split up and cover more ground, but if we were to go anywhere beyond that then I think we should team up with one pair and then keep in contact with cell phones,"

Zeke nodded. That seemed best now that he thought about it; with all of them looking separately that increased their chances of finding the Stag, and even though Vivi didn't know the entirety of the Lab's grounds, it wasn't like the building had a hundred acres or more to search either. Speaking of the woman, while Isi scoured the scene next to him, Zeke watched the Frenchwoman depart from their small group and search the immediate vicinity. His heart went out to her - being in this situation now, he had no idea how he'd have reacted if Isi had shown up at his Pick Up saying Anya had gone MIA. A part of him still hoped it was just a misunderstanding or even a trick from the Dawn Raevan himself but until they found him the vast majority of his being was simply going to hope for a safe return.

When Isi spoke up and gave the raver a direction to look, Zeke turned his head so fast he gave himself a pain in the neck. Rubbing the spot gingerly, the vet looked through the neatly kept foliage at the surf and sand beyond. The sunlight shimmering off the water made the vet squint and raise his other hand to shield his eyes from the glare, but through that he did see what Isi saw - a figure floating down the beach.

"Oh, it's just Eiry. He's been mopey all week, no idea what's gotten into him. Perhaps we can ask him to help us in finding the lost Raevan."

"I can run down there and nab him real quick," Zeke had also not seen the other figure trailing along in the Sigel's wake. "Even if he's been mopey, Eiry's always struck me as the type to help when help was needed."

Zeke had firsthand experience of this to prove it too, when he and the Sigel had gone off like unprepared knights to try and save the Lab when it was iced over a couple years ago. Where Zeke would have been now if Eiry hadn't been there to save his a** from the ice, Zeke couldn't say, nor did he want to think about it. At any rate, that moment of bravado had endeared the minty Raevan to the vet, even if they hadn't really interacted much or gotten to know each other since then.

"The cabbage..."

Now aware Vivi had returned, Zeke stopped looking at the horizon to instead pass a light-spotted gaze at her. Blinking a few times to clear his vision of those dark blurs, he reached out and wrapped her in another side-hug, smiling in a knowing way at her tone but keeping silent as she spoke to Isi. This kept up until the lovely baker gasped and one of her hands gripped his bicep like a vice, directing his eyes once more out to sea. At her query, he shook his head.

"No, Anya didn't come with me today." And even if she had, after the Halloween party, she wouldn't have been caught dead with the Wisp. Saying those words, he felt excitement rise. "It can't be Laz either, he's out." Zul didn't stop by the Lab much anymore and he definitely wasn't here. Staff Raevans accounted for, that left only one plausible option to the vet - him.

"I think we should head down to the beach," Zeke looked to his companions in turn, then gently loosened Vivi's grip on his arm. He gave her a smile as he spoke directly to her, giving her a soft push to move in front of him and Isi. "and I think you should take the lead."

He was definitely jumping the gun with this but there was still a possibility! And with Eiry known for pulling pranks and stags being known to prefer the outdoors to a small office room well...

"There's a path down there through those bushes. Isi and I are right behind you."