Welcome to Gaia! ::

It was frustrating to try to argue with one's ancestor, especially when one's ancestor was bullheadedly trying to keep the tradition of patience! alive in their descendent. Avalon wasn't sure why she kept trying anymore, finding that the old ghost of her great-however-many-grandmother was more of a hinderance than a help. How does my magic work? only met with responses like Oh, Tatiana, darling, it'll surface when it's time. Or long, pointless, bootless stories about Nimue's struggles with learning her own magic, a thousand years ago. None of it answered Avalon's questions. None of it made anything clearer.

Gee. Thanks. So useful, Grandmother.

She returned to the same place she was when she left, standing below a streetlight near the shopping district. (No one noticed a single person vanishing into the ether during rush hour.) Hours had passed and night had fallen like a curtain--where once the air around her had been warm with sunlight, the darkness now chilled her to the bone. "What a waste of time," she huffed, tugging her coat straight.

Oh, great, was there a civilian--Avalon turned and got an eyeful of what had to be a knight. No sailor collar, no bow on the minty-haired girl's a**. No Chaos aura. Therefore: Knight. "Please tell me you're new," she said. "The last thing I want to do is spend the night explaining wonders to someone who's already heard it five times." If she'd ever even been to her wonder, this girl (she looked young) hadn't been paying attention to how exactly she got there and back. Avalon preferred to think that the Page just hadn't ever been to her Wonder at all.

"I'm Avalon, Squire of Earth," she said, offering the girl a hand to shake. "And you're… I'm sorry, I haven't seen a page dressed like you before?"

Avalon wanted to tell Meru to keep avoiding it. That there'd be nothing for Meru in this but pain. But it didn't have to be that way and Avalon wasn't much for scaring kids and she patted Meru's shoulder after dropping her hand. "Yeah, well, that's really all you get when you're just a page," she said. "You're supposed to get magic. So… I guess you don't have a clue what wonders are or where your name is from, do you?" It seemed an obvious assumption.

With reluctance, Avalon draped an arm over the shoulder she'd just been patting. "C'mon, Meru," she said. "Let's go to the library and find out what you ought to expect."

Eh, well, that was one way to think about it. Avalon was feeling increasingly sure that she'd feel a lot better about things if she gave up the magic and got an actual weapon. One with a sharp edge… the scarred part of her shoulder throbbed at the memory, but she didn't give in to the urge to rub it until the muscles un-bunched. "Kind of sad," she said. "Alright, so--here's the thing. Wonders are where your powers come from. You swear allegiance to your Wonder and your Wonder gives you the ability to take on this form, here, as Meru Page of Cosmos. Mine turns me into Avalon Squire of Earth and gives me this--" she called her wand in and held it up before them. "The way it works was a little different for me than for others. I had to give up my powers for eight months to learn patience." It hadn't worked. "Most people just get it. Bam. New powers, new weapon, fancier clothes."

She took a breath. "My wonder's here on Earth. Yours will be who the ******** knows where. And I don't know if you'll be able to breathe, so, that's why we check it out beforehand and theorize about what to expect." Meru Page got herself frog-marched into the library, and the pair of them settled down at one of the computers. "D'you know how to spell Meru?"