Welcome to Gaia! ::

The evening was warm. A familiar, long-separated-from feeling that filled Lithian with a particular sort of contentedness. He had been ready — eager, even, and excited — to depart with Casseth lo those many months ago to explore surrounding continents, travel across foreign seas and scout wild lands beyond those of Eowyn.

But after the time out, after the ‘adventure’, and intrigue, after everything, the familiarity of home was welcome, and comforting. He and Casseth had made it back to Eowyn this evening, back to their seaside house on the beach. Back to familiarity, peace, and stability.

Back to their bed.

Their bed had, as might be expected, seen its fair share of activity already in the first few hours of their return, but now the hours were waning, late night drifting on into early morning, and contented — genuinely contented — and happy as he was, Lithian’s thoughts still wandered. He held himself close to the body of his lover. His mate. And he tucked himself against him, brushing his lips lethargically against his skin and thumbing over the scales near to his touch. Never had he been quite so happy as this.

But he wanted something more, too. Something he and Casseth had spoken of before leaving, even before mating, and now that they were back from their getaway, the thought lingered and persisted, heavy and active on his mind.

He leaned in, wrapping his arm into a lazy, tugging pull at Casseth’s waist and brushing his lips up the shape of his mate’s ear. “Casseth…” He shut his eyes, fingers tracing idle patterns on his lover’s stomach, “…we should visit an orphanage tomorrow…”

“Mmm…mhm,” Lithian said, settling a bit at Casseth’s side but not pulling away and continuing to provide gentle, teasing touches where his lips and fingers could reach. “We’ve spoken on it before…you said before we left that it was something we could do on returning?” He hesitated, lips coming to a light rest on Casseth’s shoulder. “We wouldn’t have to…if you’re not ready yet. But we are mated now, and settled…” His fingers brushed up and then down the skin of Cas’ stomach. “We have coin and stability…my shop is successful and your work steady enough…if there were to be a good time…”

Lithian flushed, a warm rush of feeling — giddiness, excitement, nervousness, disbelief and pleasure — sweeping through his chest at the words. He leaned and rolled to straddle his mate, nodding as he did. “Yes,” he said, dipping to catch Casseth’s lips in a kiss. “Yes, yes it is…”

And so it was that, come the next morning, after handling the day’s preliminary tasks, they set out through the port city.

Though not massive, Taliuma was the largest dock and center of trade on Eowyn and its streets saw faces of all sorts. Sailors. Soldiers. Traders. Merchants and blades for hire. Fate brought men and women through for all varieties of reasons, and with them, on occasion, came children. As such, despite not being the friendliest of all locations, it did house a moderate orphanage tucked in the inner district. Merchant stalls and canvassed-over, shaded walkways filled to the brim with sellers and buyers alike, littered the surrounding area such that the building itself looked almost out of place. A raw, orange-brick establishment with a stretch of undecorated dirt at its front occupied only by a small cluster of underfed, and unwashed children in the heat of an argument.

Lithian hesitated, eyeing them and then his mate before progressing towards the front stone steps. “Hello?” he called, suddenly uncertain as he brushed back at the red-orange patterned cloth hanging over the front doorway and apparently serving, for the moment as the door itself. The sounds of more young voices, both upset and not, could be heard from deeper inside, but he saw no signs of an adult, which was discouraging.

“I’m sure there is,” Lithian responded, and he was sure there would be — somewhere — but the lack so far made him wonder if the children were safe in a space so unsupervised.

As they moved in, progressing down a set of steps to the inner edge of a walled-in courtyard area, the eyes of the resident children continued to follow them. Whispers cropped up in their wake, most pausing in their play when they saw them and some leaning in and covering their mouths to trade commentary. One closer child — thirteen at least in years, if not older — narrowed her sockets suspiciously. Pureblood oblivionite, from the looks of things. Deep maroon skin without any visible scales and thick, messy red-black hair tied back by a ragged brown ribbon.

“What are you doing here?” she asked, weight half propped to a nearby pillar surrounding the court and gaze following them as they moved, expression sharp and condescending. Moments after asking, she leaned over, muttering something to her companion — a younger boy of perhaps ten — most of which Lithian did not catch, though the words ‘run away’, ‘better off here’, and ‘hybrid’ seemed to be prominent components.

Lithian frowned, opening his mouth. Before he got anything out, however, a large woman, heavyset and also oblivionite, and older — if her sweeping tail, wings, and third eye were any indication — approached. She lifted the edges of her wrapped skirts as she moved down the steps, keeping the already worn cloth from dragging in the dust before eyeing them.

“Ysarra Vrein, resident Mother. Looking for something?”

With the matron as their guide, Lithian and Casseth toured the orphanage, were asked a handful of questions and introduced to several of the children. The majority were oblivionite, being that they were on the Soudul-facing coastline and Taliuma saw a sizable portion of trade from there, but some dovaa, too, were scattered in along with mixes of various comings and the rare orderite. After their first afternoon there, the pair returned, making no immediate decisions, and ended up making a habit of dropping in several times a week over the course of the following month.

‘Deciding’, however, was a complex and convoluted process. The children came from all varieties of backgrounds and were of varying ages, but only a small number were below the age of two or three summers, most five to seven or even older. The one infant among them, the matron said, was accounted for, leaving them with an ominously difficult choice at hand. Lithian and Casseth discussed, and eventually followed through on a venture to visit Tukyere, where they hoped to — and did, at least — find a more open attitude in regards to both Casseth’s mixed race and their pair in general. More homeless children, however, did not make the act of settling on a single choice any easier.

Ironically, as the case may be, they ended up coming to ‘know’ the girl who had originally bristled at them — Asoriah Vyri — among the best of those children in Taliuma, and though her attitude remained defensive, reluctant, and oft-times accusing, she urged them on more than one occasion that her frequent company, Tydrick, a boy of nine summers, was well-behaved and better than any they’d find ‘in that hybrid city.’

Their search went on.