Welcome to Gaia! ::

The door opened a moment later to reveal a petite girl with long, ombre hair drawn back in a loose braid over one shoulder, and subtle shadows under pale eyes suggesting she hadn't been sleeping all that well lately. She smiled though, as she stepped aside and held the door open for Mara to come inside, and then closed the door behind her with a soft click.

The room itself looked lived in, though clean, with the majority of her furniture matching, with only a few oddballs here or there. As if it had been slowly evolving in style for a while. Which it had.

Peyton was in a pair of cut off shorts that managed to make s**t legs look longer. Her feet were bare, toenails painted a bright aqua, and the scar on the top of her right foot stood out starkly against tanned skin.her shirt was a plain, comfortable tank top.

"Make yourself at home, guess." She gestured towards the couch, abd the small table in the corner of the kitchenette. "No caffeine, huh? I've got milk, if you want, or juice." She glanced at one of the few bottles of wine on top of the fridge, debating on offering that as well.

"Yeah, no problem," she answered as she headed for the refrigerator to get herself some juice, and also grab a water for Mara before wandering towards the couch to take a seat at one end. "Here, I hope bottled is fine."

At mention of them, the Sun glanced down at Mara's shoes, then shrugged. "No, it's fine. don'd worry about it."

There was a part of her that was just itching to dive right into every bit of dirt she had on Lawrence, but she knew she had to go about this carefully. Shoving information at people, true or not, had proven to have disappointing and discouraging results, and this was important. Treading carefully from now on seemed her best bet.

Peyton eyed the notebook warily; the sticker, the title at the top, and she seemed to cringed inwardly at the way Mara called him daddy, because it just sounded so fundamentally wrong.

"Okay." Selling on where to start was a challenge. "I guess we can start without what I know of him before he got here. There isn't much, because a lot of it is hearsay, but what I do know is that he was a con man. He'd adopt personas to get close to people for personal gain. The one if those, the one he came here with, was Jan. An easy going eccentric that clashed to be a psychic. His preferred marks were older people, because they were easiest. Or so he said."

She frowned thoughtfully, and debated on going to get the list shed made of all the personas and identities Lawrence had mentioned in that dream.

Answering questions was a little easier. More direct, less chance for her thoughts to scatter. "About four years, maybe a little longer than that. He and some other survivers were brought here after this Jurassic Park kind of place did exactly what happened in the movies. Instead if dinosaurs though, it was fear creatures. Dragobds, and giant snakes, and mermaids and s**t like that."

She had to pause at the question of how many names, and after a thoughtful moment she got up, gesturing to Mara that she'd be back in just a moment, and headed for her bedroom. From a drawer in the bedside table she pulled out a small of of paper with a list taking up all of the first page.

"I've got a list. Something magical compelled him to give up at least this many, there could be more. I can explain a few of these in better detail, but some he doesdoesnt let people see." She was taking as she came back out and took a seat, eyes scanning the list in her hands and as she sat again drew her lower lip between her teeth, worrying at it."

As Mara shifted closer Peyton moved the notebook down so the other girl could see it better. On it there was a list of names, but after each name there was also a short explanation for each in Lawrence's own words. This was the first time she'd shown it to anyone.

• Larry, the first, the child who could not understand but who understood hate, the first thing I learned was that I was different and that all I could hope for was to act like them. They hated me because I was not like them and they could not love what could not be returned.
  
• Weiman, I learned hatred fast from the other who bears my name, it became my first weapon. I am the tool with which all else can be understood, the flaming sword of the greatness within. I cut through mind meat and bone and inside I find answers and immortality. All faces are tools and I am the one which should never be seen.
  
• Divinity, perfection incarnate, I will reach up my wings to the heavens and shall understand all things, all people and all emotion. Transcendence is my meaning.
  
• Jan, known as Ian to some, I am psychic, both to pets and people. I exist because the elderly enjoy me, because I tell them what they want to hear. I tell them their racism and their bigotry is normal. I tell them the ones who never loved them do because it is what they want to hear. I fill them up and then I tear them down. They think I am stupid, that is what I want.
  
• Chantelle, they saw through me on the island so I shed my skin for another, I was stolen, I am alive and yet I am dead. *
  
• Diego, I sought a family, I sought credit cards, I exist as a fraudulent face, as a lie on paper which cannot be traced.
  
• Lawrence and in me is nothing.
  
• Tweetheart, I taught myself to fly.
  
• Dr Michaels, I exist for my family, I am a vet, I am reborn. I had a wife. I had so much. I will have it again. I am good. I am good. I am good. I will be good. I will be a good boy.
  I am all of these things and yet I am none of these things. Who I am is a constant state of never knowing who I am. Who I am is Hunger.

"A lot," she began, sounding tired. "The list is new. These are aliases and personas he admitted to me very recently. I wrote it all down exactly as he said it after I woke up, I didn't want to forget any of it. It's...things here are weird. Strange things are always happening, to us, to the island. And some of those strange things just sound ridiculous until you've been through them yourself." Like a giant hookah smoking caterpillar magically compelling someone to spill a lot of very intimate secrets in the middle of a dream that was more than just a dream.

The notebook was lowered to her lap, and small hands shifted to fold over top of it. "He stalked one of my best friends, and carved a treble cleft into her chest after dragging her outside the safety of the wards that surround the training field. He cut off the foot of her pet. He went to his ex wive's house, when he was told expressly, as we all are, that he wasn't allowed to. He went there knowing something bad would happen, and didn't care. It was an...experiment to him, to see what would happen. He assaulted her while he was there, and her new husband, but worse than that, his presence there attracted one of our worst enemies, and she possessed his daughter, Melody. She was just a little girl, and he could have saved her, bu he traded her life for his, and then he lied about it to the hunters that came to clean up the mess."

The more she talked, the thicker her voice sounded. Peyton had never met Melody, but she'd seen her. She'd seen her safe and sleeping in her bed, and then she'd seen her gagging and retching on moths as they'd flown into and out of her moth, filling her, taking her over. The memory of it still woke the petite hunter at night, and she cringed now just thinking about it.

Peyton shook her head, then tucked a loose curl back behind her ear. "I don't know. He managed to avoid getting caught before getting here, I guess. He makes a lot of terrible choices, but he's clever." Which was part of the problem.

"I don't know if he has more daughters aside from you and Melody, but it's likely." The b*****d had any number of bastards of his own.

She glanced at Mara, frowning. "There's more, that he's done. "

Peyton took a heavy breath before starting again. "He was dating one of the trainees here, someone significantly younger than him. I don't...really know what prompted it, but after they'd been together for a while he seemed to just turn on him. He abducted him, kept him tied up in a cave along the coast of the island. He took his phone, pretended to be him so people wouldn't realize he was missing at first."

At some point she'd dropped her gaze again, back to her lap. "We ended up figuring it out, and we managed to find him, but when he did he'd had one of his fingers cut off, and a whole note carved into his chest." Her lip curled just slightly at the memory of it.

"Another of his ex's, Melvin, he took advantage of lingering feelings Melvin still had for his dead girlfriend, and made him believe he could reach her spirit. That he could be a vessel for her." To Peyton it all sounded very absurd, but she had to wonder what she'd have been willing to believe if anything had ever happened to Astrid. "He lied to him, manipulated him, and eventually broke him."