Welcome to Gaia! ::

May was shaping up to be a pretty terrible month, all things considered. Lily's friends had been kidnapped by a giant tick thing, there were sketchy circumstances surrounding the girl she'd been kissing, and she had somewhere picked up the uncontrollable ability to just turn off everything in her mind. She had thought that pouring herself into the otherworld and her channel would help recenter her focus, but all that she'd gotten for her struggles were questions, more questions, and the occasional new scar.

It would have been easy to just retreat from the world entirely, and for a few days after she received a letter from the dean's office she did, tucked away in bed with only the light of her phone as company. But after the second day of staring blankly at google searches of 'how to get a sweet job with no degree', she forced herself to get up, maybe go to the gym, anything to revive her ability to feel something other than defeat. As she dressed herself, she caught sight of the other impending letter in her world, one from a vintner with plans to remake how magic worked. They were supposed to be working on that. Right.

Lily didn't particularly want to visit Eve--she was the closest thing to a parent figure in Ashdown, and there was a decent chance that Professor Mercer had ratted on Lily and that she had an angry lecture waiting for her, because that's what parents did. But the world needed saving, and Eve had a knack for handling questions, and maybe Professor Mercer hadn't ratted on Lily and maybe Eve didn't know about her academic problems at all. It was a debate she waged with herself the entire time she drove towards the gym.

She didn't call to announce her impending arrival, because she only tricked herself into turning onto Eve's street at the last second. It felt weird to approach her door with no offering in hand, even though she knew that Eve never required it--it felt almost customary, in a way. Lily stood awkwardly at the threshold, staring hard at her sneakers, and finally when she mustered up the nerve she knocked at the door.

"Hey Mom," Lily responded, hesitating at the threshold before awkwardly stepping past into the next room. She started to move for a shoulder pat, and then a hug, and then just stopped herself entirely, inviting herself to the kitchen for a Pellegrino and then sitting on the sofa opposite Eve, trying to compose what she was going to say.

So I think I got catfished by a fetch. Her lips pursed as she looked down at the cold can between her hands. But hey, in other news, some congrats are in order because I just passed Mercer's class. And...still flunked out of school. Her nose wrinkled in concentrated effort as she snapped the top open, listening to the sound of bubbles hiss. Also I think I signed off on some really bad s**t in another timeline, so the me in another universe is an a*****e.

But that gave her an idea for how to break the ice. "Did you get that letter about remaking the charter thing?" Lily asked, looking up from under the disheveled swath of her bangs. "There's, like...a whole grocery list of stuff we're supposed to get, and I don't know where to start."

"Well, yeah," Lily shrugged, lifting the Pellegrino to her lips and taking a sip. "We're supposed to remake the charter and remake the way nobles work or whatever, and the only way that's going to happen is if we have all of this...stuff." She gestured vaguely at the space in front of her, like she could just will something into existence the way anyone could in the otherworld.

"If we help get the stuff together, then we make sure that nobles can't keep kidnapping people or being terrible, and then maybe we won't have to be on spook patrol all the time." She nodded at the mention of America and Leila working together on the new charter--it meant that she wasn't alone in her thinking, just a little behind schedule, which at this point was pretty typical for Lily.

"And even with the stuff that's going on, I figured you'd probably know more about magic stuff than anyone else I actually want to talk to." She started to pull her feet onto the couch, but remembered she still had shoes on, and bit down on her impulse to climb.

"I dunno, you just have this whole magic thing down, I guess," Lily supposed, tilting her head. "Maybe it's a tea thing."

"Yeah, let's make one of those," she nodded along, pulling out her phone. "It's, like, the Captain Planet elements minus heart, right? So earth, wind, fire, water..."

She started to Google 'How to make the elements from Captain Planet'.

"I'm pretty sure Captain Planet was there at the dawn of time because he's a hero, but okay," Lily said, leaning back into one of the couch cushions as she revised her search.

"So out of all of these, the only one that's really make-able is fire," she hummed, thumbing through a number of diagrams. "Everything else is already just...around."

"Don't know what my moon sign is, but I'm a Libra if that matters," Lily chimed in helpfully, pulling herself up to standing. She scoured the shelf for something that looked vaguely spooky and candle-y (which, unfortunately, seemed to be multiple titles in Eve's collection), and unsatisfied with any single option, opted for three separate books that looked like they vaguely fit the theme.

"Do these work?" Lily asked, holding the stack of books up with their spines towards Eve so she could inspect the titles. It seemed that having a purpose was lifting her mood--or at the very least, returning it to its natural neutral state.

Lily nodded, carefully reshelving the reject reference material before settling herself back on the opposite couch, the second book in hand. She opened it to the page of contents and began tracing her finger down, looking for a chapter that seemed appropriate.

"In the otherworld, magic is all about having fun and believing in yourself, so it's at least a little bit like Captain Planet," Lily persisted, stopping at a chapter title. "'Cleansing Your Altar For Crafting'--that's basically what we're trying to do, right?"

"Got you," Lily winked, crossing the room and entering the kitchen. She closed Eve's notebook and grabbed a handful of the writing utensils nearby and returned, choosing to nestle herself on the floor by Eve's feet. She leaned back against the foot of the couch and opened her chosen text, passing the notebook and pens up to Eve as she thumbed over to the page she needed.

"I'll let you know if I find anything cool," she said, her eyes scanning across the title of the chapter.