Welcome to Gaia! ::

Elle shrugged. "I don't know, I think that you can read and it makes you know more than most people, so that makes you smart too. You seem as smart as the elf children north of here! Maybe you could come to the treehouses sometime, and meet my elf friends."

Hugging Nyoka, Kia just grinned more. "Thankyou, and he is the best person in the world. So you have got to be maid of honor. ...please?"

"My child she'll outlive as well, and she took her. She took her, and her things, and everything to do with her, and forgot about us. Her other two family, her other daughter, her FIANCEE. I love my Winny as much as my Elle, she had no right to take her."

"You could do it, there are ladders you can climb. The treehouses are pretty, and when you get up there, there are stairs and things. Elves have built a lot in the year they lived here."

Kia blinked. What did maid of honors do? "Uh... well, pretty dresses... and stuff."

"She would have let me say goodbye if she wanted me to still see Winny. That's my girl, they have, those ******** kitten eating monsters. What if they turn her into one too, what if they make her a vampire?"

"They speak english too, because I am not as good at it either. So you would be fine." Elle replied, looking back at him. "But they would help you with that too."

Kia blinked, and nodded. But then she pouted just a tiny bit, and muttered, "Why can I not just go naked? Naked wedding! Clothes are stupid anyway, if it is summer."

Neith sighed, and nodded. "I know, I've got to go home. Elle was with Kia, and the elves, she wasn't alone. I'd never leave her alone."

It was pitch black around this inn. Only the passing of cars, occasional and bright at this late hour, lit up the darkness surrounding the building, even the pink and purple fluorescent 'INN' and 'BAR' light that buzzed in the deathly quiet night seemly unable to pierce the dark more than a few feet.

Elle crouched outside just behind a tree. It was 2am according to her watch, and like every night, she wasn't tired. She felt like being near living people though and this bar was full of them. Drunken adults, badly played music, but what was interested Elle was how they left. Some stumbled out into the dark world without a care, as if unaware that the night could be holding dangers. Some did seem to know, and were a lot ediger about either getting to cars, or waiting for taxis. And some wandered home alone, glancing over their shoulders as if expecting some sort of wild beast to jump on them.

She noticed one young man coming out, probably an elf from the style of clothing. Without thinking, Elle started to stalk him from the darkness of the forest. Beside her, was Enid. The kreature seemed to prod her legs, urge her on, tell her to keep going or when to stop, teaching her how to hunt this elf. Elle felt odd, having no compulsion to stop, this seemed to agree with something inside of her. The dark night, overcast sky hiding any trace of stars or moon, occasional rain, and the hunting of an elf.

They were so close. A few feet. Not far... not far to go...

And then that elf vanished.

Elle paused from behind a bush, headwings twitching. Where did he go? She took a few soft steps forward and found herself being tapped on the shoulder. "Elle? ...what are you doing here?!"

Elle jumped, and fell over headfirst into the bush. Sheepishly, she crawled out and stared up at Braeden. One of Neith's elves. "Um... I can't sleep?"

Braeden raised an eyebrow, but he didn't ask anymore. "All right. Well, come on, I'll take you home."

Nodding, pale face going red, Elle allowed the elf to take her home again.

That evening, there were two people deep in thought. One pre-teen girl, and one stressed out Neith.

Only, they were thinking entiralyl different thoughts.

Elle sat in front of the computer, typing. Not just typing... she was typing a diary entry. A real one this time.



And Neith sat upstairs in the 'study', writing in her own diary.

Her quiet feet barely made a sound on the solid sidewalk, people never seemed to look up or notice when Elle wandered aimlessly along the streets. It was night, but the town was still buzzing with life. It was so unlike the bushier areas of Gaia, where the majority of people seemed to go to bed early and rise early.

Elle stopped in the doorway of a closed shop, watching curiously. She'd been brought up in that slower and calmer 'children and animals are our life' way, these nightclubs confused her. She was still far too young to really go inside and see what magic happened... but from the way people acted as they came out, it had to be really amazing magic.

Her thick dragon tail twitched, and Elle twisted around to try and hold it still. It had gotten much thicker since she was a child, and very strong. It almost had a life of it's own, and tended to knock down anything below waist level. She was afraid it'd break a window... not likely, but the last thing the young teen needed was to get caught by cops at this time of night, because her tail had set off some sort of alarm in a shop.

With that in mind, Elle started to wander away from the nightclub again. She was so <i>bored</i> these days, without anything to do at night. She couldn't eat somewhere, she wasn't old enough to go into those magic nightclubs, people would laugh at her if she came near and tried to talk, they'd tell her to 'Go home to your dollies'.

Elle snarled and glared at a random passerby. Another laugh, just like everytime. She couldn't help how old she was! Why couldn't they just pretend to be nice, or something?! She felt shy about speaking to strangers, it always took effort... and then they always laughed.

She made her way home then, deciding that there had to be better things to do than to stand around and be teased.

Tomorrow night, Elle would see what she could find.

"Ow...ow...ow..."

Neith muttered something, and then snapped, "Hold still! This'll sting a bit."

"OW! Mom!" Elle jumped when white vinegar was dabbed onto her burnt skin, only causing Neith's hand to jerk and press down harder than intended. "That can't be good, it hurts!"

Neith pulled back, and put the cloth down. "I told you to wear sunscreen. What did you expect? The vinegar will help."

Elle tried to cross her arms, but it caused her to wince. Her shoulders, arms, back and parts of her face were burnt bright red and peeling in places. It hadn't seemed like she was burning at first, the sunshine had felt nice and warm. But it didn't hurt. It wasn't till a few hours later when that pleasant lingering warmth had turned into something a lot more painful and annoying. Frowing and attempting to stand, she retorted, "It's not my fault, I was tricked. I didn't know the sun was slow or that fifteen minutes would do this."

"You were warned, I told you that your skin was too pale for a lot of sunlight. Here... there's some icy water in the fridge. It'll help you." Neith went to the fridge, and brought out a jug of water. She gave Elle a fresh hand towel, and tried to ignore Elle's suspicious sniffing of the water. "I promise, that's just water. No added things."

Elle ignored Neith and started to dab the cold water onto her burnt skin. That felt a lot better, and she let out a long sigh of relief.

"I'll go and finish hanging out the washing, and then maybe I'll go buy more plants to shade the backyard with. Will you be all right?"

Elle nodded, and watched Neith go back out into the sunlight with a slight envious feelign creeping over her. That was followed by a nagging feeling of something that was darker. It wasn't fair that Elle couldn't live like a normal person, and it was so STUPID that now Neith was treating her like some sort of disabled person, giving her special dark shades and plants and stuff. It wasn't like Elle was allergic to the sunlight like some people were, and she wasn't like Kochi. She <i>could</i> go outside!

Standing, Elle made her way upstairs. She'd changed her mind about moving down to the basement, sure that it would make Neith get obsessive about Elle being strange. Besides, the top was kind of cool and high up. Elle liked being able to see far. There was something strange about living up here, because of the celing. It was sloped, and the only straight places were the four windows on each side where the roof had been pushed out to make a good place to stand. Luckily, Elle wasn't too tall, and she didn't need to bend over unless she went to one end of the room. And she'd gotten Neith to get more rugs, which made sure that the room was soundproofed.

Curling up at one of the windows on the window seat, with the jug of water in front of her, Elle watched her mother wander around doing house work. She felt like a swirling walking playground for emotions!

And confusion seemed to be having the best time, Elle complained to herself. She didn't know what she was supposed to be. A teenager? Then why did Elle still love the toys she had when she was younger, why were some of them still scattered around? Teenagers didn't play with toys. And children called Moms Mommy... and Elle still did that sometimes by accident. But she wasn't a child either, Elle had already started to go into that thing called puberty, according to her mom.

And then something else hit her. What WAS puberty?! And... what was sex?!

She'd heard a lot of talk between other teenagers when she went out, about sex and stuff. Elle had an idea about sex, it was that thing that made Kia get pregnant. Elle didn't want to get pregnant. But still... it wasn't like people sat down, said 'sex' and got pregnant like that? If they did, then that was a really stupid way to show love.

Was it a type of kiss? Maybe some of those yuck kisses Elle had seen on TV and in the streets did it, but did people really get pregnant in public? Elle was sure that was illegal!

Neith had banned Elle from looking up 'sex' online. Neith also hadn't counted on Elle learning more about the computer than Neith did... and defiantly hadn't expected Elle to crack the parent lock and turn it around to prevent Neith from doing things...

With a determined look and a few winces, Elle got up and headed to the computer. She was not going to ask her Mom. But if Mom didn't want her to look up sex on the Internet, then Elle would. If anything would explain, the Internet could!

Elle switched on the computer, and headed for google.