Welcome to Gaia! ::

For as long as there have been men there have been tales of other lands and the creatures who happen to inhabit them. This is one such tale when you get right down to it at the basest form. Mostly these mystic tales begin with a long and difficult journey to some distant land, but often enough the gateways are much closer than we may want to believe and someone often times stumbles into great adventure inadvertantly.
There is one such a doorway behind old barn doors at the end of Nantuckett Street. The road is old and lost. The tree roots have grown into the road to make it quite bumpy and cracked, their branches make a tunnel that green sunlight filters though hazily and moonlight dances on thier boughs by night. There is an old farmhouse, the only structure for many miles, set back into those innumerable trees badly scared from some long ago fire. Behind those ramshackle remains there is a set of barn doors. Long ago there was a whole barn but the walls have caved into themselves and rotted away to leave only the doors standing lonely and time battered. The forest has grown up around all of it as though to claim what was merely borrowed from it, and as the location grew into disrepair the land was forgotten . It is a day's drive from any busy road and two days from any city. There has been no human foot to tred here in so many years now there are tiny lights seen about the doors sparkling like earth bound stars and oddly shaped figures that can be spotted moving within the cover of the trees and they have all grown used to their isolation at this gateway. But, as long as there are doors there will be some poor soul to walk through them. For it is only with trust we walk through a door and hope it spits us out at the proper place on the other side, every once and a while this faith is misplaced. Especially when we go through strange doors.

Zarina raced across the huge yard of the farmhouse her sister and herself and just bought, feeling a refreshing excitement out of being away from all the hustle of city life. Having always been taught to love nature, Zarina found life in the city to be beyond repressive. "Zahara!" She called out to her younger sister, and she slammed through the screen door and searched the lower floor for her, finding her in the room they had decided to make into a library. "Zahara," she panted a bit out of breath from her run. "oh, Zahara, There's wild roses everywhere out by the old barn" she told her, while still attempting to catch her breath.

Zarina sank to the floor in the doorway. "I've not given it much thought beyond getting you out of the stuffy city for a spell." she admitted. "We can both work at home and my art should sell better than ever with all the natural inspiration" she said casting a glance at the boxes of art supplies that was sitting in the hallway outside of the next room. "I should unpack them and paint the fields of roses while they are still fresh in my mind" she said to herself, glancing up at her sister and reaching to take the water she had brought. "but, for the moment, I wish to keep them all for myself." she gave a quick little blush. "Do you think that horribly selfish of me?" she asked throwing her head back and drinking the water in a rush.

Zarina gave a slight sigh and leaned back against the door frame. "Yes, it feels good to be here... Like we're more connected with the Earth" she said it quietly. "Tomorrow the rest of our furnature will arrive, and we can start turning this empty old farmhouse into a home." happy for the first time in what seemed to be forever Zarina couldn't stop herself from picturing how they would decorate the house. "We should get the paint and wallpaper samples and start on that" she said to her twin. "Make this house ours today, not wait for even a minute." Excitement fueling her voice once again Zarina lept to her feet in one smooth motion.

Zarina began flipping through the samples book with a trained artists eye and ripping pieces of paper from a nearby sketch pad crammed them in to mark pages she liked. "Oh yes... Something that will highlight the books, and figures" she said not really paying attention to what her sister was doing. She marked a final page and handed the book to Zahara. "Your pick" she said her eyes focused on a stack of blank canvas that had been leaned against a wall for later storage.

Zarina was half listening to her sister while patting herself down for a charcoal pencil so she could begin a sketch to paint later. "Match more than one item dear" she told her sister absently. "The lily is precious yes, but I like the light blue tones on the ivory on the next page" she said as she put pencil to canvas and began making the swooping lines and curves from her mind.

Zarina paused in her sketching for a moment. "Yes you are right... What about the ivory with the tan touch three pages after the blue?" she asked as she swept another curve onto the canvas surface.

Zarina paused mid swoop and took a step back to study her canvas. "Well poo," she sighed "We'll never agree, lets just paint the thing cream and get it over with" she complained as she flopped herself down on a nearby chair, abandoning the canvas, that had somehow in all her movement become a tangle of vines and flower petals. "We'll pitch some simplistic moldings and some old fashioned carriage style sconces in there to compliment it all."