Welcome to Gaia! ::

Setting: West Harbor State Park. A scenic campground with fishing, boating, swimming, even horseback riding. A beautiful old lodge for those who want closer to a hotel type get-away, and cabins with electricity and running water. There are plenty of trails for hiking or you can even venture off if you're really adventurous. But, things aren't always as they seem.

You can be either a camper, a ghost, or some other creature to either cause havoc or try to stop it.

Rules: No god-modding
*Out of character conversation must be separated by double parentheses (()) or double brackets [[]] and try to keep it to a minimum.
*PM me with your character profile and i'll add it to the threads i've set aside for them. it keeps them all together so no one has to search.
*You can have more than one character as long as you can keep track of them. Don't go overboard.

RESERVED FOR CHARACTER PROFILES

((Okies, I guess I'll start it off))

Tara shut the trunk on her rental SUV with a sigh. Finally, she had finished packing all the stuff into the car. Her sister could definitely overpack sometimes.

"Almost ready, sis?" Tara called.

"Yeah, yeah," Christine shouted back. She came out the front door with her duffleback filled to the point it looked as if the zipper would burst at the seams.

"Dang, girl!" Tara exclaimed. "What do you have in there? Your whole closet? This is camping. We're not moving out."

"I don't know how long this trip will actually last," snapped Christine. "Remember your birthday weekend a couple years back? I was gone from home for over a year. It's a miracle I passed school!"

Tara shivered. "Blegh, don't remind me." She helped her sister put her bag in the car then got into the front seat. "Alright, let's go." She started the engine, turned on her MP3 Player to the specially made playlist of music they'd both like and they headed down the road to West Harbor.

((*mega-glomps Frog for being the person to FINALLY keep the story moving* I was getting discouraged))

Christine wiped the sweat off her forehead and plopped into a folding chair. She never realized what hard work it was setting up a camp-site. She was always off in the woods setting the fishing bait free when they went camping as a family. She took a swig from her water bottle and shoved the now inflated air mattresses into the tent. "These things better last since it took me two stinking hours to blow them up," she called to her sister. But there was no reply. She peeked around the tent to see her sister staring off into space as she stood at the grill burning their dinner.

"HEY!" Christine shouted.

Tara jumped. "What?"

"Pay attention to what you're doing," Christine snapped. "You're burning my burger."

Tara blushed and flipped the burgers over to try and salvage them. "Put some cheese on and you'll never know they're over-cooked."

"It's not like you to zone out while cooking," Christine said, concerned.

"I get the feeling something's watching us," Tara said, now moving to the little propane stove to begin making tomato soup. "I can't tell if it's good or bad but it's creeping me out."

"Great," sighed Christine. "Just what we need is some oogly-boogly messing up our vacation."

"Don't worry about it," said Tara, pouring the soup into the pot. "Maybe it'll go away if we ignore it."

"Maybe," said Christine. She looked around. She didn't see anything but she did sense something watching them now that she was paying attention.

A chill ran up Tara's spine as she ate her dinner. Something was going on around here but she couldn't figure out what was going on. She didn't want to say anything to Christine because she would either be worried or just accuse her of being paranoid. *So much for a peaceful vacation,* Tara thought, munching on the last few bites of her burger. But, she had a feeling something was going on and it had trouble written all over it.

"I'll be back," she told Christine and she headed to the bathroom nearby.

"Be careful, Tara," said a female voice. She froze. She knew that voice. It was all too familiar. She turned to see a beautiful woman with long, dark hair and blood red eyes. She was barefoot wearing a long, black dress.

"Hi Viola," Tara said without a smile. "What the heck are you doing here?"

"We swore to still protect you when you left us," said Viola, smiling. "Whether you like it or not."

"So, what oogly boogly is after us?"

"I don't think just you," said Viola.

"Ah," said Tara, nodding. "One of those wipe-out-all-human-kind types, huh?"

"Yup," said Viola. "We promised we wouldn't interfere unless you wanted us to. I just wanted to give you a heads-up."

Tara smiled. "Thanks. I mean it."

"Send Chrissy my love," Viola said as she faded away. Tara sighed and headed back to the site. She should have known. The thought of a normal, relaxing, non-apocolyptic vacation was just a dream for her. Something normal people have.

"Go figure."

When Tara returned to the campsite, Christine gave her a look. "You okay?" she asked.

"Yeah," said Tara. "Just had a visit from an old friend of yours in the form of Viola."

Christine leapt to her feet. "Viola! Why didn't she come see me? How's Hyper? And Demi and everyone?"

"Calm down," said Tara, taking a seat. "Everyone's fine and we still have that rule where they can't help us unless we summon them for extreme emergencies." She made sure to emphasise the last two words. She knew her sister's feelings for the chaos goddess and family. They had once been family in some warped version of reality. And, as much as she appreciated all the times her life had been saved, Tara was more than happy to get away from them and try to live as semi-normal of a life as a witch can possibly have. Didn't help that her ex boyfriend who turned out to be a crazy, power hungry demon was still after them. (Hence the only having semi-normal) She shook her head. They were on vacation. Now was not the time to dwell on the past. Only the present mattered.