Welcome to Gaia! ::

Nezik pulled himself a little higher up on the beach to examine them. "So she's the one?" he asked quietly, receiving Tianara's nod as an answer. "I hope she can help," the young merman said dubiously as he watched Aria and Mac. "We seem to be reaching a bit now." Tianara chuckled wryly. She thought much the same thing.

Katalina smiled at the old man's words. "We wouldn't be going anywhere," she pointed out. "We live here. Well, Nezik and I do, anyway. Jinx and Narcis only come by to visit." A thought occurred to her, and she glanced at Jinx. "Where do you live, anyway?"

Jinx grinned and shrugged. "With the family," she replied breezily as she looked back at Allen. When he looked confused, she lifted a brow. "The imminent war. You must be the only person connected with the seafolk who hasn't heard about it yet."

"Nixie," said Narcis wearily. "Is this really necessary?"

"Well, I thought he was here to help," Jinx pointed out. "And he says he will. He can't help if he doesn't know what we're getting into."

"She's right," agreed Katalina clearly. "The more humans we have on our side when it comes down to it, the better. I know you think we should handle this on our own, Narcis, but the fact is that we can't. We need their help."

"Not really," said Nezik, showing some uncertainty. "No help might be better than help that ends up harming. That's just theoretical, though - I think she might be able to help us, and even if she doesn't it certainly won't hurt us." His opinion of Aria seemed to be swinging, and it was difficult to tell what he actually thought. However, eventually he just shrugged good-naturedly and murmured, "In any event, she can't make it much worse."

Jinx smiled slowly. "It won't be allowed," she agreed calmly. "We've already alerted the folk around here, and they're spreading it beyond their borders. We're preparing for war if it gets down to it, but..." She sighed and glanced at Katalina. "Maybe you should explain. I haven't been in it long enough to really understand."

Katalina took over the explanation willingly enough. "There's this...creature that's roaming the Earth, now. He's a sort of being wrapped in chains. I don't know exactly what he is, but he knew a lot about the war that he claimed was already coming." She shrugged. "We think he's initiating it, somehow. So we thought if maybe we could turn the tide of anger against those who would use it to wipe us out, we might be able to prevent total destruction of the seafolk." She sighed softly. "It's not a great alternative, but we don't have many choices."

((OOC: Am I the only one who finds that mildly eww? She's going to fall in love with her own ancestor, which is sort of like distant incest. XD Kidding. If that's what you want, you could see if it works.))

Nezik chuckled drily. "Exactly. I hope she's willing to, otherwise we get to do a lot of re-thinking. Now, should we wander over and see what the others are doing?" he inquired. By 'the others' he meant Allen and the other three merfolk. Tianara had already gotten up to wander towards them.

Katalina smiled wryly. "If we knew what he was saying," she said softly, "we'd be able to stop it. Completely. In its tracks. As it is, most of us are stuck in the water. We can't react to what he's doing - we can barely figure out a plan to take us through if he manages to convince the humans that we're all trouble and need to be eliminated." She shook her head a bit, and when Narcis laid a light hand on her shoulder, she smiled sadly. "It's not much of a plan - I don't know how we're going to turn the tide, or even if it will be necessary. He might not be able to convince anyone at all."

((brb, movie time))

((OOC: And I'm signing off for a while, as I just realized I spent all day on the computer. Like, the entire day. Time to take a break. XD
@Lucky: Nuu, it's still weird. razz ))

((OOC: Totally running away with this, but I feel like all my characters should at least get a paragraph. XD))

Jinx, who had fallen silent, was watching Narcis and Katalina with something vaguely like surprise. The older Siren regally ignored his sister, but Katalina glanced over at her with a quick grin.

"Or swim all over us, as the case may be," murmured Tianara, sitting cross-legged just out of reach of the tides. Had she been wearing clothes of her own, she would have just gone in and let them get wet, but she was very aware that she was wearing someone else's things. She felt it was good manners to take care of them.

Nezik, looking amused as he glanced at the slim brunette, continued Katalina's story. "Jinx and I went looking for him - tried to find out if he's been stirring up our more rowdy cousins. He hasn't been there. But most folk promised to keep an eye out for him, and head him off at the pass if he tried to get our more hotheaded kin to start a war." He sighed. "We might not survive it even if the humans are the instigators. We can't afford to start it. Can't have them think that we're dangerous."

Katalina's smile was weak. "Look at you, little brother," she murmured. "So grown up all of a sudden." Perhaps sensing her need for comfort after such plain speaking, the hand Narcis had laid lightly on her shoulder slid down her arm to take her hand. She turned a small smile towards him before returning her attention to the matter at hand. "If he's not stirring up our folk, meeting Nezik and Caralei and I might have discouraged him. But if he's not trying to convince us to start it, he's convincing humans to."

Narcis shook his head. "And all this is rehashing what we already know," he said briskly. "We need to start covering new ground." Lifting a brow at Joshua, he said, sounding rather startled to be saying it, "I think we might need more. Humans, I mean, on our side. If this chained creature is on land, we need those who can go on land to look for him." He smiled wryly. "I'm the only one of us who can do such things, and we all know how that particular experiment turned out."

"There are other ocean children," said Jinx at last, sounding a bit surprised. "Like Tianara, I mean. She's not the only one. We know they would be on our side, if we can find them. There are some graduated ones, some that still live with their clans. They would help us, if only to protect their families."