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A Long Awaited Vacation - 119 4A

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Post by Kara Winters Sat Aug 08, 2015 8:21 pm

They hadn't meant to stay away for as long as they had, but looking after the twins posed a new set of problems unique to them. For starters, they were not stage growers, and it made Kara uncomfortable to simply put them in the care of another, even if it was someone from Donovan's clan. The second was, for reasons that Kara and Donovan couldn't understand, their daughters each had a Gift that suited their twin-ness. For whatever reason, Hope, could bring objects to her, and Faith could send objects further away. The objects didn't move, they just appeared and disappeared depending on which twin it was. Fortunately it didn't work all the time.

It unfortunately made keeping things out of their hands and finding things very difficult at times when that Gift sporadically decided to work. Donovan dreaded the day when that ability would at a constant rate. Though Vincent, in his glee, suggested that maybe the twins learn how to shoot at bow and arrow when they became old enough to not shoot themselves.

This all meant though, that changes they thought were going to be temporary became suddenly more permanent. Yukito continued to act as Headmaster, allowing Kara to stay at home and focus on the maintenance of the clan. The grounds, the care of the people, and encouraging tourists to come by the grounds during the day became her priority. Donovan, being her husband and long time assistant, moved to help Kara with some the projects going on. This included getting the family off the city energy grid, and putting in place a clinic on the grounds. They both wondered if Elnara would be willing to take that position now that Garrick and Hana were getting older, it was also much closer to home than working at the school.

That being said, Yukito couldn't remain as Headmaster forever, because this forced Miyu to continue to look after the medical wing for the school. This position was supposed to be temporary, and while Miyu had risen to the challenge (with a lot of mi-ing), this wasn't really where she wanted to stay. It didn't help that Toshiro didn't have anything to do neither while Miyu was doing this. He often hung around, and came to learn more about first aid than he ever wanted to know. Though neither of them knew what they wanted to to do, both Miyu and Toshiro agreed that staying in the medical wing wasn't going to be it.

Finally after much debating, wangling, contract making, they convinced Daemon to take the Headmaster's spot. As someone who was a first generation magic user, he could relate to any of the new students that were in the same position of being the first in their family. Physically, Daemon was barely over 30, and needed to do something to keep himself busy. There was also the added bonus that Daemon's Sight could at least keep Tracy and the more troublesome students out of trouble. Yukito and Yue would be Daemon's advisers, while still doing the jobs the angel twins had done since they were teenagers. This in turn, freed up Miyu and Toshiro, to leave their post after being there for nearly three years. They weren't sure who was going to act as Daemon's assistant though, and at the moment any Winters who was old enough to work but didn't know what they were going to do, were taking shifts helping their grandfather.

It was only because of this great (and hopefully last change) that Kara and Donovan were able to finally leave for the Borderlands. Toshiro and Miyu were coming too, they considered it a vacation after having to deal with the medical wing for so long. It was probably the smallest number of people they had going through the portal in a long time. Just Kara, Donovan, Hope, Faith, Miyu and Toshiro. Each with their own bag, even the twin girls. Though their bags were small backpacks that had leashes attached to them so they wouldn't go running off.

"Okay... I think that's everything," Donovan murmured before opening the portal.

He carefully held the leash to Faith's backpack and made sure the little girl didn't speed on ahead of them. Miyu, and Toshiro entered first, and then Kara with Hope totting along beside her. Only then did he let Faith run ahead of him, as Donovan was the last to enter the portal. Hearing the crunch of snow underfoot as he came through to the other side, he was glad he managed to get shoes on the girls' feet before going.

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Post by Nara-pyon Sat Aug 08, 2015 9:28 pm

It was a glorious Winter day, with the sun shining brightly and not a cloud in the sky. That meant of course that it was cold, and the temperature was well below freezing. The snow was thick on the ground, half a foot deep at least, and that, coupled with the thick trees that surrounded the portal, deadened most of the sounds around them. The only thing that could be heard - aside from the visitors' own footsteps and voices - were birds chirping in the trees, and the only movement in the area were the bits of snow that the birds knocked from the branches as they landed and took off from the branches.
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Post by Kara Winters Sat Aug 08, 2015 9:55 pm

In an instant the girls were back at their parents side.

"Cold!" Hope cried out and put her arms up wanting to be held.

"Up Daddy!" Faith agreed that being held was the best way to not be cold.

Both parents decided it was best to carry them than to stop and find their coats.

"We'll hurry to Ulani and Ulrich's then," Kara murmured as she picked up the pace.

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Post by Nara-pyon Sat Aug 08, 2015 10:09 pm

The yard at Ulrich and Ulani's house was not empty. Celebor's girls, Aras and Kanis, were busy building snow forts, with a now fifty-seven year old Arahad and ten year old Brooke - and not just any snow forts. Both of the forts were like small fortresses, with high walls, crenelations and windows. There were steps inside them, and two levels to walk on - one halfway up the walls, the other on the ground level. Each also had a few areas that looked like storage areas, and their purpose became clear only when one looked inside Aras and Arahad's fort, where they had already begun to stockpile snowballs.

"Hey!" Arahad grinned when the visitors came into view. "Look who's finally come back to visit!"
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Post by Kara Winters Sat Aug 08, 2015 10:50 pm

If the girls weren't cold they would have wanted to join in, and even then Hope was eying one of the snowballs.

Donovan chuckled seeing grown adults getting ready for a snowball fight (well most of them were grown).

"It's been a bit hectic," Donovan replied, "Are Ulani and Ulrich in today?"

For all he knew they could be off doing chores or visiting.

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Post by Nara-pyon Sat Aug 08, 2015 11:02 pm

"Nako and Ninako are having a pie-making day," Brooke replied promptly, glaring at the visitors as she packed a snowball between her palms. "They're at Ninako's house."

"Come on, I'll let Ulani know you're here," Kanis offered with a grin. She brushed her hands on her pants and then, brushing her cyan hair away from her face, she ran towards Ulrich and Ulani's house and let herself in without knocking.
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Post by Kara Winters Sat Aug 08, 2015 11:30 pm

Donovan blinked and his face appeared to be neutral, he wasn't quite sure why Brooke was glaring at them. He didn't say anything though, instead chose to follow Kanis.

Hope didn't like Brooke's look and opt to just hide against Kara, while Faith did the opposite and tried to give the same look back as she was being carried away.

"See you later then," Kara replied with a smile before following her husband.

Toshiro would have probably said something but Miyu had grabbed his hand and dragged him along. He was a bit predictable when he was going to say something sharp.

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Post by Nara-pyon Sun Aug 09, 2015 12:07 am

Aras threw a handful of unpacked snow at Brooke as the group headed off and chided her: "Quit looking at people like that! You're going to frighten them away!"

Brooke brushed the snow off her head and shoulders and threw the snowball in her hand back at Aras, and none too gently at that.

The door to the house was still open when Donovan and his family reached it, and Ulani's voice could be heard in the kitchen telling Kanis to close it and keep the warm air in. At the same time, Aliya came out of the kitchen, wiping her hands on a towel. She grinned at the Gaians.

"Come on in," she invited them. "Warm up! I know it's a bit of a hike from the portal."
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Post by Kara Winters Sun Aug 09, 2015 12:20 am

Toshiro was the one to close the door as he and Miyu were the last people to enter the house.

The moment Donovan and Kara set the girls down, the twins began to work at yanking their shoes and socks off before running off, the leashes to their backpacks trailing behind them. Only to stop and peer up at Aliya. She was so tall to them, the only person they had seen who was that tall was probably Lore.

"Hey," Donovan waved at Aliya before carefully taking his shoes off.

Once they were off, he went about setting the girls' shoes and socks aside properly.

"I heard you're making pies?" Kara inquired.

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Post by Nara-pyon Sun Aug 09, 2015 12:32 am

Aliya grinned at the two girls as they stopped in front of her, and gestured towards the back of the hallway, where the toy room was - what toys were left by this point. "If you would like to play, the dolls and other toys are in the back room," she told them.

Then, to Kara, she added, "Yes, it seems a corner of the cellar wasn't as cold as we'd hoped, so we're making pies out of the fruit that were being kept there. Ada and Adanedhel are cutting more ice for it but in the meantime ... well." She shrugged, grinning.

"That doesn't necessarily follow that interruptions are unwanted or unwelcome," came Ulani's voice from the kitchen. "Make yourselves at home!"
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Post by Kara Winters Sun Aug 09, 2015 1:29 am

The girls looked at each other and were about to run off before Donovan stopped them.

"At least take off your backpacks first," he muttered as he knelt down to get their bags off them. The leashes could be a tripping hazard if not put away properly.

Miyuki looked over at Aliya, "Mi.... would you like me to cool it down?"

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Post by Nara-pyon Sun Aug 09, 2015 3:01 pm

Aliya blinked in surprise. She had completely forgotten about Miyu's affinity for cold and ice, but now that she remembered, she was glad of it.

"Please," she said warmly. "It would help save so much of our food. Mother and I share a cellar, so it's quite a bit of food."

She motioned for Miyu to follow her towards where the cellar door was located. While she went, she called to Donovan and Kara, "Go ahead into the kitchen, Mum's eager to see you all. It's been a long time."
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Post by Kara Winters Sun Aug 09, 2015 3:24 pm

Miyu followed Aliya with Toshiro in tow. Though, Toshiro wasn't needed for anything, he was just use to following Miyu around.

Donovan looked down at the twins who were looking at him eagerly, it was amazing they hadn't run off yet.

"Go on," he motioned them off to the play area.

The girls didn't need to be told twice, and ran as fast as their little legs could carry them. Once he was sure they weren't going to wander off anywhere else, he and Kara meandered into the kitchen to see Ulani.

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Post by Nara-pyon Sun Aug 09, 2015 3:41 pm

Towards the back of the house, there was a door that opened to a staircase heading down into the ground. Aliya opened it and led the way down. With a twist of her hands, an orb of light appeared, and she held it in front of herself as she started down the stairs.

Kanis had picked up where Aliya had left off, and she was in the process of peeling an apple out of a large bucket which contained many apples bobbing in cool water. Ulani was at the table, slicing the apples that were already peeled and putting them into a ready and waiting pie crust.

"Well, hello there!" Ulani greeted them with a grin. "About time you visited. It's been what, thirteen years? Fifteen?"

"Can't have been that long, Brooke knows them," Kanis pointed out.

Ulani laughed. "Well, it's been a while at any rate. How have you been?"
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Post by Kara Winters Sun Aug 09, 2015 3:58 pm

"It's been busy," Kara admitted, "It's a large adjustment to look after Hope and Faith. Very different from looking after stage growers."

Donovan added, "We had to move around some duties to make it work, and that took longer than expected."

After all, Kara never imagined she would be giving up her position at the school, but between the duties at the school and duties at home, it wasn't possible to do both anymore.

Miyu followed close behind, she had never been into the cellar before. So this was new to her.

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Post by Nara-pyon Sun Aug 09, 2015 5:17 pm

"That was them, then, that I saw run past the door," Ulani guessed, grinning. "They have grown quite a bit."

"They were just babies the last time they were here," Kanis confirmed lightly. "Cute, too!"

Aliya led Miyu and Toshiro to the bottom of the stairs, which ended at a large underground room. The walls were covered with wide shelves which were covered in all sorts of things: jars of preserves, baskets and platters of food - fruits and vegetables, cakes and bread - and in every available space there were chunks of ice. Most of them had been neatly carved into cubes, but there were some places where it seemed to be haphazardly packed in.

The floor also was systematically filled with crates and barrels, and there was only one place in the cellar where there was an exception: one corner of the room was empty, and the walls there, rather than having a thin layer of ice, were sweating instead, and droplets of condensation trickled down into a small puddle on the floor.

"Here," Aliya said, nodding at the bare corner. "It doesn't seem to want to get cold there this year."
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Post by Kara Winters Sun Aug 09, 2015 5:49 pm

"They have," Kara agreed, "Walking, talking..."

"Using their Gifts on occasion..." Donovan added with more of a sigh.

Kara giggled because they had to teach the girls early on to at least ask before grabbing something. Well, it was Hope who did the grabbing, but she would share with her sister, so the two were often partners in crime.


"Careful," Toshrio took Miyu as she went to the wall, "It'll become slippery once it becomes cold gain."

Miyu though wasn't quick to make it cold, instead she felt the wall and looked around the cellar.

"Mi..." she frowned in confusion, "Why is it just this place melting?"

And for that matter why in the middle of winter. Still, she said she would make it colder for them so she would. Miyu started by cooling the walls. A thin lattice work of frost spread out from her touch, freezing any drops of water that was still sweating on the wall. Even though she knew that more ice was being cut for it, Miyuki figured she could at least make ice walls around this area. It should keep the cold in better that way.

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Post by Nara-pyon Mon Aug 10, 2015 12:02 am

"Gifts?" Ulani questioned, her curiosity evident in her tone. "What are their Gifts? I would comment that it's odd for them to manifest so early, but that's just going by elvish standards."

Her brown eyes sparkled with interest, and she looked at Donovan and Kara as she waited for an answer, her hands doing their work without needing her eyes to guide them.


Aliya shrugged in response to Miyu's question. "It could be that we didn't pack the dirt solid enough, or there could be something else buried further in ... it could be any number of things. As long as it's not a dragon hibernating under the house, I really don't care, to be honest. It's just an annoyance, really."

Especially if Miyu could do something to help them, it would make it not too bad.
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Post by Kara Winters Mon Aug 10, 2015 12:45 am

"Well it's odd regardless. Humans and angels rarely have Gifts and when they do they're the Gift of Sight like Daemon," Donovan admitted.

And he too had never heard it manifesting so young, so life had been interesting.

It was Kara who answered Ulani's question, "Hope has the ability to retrieve objects to her hands, and Faith just sends objects she holds off to other places. As far as we can tell they're limited by size and line of sight so far. It doesn't even work all the time. For a while we thought we were just misplacing things, until we caught Faith sending a ball onto the roof, and Hope getting it back."

"And for all we know, those limitations are because they're young," Donovan shrugged, "We had to teach them earlier than most kids to ask first."

Pointing and please became one of the first thing both twins learned to do early on because the parents had to curb their tendency to fall back on their Gifts.


Miyu nodded at this, she hoped that is all it was. Placing both hands on the wall she send more cold into the ground. As more cut ice would just melt eventually if it was an issue of with the dirt itself. Once she was sure it had seeped into the walls enough she backed up and began to line the wall with an inch of ice.

"Hopefully this will keep the cut ice being brought in from melting too quickly again," Toshiro explained to Aliya, "It would be a pain... especially since it's Winter."

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Post by Nara-pyon Mon Aug 10, 2015 1:21 am

"I have to admit, that sounds like quite the handful," Ulani admitted with a rueful grin. "I don't envy you the experience. I just hope they learn quickly - Aliya was always slow to obey, and you remember how much trouble she could cause. And that's without anything like this going on!"

She finished cutting up the apples for the pie she was working on and told Kanis that she could stop for now. With a grin, Kanis washed her hands and headed outside to rejoin her sister for the snowball fight.


Aliya smiled at Toshiro. "Perfect. You would think it would stay colder in Winter if anything. Of course, for all I know, this is the area Ada and Amdir dug out this past Summer and they didn't prepare it correctly. At any rate, if we don't have to keep making pies, I'll be much happier."

She nodded to another corner of the cellar, where shelves of pies were already sitting. "We've enough to have a pie a day until Spring comes."
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Post by Kara Winters Mon Aug 10, 2015 9:04 pm

"It has been," Kara laughed lightly, "Though in part it's adjusting to the fact we have actual children under the age of five and think like children under the age of five. That is the larger adjustment I think. I mean... you remember how Lin was like at only a few months."

Donovan chuckled, "I don't know... the twins were less trouble at a few months or even a few years."

At least he didn't have to worry about them sneaking into portals, convincing people to carry them or asking really awkward questions.

Toshiro couldn't help but stare at all the pies, "That is a lot of pies..."

Though he preferred pies to pickling. He had pickled apples once, because Triton was experimenting one day. He hoped to not do that again.

"Done!" Miyu announced as she studied her work.

They were good thick walls and should last a while, especially since she had seeped cold into the actual walls first.

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Post by Nara-pyon Mon Aug 10, 2015 10:16 pm

Ulani chuckled. "Lin was something else, all right. Can I offer you anything? Drink? Snack?"

The pies could wait. They had enough of them.


Aliya grinned at Miyu. "Perfect. Thanks! I'll let Mum know, though we'll have to finish with the apples that are already upstairs. Come on, let's get back up where it's warm."

She gestured towards the stairs they'd come down and let Miyu and Toshiro lead the way. "After you."
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Post by Kara Winters Mon Aug 10, 2015 10:29 pm

"A drink would be nice," Kara murmured, "Anything hot?"

Even though they weren't outside long, on a cold day like this, a hot drink was always nice.

"Thanks," Toshiro murmured, "Can't wait to be out of the cold..."

Miyu tilted her head, as she didn't notice at all (not a surprise). It was Miyu's need for the cold the reason why Toshiro was often wearing a jacket, or kept one with him. Once they were topside again, the pair waited for Aliya before heading to the kitchen.

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Post by Nara-pyon Mon Aug 10, 2015 11:01 pm

"Hot cider, tea - your kind of tea, of course, not our medicinal tea," Ulani laughed. "We could always warm up some mead or something, too, of course.[/i]"

She moved to put the kettle over the fire, then brushed her hands together. Just then, Miyu, Toshiro and Aliya re-entered the kitchen, and she smiled at them as well.

"Hello, Miyu, Toshiro. Welcome back. Would you like a warm drink? I've just offered your parents some."

And once more she ran through the list of drinks that she had offered Donovan and Kara.
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Post by Kara Winters Tue Aug 11, 2015 9:11 pm

"I'll have some tea," Kara replied softly before glancing at her husband.

Donovan shrugged and nodded, "I'll have some tea too."

Though it probably wasn't the tea he preferred, he didn't feel like cider or mead. Miyu on the other hand asked for cider, as did Toshiro.

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