Welcome to Gaia! ::

“On December 12th, in the year of 2012, people have been expecting the world to end. For centuries, the prophecies of the Mayans, or the Aztecs, or whomever else, have said without a doubt that the final apocalypse, and the downfall of human civilization would come.”

Presumably, at twelve minutes past noon. Now shut up and let me go. Having freshly turned eighteen, Klara could not care less what her father had to say about the downfall of humanity. She was legally to be considered an adult now, and the freedom buzzed in her mind, drowning out the speech. Except for the occasional mental interjections, she remained completely nonreactive to the words. So did the other listeners, but that was from respect, not boredom.

Dark eyes stared at the ancient, wooden clock, demanding it move faster, so that she could leave. It refused, as did most things when she demanded anything from them. “Thus, we must take cautions, place protections. We cannot let our harvests be spoiled by some idiocy, or some war time reactions.” She had demanded not to be included in this silly meeting. It was her birthday, shouldn't she be allowed to have fun? But no. The response had been a lecture about adulthood coming with responsibilities, one of which was the the meetings with her extended family.

And so, she and her parents had flown up, over the poles, and down, into the United States, where most of them lived. Why they hadn't abandoned the country when it became a hopeless throng of insane people, Klara could not imagine. Russia was much prettier, anyway.

The gears of the clock ticked audibly, and the minute hand shifted from 12:10 to 12:11. Klara wished she could sigh ruefully, but of course, it would be noticed. Everything was noticed here. Her mother was pinching her arm cruelly, as a punishment for not paying enough attention, even though the clock was directly above her father's head and there was no reasonable way any human soul could tell where she was looking.

She stared into her father's eyes, directly, and tried to listen to his words. Not for the first time, she wished she'd brought one of her pets with her. The others got to bring theirs, but Klara's family was too important to bring one along. Her eyes slid to watch some audience members hands, stroking the soft, smooth hair of their little living toys. Most of them had glossed over eyes, too recently fed to actually pay any attention to the proceedings. I would have brought Anya, she thought, such pretty fair hair. It seems the Americans don't have gingers. The few pale haired ones she'd seen were all obviously dyed.

Teasingly, the clock ticked another minute off, this one seemingly faster than the last. As if maybe she'd making it through this meeting without being driven to insanity. She settled her mind, and tried once more to listen. But what she heard were not words. And she was not the only one.

Her father had stopped speaking, stopped moving. As one, all the heads in the room turned to face the same direction, up and slightly to the left, staring at the cool stone ceiling with veiled fear. It was probably just a false alarm, cars drove over them often enough. But every time was a cause for fear. This time, the fears were validated. The sound of the engine halted directly above them, as though the car was parked. For ten seconds, twenty, there was nothing but the muffled sound of the breathing pets, even through their dazes they sensed their masters' fears.

And then it came. They head it, before they saw it, and the reaction was instant. 'Run.' Some gathered their pets, others left them to die as they fled, hoping to outrun the fire like they had not outrun the sound. A bomb, and the ceiling was crumbling, great, massive stones spilling down upon them. They were all fast, but none were as fast as explosives. They were all strong, but not so strong as to move the boulders that tried to crush them, to resist flames that tried to burn them.

“Mama,” Klara called, as the rocks settled down upon her chest. “Mama, they're going to kill us.”

He never took anyone's breath away at first glance. He seemed so small, so childish. He was many times an adult by human standards, but among his own kind, he was nothing yet. Scrawny to the point of being frail, with hair and eyes as pale as any albino, but skin mysteriously tough and tanned. Muscles were nothing, if not imaginary, and even his voice was too high pitched, too kind and energetic to breed seduction or fear.
 
Pan Kaleps was a million ways a child.
 
But in the ways that counted, he always left them gasping for air.
 
No one resisted him, he'd slept with everyone he'd ever known for more than a week. Man, woman. Teacher, student. Everyone. Anyone.
 
He eyed his fingers in the mirror, reveling in the straight, long digits, tipped with perfectly rounded nails, cradling his face for the perfect aura of innocence.
 
One man resisted him.
 
He brought his other hand up, to touch the glass lightly, and focused his mind into his palm. The nails grew black, sharp. Claws, then.
 
His eyes were wide, red as poppies. He looked so harmless, so painfully unworried. As though he'd never been a prisoner, never fought a war. It was a look many of his status envied deeply. Perfectly pure, never sullied by the world's troubles.
 
He lidded them, and carefully fed his thoughts into the iris, into the sclera. Made them disappear. His pupils widened, and at first the made him look more and more harmless. But a critical point was reached: no iris, only the empty blackness and a hint of rabid white. A madman, then.
 
One man resisted.
 
The pale, loose waist pants, the sheer white shirt. Beside his snowy hair, they made him look like an angel of Glory. All he needed were wings to become a bright, shining example of all that was beautiful in the world.
 
He stripped, baring stick thin limbs and the vague implication of ribs to the glass. And slowly, breathing deeply, he slid into pants of dark, nightsky leather, taking care not to think that once they were a living creature's skin. And while he could not give up the flow of his shirt, or the transparency, the sheer tulle was replaced by thick black netting. A rogue, then.
 
The piercings in his ear were delicate and feminine, and even though there were nearly a dozen pairs of holes in his flesh, he looked harmless. Only simple, hair's breadth silver chains connecting studs without heads. The were an accessory, an accent beside his dark flesh, or at their most, handles by which he could be controlled. He looked submissive in them, nothing more than a doll to be dressed up and played with.
 
Carefully, he pried them away from himself. Steel, after all, was bad for one's health. All that unnecessary iron could lead to rust, to infection, to burns. He replaced them with hanging chains, each one ended with a small, blood red gem. Save the lobe piercings, which hung down heavier than the rest, finished with a tiny vial, filled with red, with blood pulled by his own hands, from his own arms. A temptation, then.
 
One man resisted him.
 
For, he still looked like a simple child playing dress up. But, it was a start.

Summer, summer, summer. Bright sun, blue sky, green grass, and a river as clear as glass. Today is the solstice, and in a few months, their Forest dwelling relatives will have brought about their discovery. All the Gnomes, be they Dryad, Nymph, or Mason, know the plans. They have maneuvered Human politics for years, and caused a fantastic amount of tension, almost but not quite war. Enough to make the radicals upset, to make them itch for explosives. The women of the Underground have persuaded them to a target more suitable to their own goals than the human ones, and soon enough, all the world will know them.

But, until then, there is the water, so easy to cut through, and more home to the Nymphs than land or air. They float, and giggle, and play, like children. Today is a Holiday, of sorts, for this clan. Let the Masons and the Dryads toil, the Nymphs wish only for fun.

The bell laughs of humans come from over the hills, and the delicate, pale women drop, leaving only their curious faces above the waters skin, but they are only children. Too young to swim without adults, and yet here they are, clamoring towards the river's edge with glee.

The oldest, maybe eight years, maybe only seven, waves her finger at the Ladies, guiding two more sets of eyes to stare at them in shock, the youngest one is true to his title, and lets his eyes wander as his feet toddle.

Naked as birds, they look like mothers, adult and mature in body, yet they are only as tall as the children themselves, and half as wide. Frightening, and pretty too. The three elder children run away, barely noticing the young one doesn't share their fear. They will go home, and babble to mothers and fathers about how they saw the Rusalka, swimming in the river. The little one comes ever closer, and nearly falls in.

But, the Nymphs are not cruel. They capture him before he touches the water, and they whisper to him in the unknown language of the youngest child. “Go home, pretty little human. Go home, and maybe when you grow up, you'll remember how we saved you, and you'll help save us.”

And he bobs back up the hill, towards home. The oldest girl meets him half way, she had almost gone back to the house without him.

It takes a very long time before he connects the two. The Gnomes, one of the Six families of Otherfolk, specifically the freshwater clans, and the Nymphs who saved his life.

The guilt nearly ruins him. How many of his saviors has he killed?