Welcome to Gaia! ::

The portal room, while a simple name was anything but simple. It was a room a circular room set in stone, surrounded by doors that could lead to more than one place. Along the walls, the trim and doors were unbroken lines of runes like a continuous chain. Even the ceiling had a complex array of runes all forming patterns in a circle upon a circle.

Because out of all of the places in the Winters grounds, the portal room was their greatest and more dangerous achievement. It allowed them access to any of their most common haunts in a heartbeat, but there was always the risk that someone unwanted could come through, or worse yet, someone using their portals to go to any of the places they normally visited. So they always took great care and the runes were designed to lock down the portal room should anyone unwanted come into the room or out the portals.

It was for this reason Lin had wanted Andarien to not look, because she was worried about how it would look to him. So when she took Earendil through the portal, she hurried to lead them out of the portal room and several doors down.

Even though the Western style manor was also runed they were only runed slightly along the edges of the ceiling, doors and windows. They weren't as strong, nor were they as numerous. These ones were mainly used as an alarm system than anything else.

"I think we're far away enough from that room," Lin murmured as she slowed down.

"Hmm... I wonder what time it is," Lin murmured as she continued to lead them down a hallway.

She was leading them to the kitchen, because no matter the home, for them the kitchen was the hub of the house. Which made sense, despite the fact everyone had their own lives, there were Sunday dinners (and really anyone could drop by for dinner on any day, her mother didn't mind).

It helped that Triton still liked to commandeer their kitchen rather than his. Not only was there more room but he could dump Iris off onto someone else and not worry about her being a hazard in the kitchen. Really the only time he used his, is if he was going to make a sandwich.

Sure enough, they stepped into the kitchen where Iris was playing with Kali, and Triton was making pot stickers.

Triton paused for a moment mid squeeze on a new dumpling. He looked up and blinked for a moment before smiling widely. Putting the meat down he quickly went over to the sink to wash his hands before greeting the new family.

"Lin! Earendil! And who's this?" he smiled from ear to ear, "A nephew no doubt."

"Of course," Kali spoke up as she picked up Iris and made her way over, "Welcome back, we hope you'll stay a while."

"Just a week, there are people who need to get back home," Lin replied as she placed a hand upon Andarien's head, "This is Andarien... speaking of home, when are mom and dad going to be back?"

Kali looked over her shoulder at a round flat object hanging on a wall. It had two fancy pointers, one longer than the other with numbers all around the edge going up to 12.

"It's four, so they should be home soon," Kali finally spoke, "Dinner is at six. They went to visit grandmother Mi, and probably to stop by the school to make sure Scott is still in one piece."

It was a horrible, on going joke, that Tracy Scott, the headmaster for the Fighter class would be horribly lost without someone to rein him in. Which was why Donovan had long ago hired his distant cousin Lain to help with that with mixed results.

Triton grinned because it reminded him of Elnara when she first arrived to this world. Of course, he had spent a lot of time with her and let her stay in the old cafe before she became his sister.

"That's a clock, it tells us the time when we're indoors," he told Andarien, "And yes, that is mechanical, but there's time still to ask later. We should get you all settled though..."

He looked thoughtfully at Earendil and Lin.

"We weren't expecting you to come with another child, but fortunately Donovan is always prepared. They shifted everything around to give you two your own section of hallway. So your new room is across from Miyuki's room, and we can prepare the room beside hers."

Though the question was, who was going to do it. He was making dinner, someone had to watch Iris otherwise who knew what sort of trouble she'd get into.

"I'll call everyone to say they're home," Kali announced, "Trisha can help set the room up and Kaito and Miyu can help with dinner, otherwise you'll never get it done now."

Triton's ears flatten against his skull when he realized this called for a family gathering, which meant more food, "I'll make noodles then, Miyu can help with desert... but you'll need to get someone to set up the dining area, the causal one, not the fancy one."

Kali grinned impishly, "I'll get Yue to bring out the lazy susans, the joys for a large family eh?"

With that and Iris still in her arms she told the family she would see them later and went off to make the calls in question.

Triton smiled a bit, he understood that things were quite different here. Technically they did hire help to clean the manor but they didn't stay here and it was only once a week.

"I'll show you to your rooms and Andarien can drop his things off in the room that will be his. Might as well get it done now, by the time we do that people should be filtering in. With the exception of those who live in the Second World or in the Borderlands, we don't live that far away."

"Tomorrow," Lin told Earendil, "I'll show you around the grounds. Since most of us will be coming here, there won't be a need to visit until tomorrow. Visiting tomorrow will allow us to talk to people more personally because..."

"It'll be a mad house," Triton finished, "Slightly..."

Lin paused for a moment as she thought about how to describe it, "It'll be chaotic and disorganized. More chaotic than disorganized. Remember Elnara's wedding when we all fit into the dining hall? Think of that, and that's a mad house."

Triton rolled his eyes at that, "If you think that was bad, we didn't always live here, we lived in an inn and squeezing us all into one hallway, where the portal was, instead of room of it's own, that was very chaotic."

He paused for a moment when he realized exactly what Andarien was doing.

"Why are you trying to get the clock?"

"Besides that, you would need to remove the back to see the mechanical parts," Triton added, "You would have to ask Kali to see the clocks where all the parts show."

He knew that Kali owned a few, and probably had taken them apart and put them back together since that is what Kali use to do a lot.

"We actually don't have large mechanical parts," Lin added, "They're small and need to be protected. Your egg was made to show it's parts while being protected on purpose, most items don't do that."

"And Lin you might want to give them a 101 on the shower, the sink.... the lights..." Triton warned his sister.

He knew that she was so use to living in both worlds that she might forget that some of the technology of Gaia was very foreign to others.

"And the rest of it," Lin nodded, "Thanks for reminding it, I guess we'll be able to keep busy then."

Triton gave his sister a catty grin as he motioned them to follow him. He didn't have any heat on and as long as he came back and let his sister do the explaining he should be fine.

"This way then."