She had been daydreaming since her time in The Dream Arena and it was hard to be mad at her cousin for setting them up. She blushed a bit and got up. Time death had aged her quite nicely. She looked like her mother a bit more, though not as tall and definitely not a red head. She got dressed in a cream colored gown and ran out of the door. No longer was she hidden behind a baggy dress of blue. “DRAE.” She came stampeding as she looked for him. Her elvish ears listening for his voice.

Taking her dress up as she ran she found him just outside the temple. She flung herself onto her step-father and stared up at him. “You need to come with me! You are meeting more and more of us every day! I have an idea.” She let go of him and jumped down to the ground.

“Mama has a picture of painted portraits of everyone!” She dragged him with her. “You just got home from business?” She tilted her head as she pulled his arm towards her. Blue eyes stared up at him as she held onto his arm. “I went to the Dream Arena the other day and a boy! We went around and we saw the gardens!” She was excited. “And I got to read some of the books there but they were all just monster manuals!”

Drae was approaching the main doors of the temple, a small velvet covered white box in his hand, and his heart pounding hard in his chest. He gripped the box tightly and tucked it into his pocket as he began up the stair when the doors burst open and his surrogate daughter Sapphire came blowing down the stairs toward him, and jumped onto him, in a VERY similar way to Angela and Iva. The half-elf laughed as she tackled him to the ground and held her protectively as he looked down at her, her excitement filling his ears. 

"All right, careful there, Saph," he chuckled and let go of her before he got back up to his feet. "Now, what's this about?" he asked as he followed her back up the stairs and into the shrine. Something about portraits, and then she was asking a question. "Uh, yes, business," he replied a bit quickly. He was a tiny bit preoccupied but clearly his purple haired daughter demanded his fatherly attention, so he shuffled his thoughts back to the recesses of his mind. He did so just in time to hear that Sapphire had visited the domain of Torn, and had met a boy there. Then there was something about books being monster manuals, but that was not near as important.

"Whoa, whoa now. Back up and tell me about this boy!" Drae insisted.

Sapphire chuckled softly and blushed. “Well, I’ve known him for a while but I just re-met him. He was my guardian when I ran away from home. Mama asked him to protect me. His name is Hiro! He took on the Gauntlet and won the right to be called a hero! He is my age!” She jumped about and chuckled before hugging him. “I don’t know if he notices me entirely.” She blushed a tad before laughing more. “Mama says it doesn’t matter entirely if he does or doesn’t… That I am young and shouldn’t be worried about that.”

She realized Drae was probably worried about her and laughed more. “I got something for us though. I managed to talk Mama into letting it out of the vault for a little while.” She dragged him with her. “I wanted to show it to you. I think you and Mama are great together Drae! So I wanted to show you all of my family.” 

Once they made it to the library she grabbed a rather large book and sat down on the bench. It was entirely too large. “Here, come sit with me.” She opened up the cover and smiled. "This is our whole family. I can show you everyone. That way when they come home you might recognize them!"

"Your mother, is absolutely right," Drae chuckled. "I know that being interested in boys is a thing for girls your age, but trust me when I say that you have SOOOOO much time ahead of you before you really need to worry about falling in love. You especially, because you have such long lived life," he said as he hugged her to his side. "But, don't be afraid to make friends. If they are worth anything, they will notice you for who you are, not how you look," Drae smiled. 

He was grateful that she chose to change the subject, because discussing boys with a young girl was something that was waaaaay out of his area of expertise. He allowed her to drag him to to library, and smiled when she said that she thought he and Angela were a good match and he instinctively put his hand in his pocket and lightly touched the box within. "I'm glad you think so. I've gotten rather fond of you girls, I'd hate to be run off," he chuckled. He sat down with her and shared the book on his lap and allowed Sapphire. 

"Ah, good idea. This way I won't be caught by surprise the way I was with Amaranth showing up," he smiled. "All right, lets get started then," he insisted.

Sapphire chuckled softly and shook her head. “All of us here like you. I can’t say the same for everyone who hasn’t met you but you are a good daddy to all of us who are here.” She was also well aware that many of her sisters were older than Drae. She snuggled up to him and flipped the page. The very first painted portrait was of Willow.

It was very easily seen the similar features between Angela and the Matron Mother. “This is the very first Rosenite… she is our grandmother! Well… Lots of Greats Grandmother.” She had long white hair and the same green eyes as Angela. Though she honestly did not look young at all. Flipping the page two blonde women stood there. “That is Grandma Dragonlily and Aunt Kira. They died a long time ago.”

She flipped it once more to a red haired woman and bounced. “This is Grandma Lilla.” the next was a white-haired woman once more. “And that is Grandma Cathrine… ANDDD” She flipped the page to the first couple in the book. “That is Mama’s parents Serenity and Kyoto.” Serenity had long dark brown hair and blue eyes. While Kyoto had long pulled back white hair and green eyes. “Grandpa saved Grandma from the slavers and turned her! She agreed to marry him after a while!”

Flipping the page there were all five sisters all grown up. “This is Mama and all her sisters.”

Drae chuckled as Sapphire took him through the book page by page, essentially introducing him to everyone who came before Angela. 
"Well, I am rather grateful that I don't have to make a good impression on them. I'm not the best when it comes to meeting parents," he said with a smile. "I do wonder where the red hair came from in your family though," he added thoughtfully since no one he had seen yet had the same red hair. "Interesting how one can find love in the strangest of places, huh?" he said as Sapphire told him of how her grandparents had met. 

He looked over the page with the sisters a small smile lingering on his lips. Suddenly, however, something struck him. One of the faces, he had seen before, many years ago. He tapped the face of one of the sisters, one with raven colored hair. 

"Who… who is that?" he asked Sapphire. "She seems familiar…"

Sapphire looked at the picture and frowned. “Aunt Cyprus, she killed brother Raven. He was Mama’s Avatar before Foxglove was. Raven was only six when Cyprus killed him. No one knows what happened to her. Mama went after her and no one really knows what she did to her. Mama has never said what she did.” She frowned a bit more.

She began to flipped the book to Raven’s picture. He was very young in his portrait. He had shaggy black hair like his namesake and vivid green eyes. Ash was next to them and they were children. “Mama made Raven as a playmate for Ash. They were really close up until that happened. I don’t know a lot about it before I seen this picture and asked Mama who he was.”

In reality, Angela had locked her sister into the very ashes of her body and burned her until she was sent to brimstone and fire. Possibly not the best idea but Angela wanted to curse her. Angela wanted her to suffer. “Aunt Cyprus was the Queen of the Black Court before Cousin Kirika.”

Drae's brow furrowed, trying hard to place the face that nagged him. Why do I know her face?

He listened intently to Sapphire's explanation of who the woman, Cyprus, was and what she had done. Her felt the hair on the back of his neck bristle when Sapphire showed him Raven, the dark haired boy stunningly similar to his own newborn son, Rohan. Same black hair, and green eyes, and Drae felt something deep inside him… dread perhaps. 

He didn't let on to Sapphire his disturbance, but it was clear that his interest had been piqued. 
"I see… I might have to do some research on my own," he said. "Let's keep going. I am sure that there are some siblings that I need to see the faces of," he said urging Sapphire on, not wanting to take away from his time with her. All in his mind though, he was trying to place the face of Cyprus.

The moment he locked onto the picture even more… the mark on him began to burn as if something or someone wanted him to pay attention. Sapphire was merrily kicking her feet on the high bench as she turned the page as Drae had asked. It was luckily for him that she hadn’t found out about his nervousness for she would have put the book away.

“You know Holly, Ash, Belle, Fern, Me, and Iva… You met Amaranth.” She was flipping through dozens of pages. “Let’s see who would you meet!” She flipped to the page of what appeared to be a red haired woman with druidic marks on her and golden eyes. “This book keeps track of everyone. This is Daphne! She is my nymph sister. She lives in Laeto and sometimes Mother goes there to ask for the wood that Daphne’s tree has. It’s magical!”

Flipping next was a large burly woman with red hair and hard eyes. “This is Basselina! She is from the Highlands or her father was!” The next was a petite man with blonde hair. “This is Thyme. He is a half-elf like me!” Flipping the page there was a strong-faced woman holding a baby. “This is sister Gissa.. she died giving birth but here it shows her holding Asianne!”

Flipping the next page was a red-haired woman holding a violin. “Probably the only person who could beat Holly out when it comes to being a bard is Calanthe. Her father was from the Highlands as well.” Flipping the next page Sapphire had her eyebrows go upset for a moment. “These are my otherworldly siblings.” It was a set of six. “The red-haired man is dead I know that much. The Cyprus of that world killed him too.. The red haired woman is Aaryona, I heard she runs a vampire clan over in Kurayo right now. The fox tailed, blue haired one is Reyviir and the strawberry blonde is Aelwen. The two silver-haired one are Nerezza and Lucian, they are twins. They are about the only ones who come around right now. You know Foxglove… Oh!” She flipped the page to a golden haired one. “Mama turned her! Her name is Marigold.”

The burning sensation made him grip his arm where the black rose mark had been etched into his skin years and years ago, and he hid a wince from Sapphire, but still rubbed the spot, trying to make the pain fade. 

"Daphne is the nymph, got it," he said with a nod, making note of the gold eyes and druidic marks for the nymph, and made sure he would be able to recognize Basselina by her stature, and made note never to comment on her build difference from her mother. It might lead her to want his head; Northlanders seemed to have shorter tempers. He now had a better idea about the one called Thyme. He remembered Amaranth mentioning how he was in his fifties, which made him significantly older than himself, but there was no way to tell with the half-elf. 

"Like you and me both, Love," Drae told Sapphire as he rubbed her head playfully. He looked at the picture of Gissa and Asianne with a solemn nod, and then chuckled at how Calanthe was possibly the only one who could surpass Holly as a bard. 

He recognized a couple of the other worldly siblings, specifically Nerezza and Aelwen. He had met them during his earlier stays with Angela, back when he had first became her lover, and he had heard a lot about Lucian. He looked at the other siblings and memorized their faces before Sapphire turned the page to reveal the golden haired child that had been turned by Angela. 

"All right… Marigold is the last one, right?"