As hands join from couple to couple, Gruffydd glances to his lover. It's perfect, actually. Just family. Just friends. We're all holding one another's hands. And the promise is a simple one. Love one another.

     "I am glad to know that I live on in beauty and verve," Elaine smiles. She bites back a laugh at the teasing of siblings. That she finds you all delightful is immediately apparent.

     When the three of you move or speak as one, he feels like Galahad surrounded by Grail Maidens. It passes, that feeling, but it leaves behind the residue of myth.

     "...It is a pleasure to meet you, children of my children..."

     Bianca looks to each one and then to the High King. "Your Majesty, I will stand for these three -- Sun, Moon and Star -- and vouchsafe their Avalon heritage for the Crown's recognition."

     "... We might as well discuss the two-hundred and some odd pound gorilla. You know that your grandfather and I have spoken with him. We're interested in your side of the story and how you're doing..."

     "We're brave things," Balthazar murmurs, his arms surrounding you, his head inclining as you move upon his lap. "We can take a little danger."

     "I just didn't know what to expect," Zillah explains to them both, still breathless from the whole experience.

     "...Prince Balthazar is a wonderful man of intelligence and grace, and he comes from a family by whom I consider myself privileged to be granted the honor of this consideration. I am certain that he would be dismayed if I took him so for granted as to fail to give him the opportunity to display his abilities; but I do not believe that I shall go out of my way to invent tests for him, our courtship already being secure. Fate will find tests aplenty for us both, as it will for all living beings who strive for excellence. My only hope is that we may both achieve a level of such that we may be each other's equal."

     After all, every girl has trouble letting go of her first love, even if she has class to get to.

     Golden eyes look to his sister, then quickly look away. When we played as children in the sun, it was like Hawaii never ended. But you are right, I am afraid, my sister. There is a shadow on my heart. I didn't know it was there until just right this moment.

     "Oh oops," Sabira says with a smile, folding her wings as she walks with Maddie into the radiant blue-white light and into the portal. She sticks a foot in first, that disappears from sight and then says: "I'm melting, I'm melting!"

     Maddie pivots, holding her breath as she heads back to the door through which she came. She is going to explode, she just knows it. Once her back's turned, she is blushing vividly. Ohmygod. I SO need a drink!

     "...You are putting too much pressure on yourself, sweet. That is that West Affliction," he smiles a little. "Way too much pressure."

     "The day after tomorrow - no, tomorrow." Maddie blinks, and gulps, going ashen. "Oh god. I should be practicing right now. Time got away from me!" She begins scrambling to brush crumbs off of her lap. "Thank god it's not today. I'd never forgive myself if I'd missed my audition!" She is all sixes and sevens, now...

     She tangles her fingers in your hair, lightly, gently, then withdraws. Her hand remains on your thigh, feeding you energy, powering the healing that is needed. "I think it is time that you built your temple..."

     "Is it really necessary to have ten medics? Aren't there wounded people down the hall?" Balthazar glowers, his head tipping back in pain (his pain evident in the tightening of his jaw, the sharpness of his gaze, and the way his other leg bounces up and down on the ball of his foot). "Bit of overkill..." he pauses, gritting his teeth as they prod his leg.

     Mentally, Pres facepalms. We're gonna need a bigger boat. He looks both ways. Where is someone to rescue him now?

     "You're the best dancer I have ever seen." He turns his head, he kisses your hand, he looks at you, and he gestures with the motion of meteoric lashes. Go on and dance.

     "I hate meditating." Maddie wrinkles her nose. "I'm bored."

     The crowd rises to its feet as chariots swing around the completion of the first turn and the grand armored figures for Rose and Gold begin to fight.

     "Well, whatever we're going to say, we better think fast," Pres mutters, slouching down again. "Here she comes." Maddie turns, eyes and lips rounding as she spots their sister.

     "The Birth of Venus," Gruffydd says suddenly, grand peacock wings making themselves known, spreading with relaxation. "You remind me of the Botticelli painting." He shimmers in his own exotic grandeur, made more so by merely being in your shimmering presence.

     Heavy, pendulous fruit, glistening with ripe nectar, release their perfumes around you. Bees, butterflies and hummingbirds sip at brandied sugar. Vines of honeysuckle and jasmine tangle overhead and spread over the sand and into the sea.

     She stares at the open box with disbelief and almost with dismay. This makes it all real, it makes it serious. She cannot pretend otherwise; she cannot deny it or disregard it. And, despite herself, she has to admit - she is intrigued...

     "Are you ready? Do you mind if we take a slight detour? There's something I'd like to show you. I will warn you," Balthazar says with a bit of a lopsided smile, "... it is fantastic."

     Maddie's in the back seat, lazing on the cushions and staring out the windows. Both Wests are a little bit unusually quiet, but eventually Pres speaks up. "So, Mads. Loki. Magic."

     "Soon, I'll be calling you Your Majesty. I'm not sure I'm ready for that, to be honest. To me, you will always be the little boy who crept in our bed every time it thundered."

     "Thank you for the welcome, sir. It's very kind of you to open your home to all of us. We'll try not to get in your hair too much. Right, Maddie?" He lightly pokes his baby sister in the shoulder. "We've been touring family reunions this month, it feels like. Next week: the Hatfields and the McCoys."

     My god... it's full of stars...

     He leans back just slightly, his fingers glancing across the rubies of the orchid. Balthazar lifts his gaze from it to your face. "You write me, and I sing you," he says, his voice soft and deep.

     Maddie shoots Balthazar a look that wavers somewhere between you didn't tell me! and you're a WHAT?. She blushes as the applause and murmur both move around the room with their rhubarbing rumble, and she hastily - very hastily - takes a drink. A large one.

     He is stripped emotionally as well as physically. It is there for you to feel, to see, to hear, to taste. It is in the salt of his sweat. The honey sweet fire of his kiss. Inspiration. Love. Sex. Divinity. What you create between you, where you meet and extending beyond you is nothing short of magic.

     Loki grabs his glass on the way. "A few hours of breathing space. I think. I may be on California time." His phone gets one cursory examination before it's disposed of in a pocket in much the same manner. "Boston time will just have to do."

     "...It is very strange. It is ...like you are a wave and you wash away all the sand from my skin, you polish me... like a shell."

     He parts the kiss with a tugging upon your bottom lip with his teeth, a light squeeze, the last sting of lighting before being smoothed by the suckling of his lips. Honey and fire; the buzz of the bee in the song of it, and the sting of the bee, however covered in nectar.

     Are you putting on a show for him or me...
     Or is it actually about Loki...

     It is spiritual, it is uplifting. There's herself and the board and the ocean, and if she isn't singing, it's only because her lungs have a different job to do right now. It is sex and philosophy, religion and nature, all rolled up into one package

     "You're used to the sun," he notes easily, without a trace of teasing. "You know how to protect yourself from sun-burn."

     "We'll try to tone it down for the newcomer nonetheless," Pres answers Balthazar with a slight grin to Loki. "I'm the dull one, I'm afraid. My sisters got all the glamour in this family."

     Loki gives up on this episode of Life isn't as simple as it seems in high school. It's not like he ever listened when he got it from his dad back then either. "I'll spend time with Pres in Oahu, anyway. I like Balthazar just fine, but I have no idea what he prefers to do on vacation. Probably things involving sun."

     Every seat is filled in Shepherd's Bush Empire, apart from those taking a quick break between shows -- ten minutes -- to get refills on beer and visit the necessaries. The old BBC theater is packed and the murmur of the crowd, the babbling Babel of nearly three-thousand, puts on its own kind of show.

     I really just don't need this. The West Girls should come with warning labels affixed to them...