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Thorn Hall is a large estate in county Cork. And while it has all the trappings of a normal farm: with fields, and pastures, an orchard of various fruit trees, a barn with horses and a few cows grazing, there's something about the land that just feels more real. As soon as they cross the borders onto the land its palatal. There land is alive. And not just in the green and well taken care of sense but also in a wild woods and blood spilled. An over abundance of crows and ravens rest in the trees watching them as they walk. There is a spirit of Thorn Hall and it brushes across Cavan just briefly as if judging his intentions Cavan is, after all, a stranger to this land and world. The fact that he's with Rory is definitely a plus and it retreats. Though there is a sense of warning. If Cavan does anything it disapproves of ...

If Rory notices anything about it, he doesn't show it. But he's quite used to the Hall.

The reason why Rory told him about a password is immediately made clear when a small girl, about five years old, drops out of the trees in front of them. She has the same hair and eye color as Rory and is wearing a dress that probably got mud on it as soon as she stepped out the door. She also carries a spear coated in pink paint and sparkles.

"PASSWORD!" she demands, holding the spear threateningly.

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As soon as they step onto the land, Cavan takes a slow, deep breath, eyes drifting closed. It's almost painfully familiar, and the land has a feel to it that he never expected to touch again. His last visit back to Ireland in his own world was painful, and while there's still a lot of open, rough land there, the people and the houses show a million little touches of modernization. Even the accents have changed. The fae have retreated, and some essence he knew in his boyhood has simply fled.

There is, in the flat hiking backpack he wears, a very short curved sword, but his intentions are completely pure. The spirit of Thorn Hall will find only wistful longing and gratitude in his mind and soul.

The girl does make him jump just a little, then he fights to keep a smile in check. "Bubblegum sprinkles?"

There is definitely a hint of the fae around. Just a tiny bit of teasing in the air, but Rory did mention that his family acted as guardians between the borders. There must be a crossing nearby. The sword isn't worrisome. What good is a sword against a spirit of nature?

The little girl glares at Rory. "You TOLD him didn't you!? Why do you always tell people the password!?" She aims a kick at his leg, but he side steps it deftly.

"Because it's rude to stab guests and your mum has been telling you to stop demanding passwords anyway," Rory says reasonably.

"How am I supposed to protect everyone if you let anyone in?"

"Cavan, this is my niece Ceilidh. Celidh, this is Cavan, he's a priest, so behave."

Her manners change a bit and she clutches the spear tightly as she says, as if repeating a line memorized but not sure of the meaning yet, "I welcome you to Thorn Hall and offer the gift hearth and home. So long as you offer no harm you will be welcomed and protected here."

Then she looks up at Rory to see if she got it right.

"Oh, I'm not a proper priest, not quite. Just a monk." He wants to be honest about this, after all. As he protests, however, his goes down on one knee to bow to the girl.

"Thank ye, kind lady. Ye do honour to the Hall, protecting the place so rigorously." He smiles gently at her, but there's nothing patronizing about it, just the quiet little smile Rory has probably already noticed is his habitual expression. "I'm grateful to visit here, it's... beautiful. So much like home... could I have your permission to enter? I mean no harm here."

"Yes... I suppose you can," she says reluctantly. Clearly she wanted to stab someone. "I mean you are welcome here and may enter."

Rory grins at her. "Go and let the others know we've got a guest, would you? I think Cavan would like to take the scenery in as we go and I should probably explain a few things before we get there."

Ceilidh nods her head seriously and then scampers off yelling loud enough to disturb some of the birds, "RORY'S BROUGHT A BOY HOME! CAN I PUSH HIM OFF THE ROOF?!"

With a groan Rory slams his palm into his face. Up in the trees the ravens and crows make a noise that could possibly be laughing.

Cavan just grins, rising to his feet again as the girl scampers off. He's not intimidated, and a little charmed. "If it's any consolation, I'm more durable than I look." That's putting it mildly, but Rory is right that they have a few things to explain as they walk. Rory's not the only one who has some explaining to do.

"I don't think she's big enough to push you off yet, anyway. Hopefully, they might actually believe you're not a date."

There's more bird laughter in the trees and one of them might have croaked "Hello Poopy Head!"

Rolling his eyes at the unseen bird, he starts to walk down the path. "First of all, two warnings. Don't go into the rose maze and don't go into the deep forest. I don't care who you are or what you think you might be able to do, those are two places that are off limits. The rose maze will ... well it won't kill you... if you're unlucky. Thorn Hall is essentially alive. You might have felt her when we crossed the border and she doesn't take kindly to people who enter the maze. Only two people can enter it, Grady and Grace - and Grace can only enter it at certain times."

He holds up two fingers, "The deep forest is where the Wakers are and we can't allow people to cross one way or the other."

The Wakers are the standing stones that Rory mentioned earlier.

He tilts his head, looking for the bird with interest. His first guess is a raven, since they've been known to mimic human speech, but in this place, who knows.

As soon as Rory starts walking, he's quick to follow and match his pace, sobering with a nod. "Yes sir. I did feel her, and I don't want to intrude anywhere. It's just... so good to even walk the ground, here. My world feels hollow by comparison. Cluttered, too... does that make any sense, that a place could be both cluttered and empty at the same time?" Cavan feels like he's babbling, and he knows that's not usual for him, but he can't seem to help it, either.

It is a raven... or possibly a crow... because the call comes out again but from the other side of the path. There's a ... whatever you get when you've got a mixed flock of crows and ravens surrounding and following them. They seem to be interested in Cavan watching him with their beady eyes.

"When Trever was three he taught the entire flock to say that whenever someone came out the kitchen door," Rory says, feeling like he needs to explain. "It took a while to convince them not to do so but occasionally we get a couple of wise guys." He doesn't add that being eight at the time he thought it was hilarious.

"And I might be a knight, but you don't have to call me sir. Rory's fine." He grins and then nods at Cavan's description. "Yeah, I get that... the few times I've been to other people's worlds they just... don't feel as alive. Especially the worlds with no magic in them. Sometimes I'd go as far to say that sometimes they feel dead."

It's a murder, be it ravens or crows, and Cavan looks back with quiet calm. They're portentous birds, but they seem such a fixture of the place he's not sure their presence means quite the same thing here. "They're smart. One of my teachers when I was young kept some, but he never taught them to say that." He's amused though, some lingering childish part of him wondering what would have happened if, in the midst of saga recitations or haruspicy lessons his teacher's birds had started calling out 'poopy head!'

"I wouldn't call my world dead, but it's... a lot of things get buried or hidden away. I try to preserve as much of the old secrets and knowledge as I can, carry them forward into the world..." He's a lot older than he looks, and so is his knowledge.

Indeed. If the flock suddenly decided to up and leave the McCallums would be worried. It'd mean the Morrigan had likely truly forsaken them or something worse. Rory has never heard of a time in all the years that Thorn Hall existed where the birds have not been there.

"I'm sure your teacher was older than three. Fortunately Trever never taught the ones up at Tara Castle to say that. The diplomatic incidents would have been hideous. Hilarious, but hideous."

Rory does tilt his head a little at Cavan thoughtfully. "What happened to your teachers?"

With a connection to Morrigan, ravens and crows are definitely part and parcel. Their presence is strangely comforting to Cavan, even though he's not a devout follower of Morrigan in particular. Ogma always lay closer to his interests.

"A bit, aye..." He smiles faintly, wistfully, at the memory, then sobers and looks down sheepishly, studying the ground at his feet as they walk. "...Time happened. I'm... a bit older than I look, too. The world has changed since I was young. What year is it, here?"

"Mm... 2012 as we reckon, using when the Romans got kicked out of Britain as a start date," Rory says. He feels like he needs to add the qualifier for context when dealing with out-worlders. "How much older?"

At least Rory doesn't seem to be upset, suspicious or disbelieving when Cavan says he's older than he looks. He just takes it in stride as if the man had said he wasn't a natural blond.

They're getting close enough to the house now that other noises can be heard: the barking of dogs and the gabbling of chickens. The trees are starting to thin out a little, but if Cavan looks carefully he can spot a dryad briefly look at him before melting back into her tree.

He is a natural blonde! Although the dark brown eyes occasionally throw people off. But he's already gauged that Rory would probably take the news all right, and he wants to have the truth out in the air partly because it seems safe to say it, and partly because it makes things so much easier if he can truly be himself without the usual worry of pretend to be a teenager.

"It's 2014, so we're not far off there... but I was born, well, found, in... oh... um..."He actually has to think about that for just a minute. "Well. A thousand years or so before the Roman calendar was adopted." He smiles sheepishly, shyly glancing up at Rory for his reaction.

"2014? Really? Don't mention it, some of them are are dying to see the new Hobbit movies and will kill to know how they are."

At the mention of his age, Rory doesn't blink an eye. Instead he just says, "That's not so old. I know older people. There's a god in love with Trever. Claims Trever is the reincarnation of his true love like six thousand years ago."

"I haven't seen them myself, so I can't help there." He smiles sheepishly.

Not so old. Cavan knows there's immortals out there older than he is, but there are only a handful of those. It's a relief, in a way, to be considered so ordinary here. "I'm not a god... but ye don't have to think of me as old. I just wanted to be honest."

"You've utterly crushed them. And don't worry. I won't think of you as old. You don't look it."

As he finishes there's a blur and a shrieking noise as Ceilidh goes running past them screaming that she didn't want to wash up. Rory also doesn't bat an eye at this either. Clearly this is a regular occurrence.

After that the Hall comes into view. It's a two story building leaning towards ramshackle but still well taken care of. It's easy to tell where additions have been made over the years to expand the house because no one really cared to match up the styles.

A large wolf hound is calmly laying in the yard with a severe case of kitten pox. Five black kittens are crawling around on him, batting his ears, swatting at his tail, snoozing on his back and doing other kitten things. A sixth kitten, this one fat, fluffy and grey, is nosing around the ground and eating rocks.

"That's the problem. I never will." Cavan gives a wistful little smile. It's very hard, among ordinary people, to be taken seriously when you're tiny and look like a teenager. His eternal struggle is not simply to be treated as his age, but to even be treated as an adult. Romance, too, tends to be very tricky ground. He mostly gets offers from people who are still figuring out how dating works, while the people he's actually interested in tell him he makes them feel like a pedophile.

The screaming girl running past startles him a little, but once he realizes what the fuss is about, Cavan tries to hide his smirk, and follows Rory on. "Ohh... it's lovely. It's perfect." The architecture ahead is appealing, a mishmash of history, and that's something he can definitely relate to.

"...Should the kittens be eating rocks?"

Well, that's not entirely a problem here as gods and fey do regularly romance mortal folks. It's all about actions as opposed to age.

"That's Mayhem," a new person says coming out of the house. He's a few years older than Rory with that same hair and eye color, but a bit more of a tan and coating of dust. While Rory feels like he belongs to Thorn Hall, this man feels like he's part of Thorn Hall. A part of her very living bones and blood. "He's part goblin so it's fine for him. And you must be the boy Ceilidh's yammering about."

He comes over and holds out a hand, "Grady McCallum. I'm the one who keeps an eye on the Hall and her lands."

"It... is where I come from. Immortals are... hidden. We have to live pretending we are the age we look." He shakes hands confidently, privately fascinated by the feel of the man's connection to the place. He can only imagine what that must be like, to truly belong somewhere so completely.

"I... can tell ye are." He smiles a little. "Cavan te Uterni."

"Huh. I could see that. But most immortals here are either gods or fey." There are a few exceptions here and there.

Grady smiles a bit. "A pleasure to meet you Cavan, and welcome to our hearth and home. And I suppose it might be a bit obvious to some. Did Rory give you the warnings?"

Though his eyes and mannerisms are warm, there's definitely a hint of iron especially when he mentions the warnings.

"I think I like it here better." He smiles sheepishly.

"And thank ye. He told me where not to go... and I felt the touch of the spirit of the place when we came in." He's generally well-behaved enough that he isn't worried. Cavan will happily stick to wherever they take him, just enjoying being here and with people he can speak freely to.

People often say one thing but then get curious and possibly drawn in by another. It never hurts to reinforce warnings. At least that's how it's been in Grady's experience.

"Good. Why don't you come in. Are you hungry?" Grady says, gesturing for him to proceed into the house.

The house... the house is simply put much bigger on the inside. The entryway and front room should take up the entire length of the house, but it clearly doesn't. There's several side rooms visible, the door across from them leads into the dinning room. A stairwell that is perhaps a bit too narrow goes upstairs. The furniture is a ramshackle mixture of really old things that were hand made and then more modern pieces of furniture that were definitely store bought. A TV set with a video game system is visible in the sitting area and currently being used by an eight year old boy playing Minecraft.

Toys are scattered about and it looks like someone has been fletching arrows. There are a lot of weapons in easy reach.

Again there's a sense of examination as Cavan crosses the threshold. This one is a bit more poking, but eventually retreats.

"Oh, I... could eat, but I'm not starving..." As he crosses the threshold, his mind is open, welcoming and receptive to the touch of the home's spirit. Also he's momentarily lost in wonder at the differing proportions of the house. There must be some kind of magic at work, here, and he's both fascinated and delighted. The prevalence of weapons laying around means his own sword is less likely to be taken as hostile, which is good because he carries it as a matter of practical self-defense. All his kind do, if they have any sense.

"This place is wonderful- and so big! Do ye have a large family, living here?" His current home is a little two-room flat, just big enough for himself and a windowbox of plants. He's content with that, but that doesn't mean he can't admire this place.

Rory takes Cavan's statement as hysterical from the grin on his face.

"You could say that," he sniggers.

In a much more serious manner, but he's also very amused, Grady says, "There's thirteen kids, Rory's the second youngest. But not all of us live full time at the Hall. Sean's in Dublin, Talia is up in Tara, Aofie lives in town with her wife. Grace is often... doing things and Sibohan's on tour sometimes, but her kids Ceilidh and Simon live here full time. Talia's kids, Trever, Kale and Nat used to, when they were younger, but they've moved out as well - but the Hall keeps their rooms open and Sean's girls will take them when they visit for the summer," he says thoughtfully. "That's the immediate family."

"Plus sundry cats and dogs and birds," Rory adds.

Cavan gives a little laugh. "Yes, then. And the pets are family too, aren't they?" He doesn't have pets, forced to move around often so nobody notices he's not aging, but he does like animals.

"I'd expect it to be louder, but I guess mostly everyone's out of doors?" Who would want to be, in such glorious countryside. He's hoping to see more of the grounds later, too, even if there are some spots off-limits. "Ye said there's a beehive?"

"Ceilidh's the only one outdoors currently. Most everyone else is out at work or elsewhere. Though," Grady glances over his shoulder. "Simon! I told you to get Ceilidh to wash up. Not continue playing games after she ran off screaming."

The eight year old boy gives the exasperated sound of any kid who has been forced do something they didn't want to do. He didn't complain, just grumbled, and sulked outside in search of his sister.

"Trev's upstairs but he's gotten the flu so I don't think you want to talk to him," Rory adds. "Cavan works with bees."

"You'd like to talk to the hives, eh? I guess I could introduce you. Come on."

Grady steps back outside and starts to go around the house. The large wolf hound shakes all but one of the kittens off before trotting at Grady's heels. The remaining kittens vanish and then reappear to chase each other in the grass.

"I think if I lived here, I'd always want to be out on the land... it feels so..." He takes in a breath, eyes drifting closed briefly. "It's alive. I'd forgotten... what it used to be like..."

He follows them right back out, without ever removing his pack, smiling gently at the kittens and dog. While he feels the ties of duty to his own world, this is a rare and wonderful vacation, and he intends to enjoy every second. "How many hive d'ye have?"

"We've got three hives here by the house currently, but one looks like it might be ready to split soon," Grady says. "When it does, I'll let them go where they want."

They turn around the side of the house and what must be the Rose Maze confronts Cavan. It's large and old. It also smells like roses in a brief breeze that snaps by, even if it's the wrong time of year for roses.

Cavan does pause to breathe in, as the maze sends out its siren call of scent, but he's wise enough to stay with his tourguides. "I suppose there's really no such thing as wild or domesticated bees, really. It's just a matter of where they live." He nods mildly.

"Do they... talk to ye? I mean... I've only just started to learn how to listen, I think, but everything seems to communicate more, here, than back home."

"No, I guess not, much like cats," Grady agrees. "As for talking? I've learned how to understand them, but Finn and Trever are the ones that can actually talk to them. Not very interesting conversationalists, I'm told."

They've reached the hives now, which are near a kitchen garden and a general flower garden, with rose bushes that are clearly less dangerous than the ones that make up the maze.

A few chickens scratch at the earth hunting for bugs and cluck quietly to themselves.

The hives themselves seem to be in excellent condition. Very happy and healthy and like everything else, just a bit more alive.

He can't help but get distracted by the garden, pace slowing as he peers at the plants there. Of course, there are bees on those, too, busily working away to keep the herbs and vegetables pollinated. "There were some at the last monastery I used to sit and meditate by, I used to half fancy I could hear them talking..." He's not sure if it was just his imagination, but he's not willing to discount that he might have actually heard them, either.

"Well, like I said, Finn and Trever can talk to them understand them properly. Perhaps they were trying to talk to you, even without words. They're quite clever," Grady says.

A few bees buzz over to Cavan and inspect him, one landing on his nose.

"Perhaps I just need to learn to listen better." Boring though their talk may be, he'd love to be able to understand it properly. Cavan is always ready to learn anything and everything, ever a student of the world.

When the bees approach he holds still, watching them with interest, and beams when one lands on his nose. He'll try not to go cross-eyes watching it, but he may or may not succeed. "Hullo miss. Do I smell like honey?" He uses it regularly enough in his food, after all.

"How good are you at reading their dances?" Grady asks, watching as the bee sits on Cavan's nose. "They seem to know good people, I've noticed."

Rory starts to say something but a whirlwind of pink comes bursting out of the backdoor. Ceilidh comes running out with a large pink sheet fluttering behind her. She also has a bright hideously pink owlet riding in a shoe box with her.

"UNCLE GRADY! PRINCESS STICKY BUBBLE GUM AND I ARE GOING TO GO FLYING!!!" she yells before zooming by, the sheet flapping as she runs. The owlet makes some excited noises.

Grady glances at Rory who sighs. "I'll be right back." And then the younger McCallum brother goes trotting after his wayward niece.

"It's really nice to have younger siblings sometimes. I was the second youngest until he and Grace came along."

"I was trying to translate them all, writing them down in a journal..." He blinks as the bee takes off in mild alarm, thanks to the whirlwind of pink. At least she's not likely to go far, and he can hardly blame her, but he does shift a bemused look to the girl. What a name for an owl. Strangely appropriate, though.

"I've never had any, but there were a lot of boys under the druids' instruction..." He watches her flapping away, with the other man chasing after to make sure girl and owlet both don't wind up hurt.

"I'd ask what it's like, but that's probably a hard thing to answer with nought for comparison." He grins apologetically.

Ceilidh is very good at naming things. She's also very good at running; she's making Rory work for catching her.

"It's like going from having to do all the chores to being able to tell someone else to do all the chores, essentially," Grady says easily.

It's amazing how fast such short legs can go.

Cavan gives a laugh. "I live alone now, so I'm used to doing all the chores myself. Speaking of that... ye wouldn't want any bread, by any chance? I don't know how to pay ye back for getting to see this place, but I make bread once a week, with honey..." It's not a chore, really, but he always has so much extra and so few people to give it to.

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I am so sorry, work ate me alive.

CLEARLY. XD

Annnd then I got sick. Ugh.

You poor baby. petspets

I'll live but still coughing up crud.

I hate that part.

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I am so sorry, work ate me alive.

CLEARLY. XD

Annnd then I got sick. Ugh.

You poor baby. *petspets*

I'll live but still coughing up crud.

I hate that part.

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You poor baby. petspets