[center][h3][color=green]Lewa[/color][/h3][/center]

Traveling for days on end did a lot did a lot of damage the Toa of Air's carefully-reconstructed resolve, eroding away his veneer of positivity until his anxieties once again lay bare and plain to see. He found it very difficult to feel as though he were making any kind of progress on a grand adventure while traveling at a snail's pace. How he longed to speed ahead, leaving the caravan wagons in the dust as he blew across this landscape like the wind itself! But the trip so far had taught him that this continent must be orders of magnitude more vast than his island home, so without the guidance of this world's locals he would be completely and utterly lost. So he walked, and waited. Withstanding every empty, mind-numbing hour, every breakdown and rut in the road, every night the organics spent sleeping while he roved around the countryside, lest he lay awake. Any minute, after all, could be the last for Le-koro and his people, crushed by the mindless onslaught of the Bohrok Swarm while its guardian was nowhere to be found, his brothers and sister ignorant of his disappearance or stretched too thin to stave off the tide of destruction. Making it back and finding his homeland in ruin, its vast and beauteous jungles melted into toxic sludge by the Lehrok, would be worse than never making it back at all. Lewa could not turn away from his duty, however, so if there existed any chance of returning from whence he came, he had to try.

At long last, after three soul-crushingly monotonous days on the road, the otherworlders came within sight of their destination. "Nieve," Lewa murmured, the name of the city never far from his mind these days. "Finally." Even from this distance, the toa could make out its astonishing scale. During his time as one of Mata Nui's guardians he'd traveled all across the island, witnessing the icy spires of Ko-koro, the underground village of Onu-koro, and the huts of Ga-koro on their sprawling mats of buoyant kelp. Out of all the settlements across Mata Nui, none impressed so much as Ta-koro, a citadel of ignenous stone that rose from a lake of boiling lava. Even that, however, paled in comparison to this human city in terms of size. All six Matoran villages combined might not be Nieve's equal, and it seemed obvious that more people existed in this one place than across all of Mata Nui. The smallness of Lewa's whole world came as a humbling realization. He swallowed, and pressed on alongside the others.

Lewa followed the caravan inside, his appearance raising no objections, but a handful of eyebrows. Some of the humans he met already referred to him as a 'golem', but even if the average person here could grasp at that plausible explanation, it did not suffice to fully explain something intrinsically alien to this setting. He proceeded warily, trying to set the humans' minds at ease with cheerful smiles and waves, rather like a country bumpkin who'd never before experienced civilization. Which, of course, wasn't far from the truth. If there was one thing clear in his mind, though, it was his purpose here. Having had several days to come up with a suite of questions, and get advice from the others on how best to pose them, Lewa felt very eager to begin his hunt for Lavielle. By now, he didn't care one whit about 'how' or 'why', only whether or not the goddess could return him to Mata Nui.

But just after selecting a group of idle citizens to query, and before actually approaching them, the toa received a question of his own. "Huh? Why me?" He had avoided the mysterious ailing child until now, feeling completely unable to care for the helpless girl in any capacity. Matoran might be smaller than toa, but they were all fully capable and complete beings, comparable to human adults. The concept of a child was beyond him. Yet out of everyone Anne singled him out, then ran off before he could tell her she was making a mistake. The buck had been well and truly passed.

After a moment Lewa shook his head, despondent. "Mata Nui..." He looked down at the girl. Not being the merchants' problem, she could no longer enjoy the shelter of the caravan, so she currently lay on the ground. He stared at her for a moment, unmoving. Why was she [i]his[/i] problem? He never wanted any involvement with her, or anyone here for that matter. Dumping this responsibility on him like this was neither smart nor fair. Why shouldn't he just walk away?

Unfortunately, Lewa knew the answer. If his actions displeased Anne, or any of the otherworlders, and they managed to find him, they could easily destroy him. While a beacon of strength and hope in his world, he barely registered in this one, so his continued existence depended on keeping the others happy. But the fact remained that he couldn't care for a human, especially a young one that couldn't even communicate with him. "Cross-wired piraka," he muttered in frustration, his plans completely derailed. He reached down and picked up the catatonic child as gently as he could. If he couldn't take care of her, who could? Remilia had healing abilities, but she couldn't repair the girl. Come to think of it, she wasn't 'human' either. Maybe if he could find a healer from this world, with a better understanding of how humans worked, someone like that could fix whatever was wrong with the child. Or at least make her comfortable? Better that than roaming around with Lewa for hours and hours. "It's worth a go-try." With a sigh he set off with a new set of questions in mind, now on the hunt for the city's medical center.