Thunder rolled across the sky.

"Yup," her Guardian answered. He glanced over at his charge. "What?"

"You don't think it's going to storm, do you?"

"Well, that was thunder and lightning... are you afraid?"

"NO!"

"You are! You're afraid!"

"Am not!!!"

"I can't believe you're afraid of some rain!"

"IT'S NOT THE RAIN I'M AFRAID OF, BAKA!!!"

Roger chuckled to himself but didn't answer. It seemed best to change the subject, anyway. Wait a minute... it was as if the storm had suddenly cleared up. It looked like it had come from somewhere not far from the Mori... Remembering his connection to Susanne, he quickly stopped the thought, risking a sidelong glance at her.

She hadn't been paying attention to Roger's thoughts, anyway. Whatever that storm was... it was over now. She didn't care how or why. As long as it was over. But she felt something... a familiar presence.

She quickened her stride. They could see the forest now. And as they neared the tree line, they could see a familiar figure slumped against the trunk of a tree.

"Dionysus?" Susanne said, shocked. She ran over to him. "Dionysus? What's wrong? What happened?"

The man looked up. His teary eyes stared at her absently.

"Dionysus!" Roger said, nudging Susanne aside and shaking the other Guardian. "Snap out of it! What's wrong? Where's Celly?"

At the mention of the girl's name, he broke into a fresh storm of tears and began speaking incoherently.

"Shh..." Susanne whispered, sitting next to him. "Calm down, please. I have a hard enough time dealing with my little sister when she cries."

The comment seemed to have been heard, because Dionysus gave a teary laugh through the sobbing.

Susanne placed her hand on his shoulder to try to calm him, and quickly drew it back. That was... weird. She looked up at Roger with frightened eyes.

Can you see what happened? He thought to her.

No... it just feels... she struggled for some kind of word to use, but in the end just focused on her connection to Roger and once again placed her hand on Dionysus' shoulder.

Poor guy... Roger shook his head.

Susanne thought hard. Maybe this was a power. Emotional connection, something like that. She thought hard about something happy, something calm, and tried to project that into Dionysus.

Slowly, the storm receded until it was an occasional choking sob, and then he was quiet.

"Okay?" Susanne asked quietly after a few moments.

Dionysus nodded dumbly.

"You don't have to talk about it if you don't want to," Susanne said.

"Hey, what's going on?" Meredith said, coming up behind Roger. "We saw this flash of lightning and -- wow, Dionysus, you're a mess! What happened?"