first song ♪ not quite the beginning she wanted.

[gleamingly]

Characters: Rapunzel (gleamingly) and you!
Setting: Room 1-01, floor three, floor six, and floor twenty-two.
Format: I'm starting with prose, but I'll match you.
Summary: Rapunzel wakes up in the Tower of Animus after an argument with her mother. Worst time-out ever.
Warnings: Nothing so far.

Room 1-01.
When Rapunzel wakes, it is with a start, and it is not because it's too loud. Rather, it's because there is a distinct lack of noise. Where is the rustling of the leaves in the trees, the chirping of the birds, the (rather obnoxious and unattractive) snoring of her (ridiculously attractive) traveling companion? She remembers the argument with her mother and her heart nearly drops into her stomach. Had she been brought home?

A look around the room answers that question. No, she hadn't, but she also isn't in the woods on her way to see the floating lanterns. She is also not wearing her dress, and -

Are those other beds? She gasps and pulls her covers up over herself, self-conscious about the strange white jumpsuit she's found herself in, before peeking out.

"Who... who's there?" She calls out shakily. "If someone else is in this room, tell me now...!"

Floor Three.
She has never seen so many books in her entire life. It is all she can do not to drop her mass of hair and run among the shelves to find something to read; instead she keeps her long hair gathered up in her arms and steps off the staircase so that she can explore the library at a brisk pace.

If she had something like this in her tower, it would have been so difficult to get bored.

One might find her peering curiously at a book with pictures of automobiles, or with two novels in a trilogy resting on the frying pan and the pile of hair in her arms while she rushes about looking for the third, or maybe even eyeing a book perched precariously on the top of a shelf as she twirls her hair like a lasso and throws it to pull it down.

Floor Six.
Anyone passing by the forest floor may see a peculiar sight: A barefoot, long-haired blonde in a dress that seems too short for her, clutching a frying pan and staring down a deer with too-sharp teeth. The deer is growling; Rapunzel is glancing uncertainly between it and the chameleon perched on her shoulder.

"Deer aren't supposed to growl, are they, Pascal...?"

The chameleon chitters at her and points insistently at the staircase with his tail, but she shakes her head. "No, I don't want to just run away!"

Floor Twenty-two.
She is somewhat more relaxed now, but only because she hasn't yet gone very far into the gallery. For the moment she is just looking at the paintings and chattering to about them to Pascal, who is now perched on her other shoulder.

"Whoever painted this must have been very skilled! Look at the reflection in the water," She's saying, brushing her fingers against a painting of a young man staring into a pond. The plaque below it reads Narcissus, but she doesn't know what that means. "It's identical to his face! And look at the way the water catches the light. Can you believe this was made with paint, Pascal?"

The chameleon does not look very impressed. Rapunzel is undaunted; she'll continue her tour of the gallery.

Comments

Floor Twenty-two

[averytinyparticle]

Quark's always wary when he sees people going into the gallery--especially people he's never seen around before. And it's a lot easier to keep track of faces now that the Tower residents have all been smashed up to the first few floors. He figures he would've remembered seeing such long hair before. But that doesn't matter! He can ask her about that later, after he tells her about the gallery.

Ugh, girls are so weird. The last person he saw going in there unaware was another girl. Granted, that girl was way, way littler. Quark darts the rest of the way up the stairs to follow the blonde newcomer into the gallery, calling out as he does. "Hey!"

He slows down a bit when he catches sight of her again, breathing out a sigh of relief as he approaches. Quark's glad that she didn't get too far yet. He didn't really wanna have to see those scary things again, himself. "Don't go too far, okay, Miss? The paintings get really really scary and awful!"

[gleamingly]

Rapunzel looks over her shoulder when she hears the boy calling out, but she doesn't see him right away. It is only after he catches up that she notices, and she smiles, crouching down a little - but just a little, because she really isn't that tall to begin with - to be face to face with him.

"Scary?" She repeats. From her shoulder, Pascal makes a noise that, if chameleons could make such noises, sounds quite a bit like one of disbelief. "What do you mean by that? The ones I've seen so far are beautiful."

But then he said not to go too far, which of course meant they were much further in. "Do you know who paints all of these?"

[averytinyparticle]

Quark isn't sure where to keep his gaze focused: on the girl or on the little lizard friend she has perched on her shoulder. His face flushes with embarrassment, feeling almost as if he'd made an outburst in school and was getting a lecture from a teacher. Not that he'd ever been to school. "I mean scary," he repeats bashfully, deciding to look at her instead of at Pascal because she seems less skeptical, as if that answer clears up everything. "I got lost here once because I thought the art was pretty, too, and then there were all these pictures of people getting hurt..."

His expression droops. That was how he had met his friend, Jade, but she's gone now, and that's sad. Quark shuffles his feet, reminding himself that his Grandpa always told him there was a time and place for everything! Right now, it was the time and place to answer this girl's questions. "I dunno," he admits, "maybe Ruana, but she probably just made them up or something. They're not really real, I think."

[gleamingly]

"Well," She says after a moment, smiling in an attempt to help put Quark at ease, "Thank you for warning me. I probably would have been really scared if you hadn't."

Pascal rolls his eyes and scampers up her neck to lodge himself in her hair, apparently not in the mood for babysitting. Rapunzel purses her lips and mutters a "Be nice, Pascal," before returning her attention to the boy in front of her.

"Ruana... is she one of the people who runs this tower?" He didn't say Gothel and for that she is glad. A small part of her wonders if this is her mother's doing, because she said she wouldn't go back to her tower, because she disobeyed her. But she wants to believe that her mother is just looking out for her best interests. She doesn't want to believe that her mother would do this.

This is the second time she has heard that something in this tower isn't real and that makes her raise an eyebrow. "Not real. Like the books in the library, you mean? How many fake things are there around here?"

[averytinyparticle]

"Uh-huh!" Her smile does wonders, and Quark smiles in return, perking up easily. "His name's Pascal? That's a cool name! I'm Quark. What's yours?"

He watches, interested, as Pascal roams around her hair, then nods at her next question. "Yeah! She's in charge of everything. She likes to play games, but they really aren't very fun." People always got hurt. Quark doesn't really want to bring up the game from last month, where she showed up and was all scary and mean. These weren't very fun things to remember, or to learn about in the first place.

"Everything is! For the most part, anyway. All the monsters and stuff are real. But all the decoration are fake, and even the food and other people!" It was both frightening but fascinating. "Everything's just wire and film, but you usually can't tell because I guess they want us to not feel sad and scared all the time." Even if it felt like it, sometimes.

At least Zo tried really hard. That much everybody knew.

[gleamingly]

"Quark... I've never heard a name like that before!" She grins at him. "My name is Rapunzel. It's very nice to meet you." Pascal, his body a soft golden color, peers out at the boy from inside her hair. "Say hi, Pascal."

He chitters a little before vanishing back into her hair again.

"Ruana doesn't sound like a very nice playmate," Rapunzel decides. "You and I should play games together instead. That would be a lot more fun." She can't imagine what would possess someone to bring a child here. Why would anyone do that to them? Children are innocent and should be protected, not thrust into situations like this.

His explanation leaves a bit to be desired, and she stares at him blankly for a second or two. "...well, it's nice of them to try and keep us from being sad," She says finally.

[averytinyparticle]

"It's weird, isn't it?" Quark laughs; it's okay if he thinks it's weird. But that's the only time. "My Grandpa named me Quark because he said when he found me I was really, really small, and a quark is a really really small particle!"

His smile doesn't fade as Rapunzel introduces herself. "That's a really pretty name. It's nice to meet you Ms. Rapunzel, and you too Mr. Pascal!" If he was being honest, Quark wasn't so sure if he was supposed to be quite so formal with a lizard...but, well, just to be safe, he didn't want to offend it.

The boy's expression only brightens further. "Really? You'd play games with me? Does that mean we're friends now?" He practically bounces on his feet, hands ringing themselves together excitedly. "Yeah! That would be fun!" And Ruana definitely wasn't invited. "What kind of games do you like?"

[gleamingly]

"I don't know about weird... I think it's cute!" Rapunzel smiles brightly at him. "Your grandpa sounds like a very creative man."

She won't ask if he is here or not. She hasn't found Mother or Eugene yet and that in itself is painful. If Quark hasn't found his grandfather, she doesn't want to remind him. Instead, she just looks delighted at the compliment. "Aww, thank you, Quark!" Pascal peeks back out at the sound of his name and makes a motion with his head that might be a nod.

"Of course I would! I love to play games," She says. "And I'd really like to be your friend." She hums a little as she thinks about her favorite games. "Pascal and I played hide-and-go-seek a lot at home. We also like to play pretend!" There was no better way to substitute seeing the world than reading a book and imagining that she's going on the adventures herself.

[averytinyparticle]

"Those both sound like a lot of fun!" Well, hide and seek could potentially be extremely dangerous depending on where they hid, and it could get super boring if you hid too far away for someone to find...it would be like extreme difficulty hide and seek! Maybe if they got the whole Tower to play, it wouldn't be so bad, but that seemed like it would take some convincing...and not everyone was so nice as Rapunzel seemed to be. "What kind of things do you pretend? I've never really done that before! Do you use props and stuff? Are there rules?"

Sure, maybe he daydreamed a little here and there, but most of the time Quark was always so busy doing some thing or another that he didn't actually stop to play pretend. That and he didn't have many friends who really seemed interested in that sort of thing. Or who were his age.