Welcome to Gaia! ::

A chilly winter wind whipped Samantha fisher's hair about and into her eyes despite the parka style hood she wore. The hazy auburn veil obscuring her vision agitated her more than the cold wind or what she felt was an unnecessarily walk.

Charlie beaker was a local farmer who raised Bison as opposed to cattle. The purpose was still the same, to send them to a butcher when they were ready but the meat itself was leaner and overall better for you. Samantha had made a deal with him four years ago to get a half animal every year to stock her freezer with.

Over time she'd come to visit the man for general company reasons and not just to renew the contract and inspect the facilities to insure everything was up to par. Still it was the dead of winter and she didn't really want to be trekking all the way from the nice warm house out to the barn.

" A really beauty I tell you fresh from Earth and white as the snow, got her quarantined from the herd for a week to make sure she's as fine as the vet says and then I'll try not to lose her in the snowdrifts" Charlie grinned as he lead the way.

A white bison, an interesting creature to be sure and any other time Samantha would have jumped at the chance to see it but right now her feet were freezing and the air was.. smokey?


Both humans noticed the smell at the same time and dashed the rest of the way towards the barn. Inside was thick smoke and the most unpleasant smell Samantha had ever experienced. From inside the smokey building there was a strange terrified cry and Before either could venture inside a heavily bundled person rushed passed a manic grin upon their face.

Startled, Samantha turned to go after them before the cry came again and this time it was more recognizable as that of a child. As charlies turned to chase the intruder she braved the possible inferno of the barn and went in search of the child.

Past the first barrier of smoke Samantha could see better and found that nothing inside was on fire, the hay remained untouched, the wooden building unscorched. In fact all the smoke seemed to emanate from a single stall, the same stall the cries came from. Terrified of what she might find Samantha bit her lower lip and ventured forward nonetheless. Please don't let there be a burned kid in there, she prayed, please don't let some sicko have burned a child.

There was no burned child in the stall but there was a small girl with wide brown eyes , small horns and hair as white as the snow. Carefully but quickly Samantha scooped the child up and rushed her out of the barn. " It's Ok, baby it's fine no one can hurt you" She assured the strange toddler she held in her arms.

She didn't know how the kid had got there or what their connection was to the madman the madman they'd seen leaving but Samantha was sure of one thing. Charlie wasn't really equipped to deal with a kid, never mind a kid who appeared to have replaced his prize new purchase. The girl was going to need a home though and it seemed to her like fate had chosen her.

Observations

Laying on the couch Samantha let her attention waver between CSI and Winona playing on the floor. The young Bison girl was being fairly quiet at the moment playing with some toy cars and a little car wash and ramp thing Samantha had bought her.

In the short time Samantha had been caring for the girl she's noticed that while she seemed like most other toddlers Winona had a few quirks or at least ways of doing things that Samantha didn't remember doing herself as she grew up.

When it came to food the girl was odd eating cold foods first then warm ones and always working from one side of her plate to the other. Samantha couldn't begin to guess at the point of this but found it cute of cute.

Watching her daughter's ears and tail had become important as she's noticed that the speed and way either of them moved could easily tell the woman what the little girl was thinking and how she felt about things. Although pawing at the ground was also a fairly clear signal she gave especially when upset.

It was little things like that which amused Samantha and made her wonder if it would always be this way, if Winona would always drive her cars around a pillow and then up onto the ramp to jump onto the pillow instead of just driving over it with the same headstrong ness that seemed to take her everywhere else Children grew up so fast and people tended to change the more they experienced the world. . For now Winona seemed naive and in a strange way oddly subtle about who she was even her personality was rather Brash. Samantha wasn't sure yet that she ever wanted to see anything different in the girl.

Winona's hooves clopped softly down the alleyway that ran between several sets of large stalls. The barn she was in, the barn she was born in retained a faint smokey smell but mostly all the girl got when she flares her nostrils and breathed deep was the smell of things like her, a different sort of sweet smell and then a bunch of things she didn't know how to explain even in her head.

Hard coated, hoof like fingers touched the wood of the stalls feeling their resistance a bit but not the grainy texture of the wood, nor did the girl need to fear the risk of splinters. Her oddly formed hands were both a blessing and a curse. They were strong but inflexible, it didn't hurt to accidentally close the door on them or sit on them but she often nodded both hands to grab things her mother could grab in one.

" You sense anything?" Winona flicked her ears to better watch the sound of Charlies gruff voice. The nice farmer man had been here when she was born too. He gave her warm bread with butter and looked at her funny but the Bison girl liked him sell enough. Even if she didn't understand why he looked at her funny sometimes

The girl shook her head as she entered the designated stall " No, just smell stuff but I don"t member anything." Winona was supposed to be trying to remember how she got there and a man who'd set fire to the stable but neither smelling the place of her birth nor seeing it was doing anything to help bring back the memories if she had them. " I'm sorry"

She turned to face the blue eyed man sadly, she wanted to help but she couldn't she just didn't remember any madman. All she remember was thick choking smoke and a another bad smell and then her mother had come and taken her away and the air has smelled clean and she was safe.

Charlie smiled softly and sadly at her " It's ok kid you were scared I don't expect you to I just wanted you to try. We'll go back inside have some more bread and I'll teacher you how to play poker."

" You'll do no such thing"

Winona laughed as her mother glared at Charlie, she wondered what was bad about poker.

" Crazy eights then?"

" Fine"

With the adults in agreement and heading back towards the house Winona gave the stall one last curious looked before trotting after them tail swinging behind her happily. For now there was the promise of bread and all was well.

Red, green, blue, green, yellow

Winona watched the pattern flash before her eyes slowly before repeating it. Her caratin coated fingers tapped the respective coloured light pads mimicking the patterns. Said fingers being covered in few coats of clear nail hardeners since the cracks had appeared. It seemed to have done the job as they hadn't gotten any worse, not that they'd gotten better either. Still, they didn't hurt and the young bison girl could still play.

With the wind blowing fiercely dropping the temperature and kicking up snow so you could barely see outside Winona was trapped indoors. Her mother had given her a plate of carrot stick and peanut butter to snack on and a dusty old game she called Simon where you had to follow the pattern of the four lights that the game gave you. The patterns got longer and longer and if you eventually went long enough you won. So far she'd played twice and lost both times having forgotten a colour becuase the time between flashes sped up too much. Still the girl was determined to beat the game.

Since her mother had told her the game was hers to keep now Winona knew she had a long time to beat it but she was going to try very hard to win today becuase she had nothing else to do. Plus it was on easy mode so even if she did win there were two other modes she could flick the switch to and try to beat.

Losing her concentration she missed a light in the next pattern heard the annoying bzzzt of a wrong answer and sighed. Her tail flopped back and forth, the soft hair covered end ticking the backs of hers legs as it did so. With a giggle Winona reached for a carrot stick and pressed the restart button. Time to try again.

PCM part two
Squish squish squish

Winona's light brown eyes stared down at her dark hard coated fingers nervously, they were doing funny things again and now they hurt. The girl had no idea why though and nothing else was acting funny. Her hooves were still the same and her nose and a hair and her horns too. Nothing else was cracking and hurting randomly. This distressed the Bison girl especially since her mother kept putting the hard nail stuff on her fingers and they kept showing cracks anyways.

Now today they were all weird and kind of squishy at some parts , those being the parts that hurt. Although they were also sort of bendy which was all kinds of weird and might have even been cool if it didn't hurt. As it was the girl was just a bit scared and annoyed.

Laying on her back in bed, tucked under the horseshoe print blankets the girl had gotten when shopping with Sid , Winona sighed lay her fingers down to rest on her stomach. Her ears flicked a little listening for the normal night sounds outside, trying to distract herself from the pain. It was time for sleeping after all. Besides her mother didn't know what was wrong either and neither did the doctor they'd gone to see he'd just said to wait and saw what happened. In the girl's mind all waiting had got them was nowhere.

Maybe in the morning they could go see Charlie, he was nice and he had Bison, which her mother said she was just like except not quite. Maybe this happened to normal Bison and she'd caught it while she was there last. Charlie always said he had to have a healthy herd so Winona was sure he'd have medicine for whatever was wrong with her if it was something like that.

Even if he couldn't fix her maybe he'd let her go out in the field and play with them or feed them bread. Winona always felt happiest when she was in a large group, be it people or animals. Maybe if she was happy enough she wouldn't mind the pain so much.

Though warming them by laying them on her stomach seemed to have helped dull the throbbing a little. armed with this knowledge and a plan for the morning Winona tried to fall back asleep, hoping for daylight to come soon.

“ You mustn't touch that”

Winona frowned at her mother's words. Though it had barely begun she'd said that several times already on this trip and the young bison hiccup was getting sick of it . “ Mustn't touch anything” She huffed and scratched at the base of one of the one of her budding horns. It wasn't fair, her mother got to touch everything, pick stuff up, stretch things and even smell or squish them when they went for food.

Not her though, Winona was always told, she mustn't touch things, to put things back where she got them and or just to keep her hands in her pockets all together. This had become a sticking point between the two and the young girl often made point of poking things swiftly or running her hard coated fingers across cars in parking lots and random objects in stores just to see if she'd get caught and how far she could push her mother when she was.

Today all Winona received in response to her grumble was a sigh from her mother. She swiftly decided that the entire shopping trip was going to be no fun at all and she made a point of letting her mother know it. She followed behind her stomping her hooves with each step and swishing he tail angrily. If she couldn't have fun than she was going to annoy her mother until she wasn't having fun either and gave her a good reaction or took them home. Then just before they left she was going to touch something just to prove she could.


The chance to lay her hands on something actually occurred sooner than Winona expected when her mother left her alone to use the bathroom. As soon as the green stall door closed the dark skinned girl smirked and raced away out of the smelly tiled room and back into the mall. The restrooms were right beside the food court and Winona made her way quickly through it.


The young hiccup weaved through throngs of many different looking people as fast as possible. Her mom always took forever in the bathroom and never talked because it was embarrassing; still, Winona couldn't be sure exactly how long it would be before her disappearance was discovered and she wanted to do as much as possible before she was captured.


White tail flicking lazily behind her Winona moved swiftly as she made her way towards the drug store. Though she was walking fairly fast she made sure not to run. Past experience had taught her that she was usually caught quickly if people saw her running because they assumed she was in trouble. Not that they were wrong exactly.

Nevertheless the toddler ducked into the drug store as soon as possible. She love this place, it had makeup you could try on , even if she didn't get it's purpose, and machines that played nice music and little locks of hair in all different colours for her to touch. Sometimes and only sometimes her mother even let her rub some of the samples of perfume on her skin. She was never actually allowed to play with the other stuff though so she was going to do that today.


Time seemed to fly by as the young bison girl rubbed eye liner and lipstick on her hands and arms seeing several nice shades and finding one lipstick that made her skin sparkle ; though in the end Winona had to admit that there were several spots on her that now looked like funny bruises. Once bored there she'd played with the hair samples in the hair dye section, she'd always wondered if dying her hair would make it as soft and shiny as the hair she had there. Winona was also curious as to how they got the locks of hair from people.

After pressing ever button on the CD sample machine Winona slunk out of the store between a gate. Suddenly the light on top of it flashes and a voice came out of nowhere talking about cashiers and tags. She didn't have any tags or anything from the store she'd just touched stuff not bought it so frowning she kept walking only to feel something heaver land on her shoulder. In her peripheral vision she saw set of long thin fingers and when she looked up Winona saw a not happy looking man in the store uniform .

“ Your gate's broken” She informed him solemnly. “ It thinks I have tags.” Vaguely she wondered how much a broken gate cost to fix.

As it turned out the gate was not broken and Winona had forgotten to take one of the tubes of lipstick out of her pocket after playing with it. Fortunately her mother had shown up to make things better before they had taken her only gods knew where to yell at her for stealing. Not that she'd actually stolen the lipstick, she didn't event want to wear any it was just an accident. Still they'd been mad at her.


Now the small girl looked up at her mother sheepishly, her face was flushing though her dark skin hid the first signs of it. It felt very warm and she was horribly embarrassed , now her mother thought she was the stealing sort along with the mall man and everyone else who had seen.



“ What have we learned today?” her mother asked arms crossed and one blond eyebrow raised high. Winona nibbled her lower lip for a moment. What had she learned, not to leave her mother's side, not to argue with people in uniform, not to tou-.

.“ Mustn't touch” The words where soft and the was a sort of defeated tone to the girl's voice “ Mustn't touch things”

At the clinic
PD at dreamers clinic with Mik

Pizza time
PD with Phineas

Growth quest pt one

Present time

Winona fiddled with the nob on the front door. It was after ten in the morning and that meant the mail had arrived. The young bison girl loved looking at the brightly coloured fliers her mother dismissed as junk mail. She also loved to play with and eat the various samples of free products that showed up from time to time. Mail time was one of the young girl's favourite times of the day. Winona's tail swished behind her in anticipation as the nob clicked and the door swing open, there she was free to collect the mail, thus helping her mother and getting what she wanted.

A grin plastered on her face the young girl toddled outside and down the driveway towards the mailbox oblivious to the rest of the world. Today was a good one and there was smelly perfume sample, a catalog from one of the stores in the mall and the usual letters with her mother's name on them.

Turning back towards the house Winona paused and stared at the front porch, there was stuff on it that hadn't been there just a few moments ago. The girl's brown eyes narrowed as she sped her way back up the driveway and paused on the front step of the old wooden porch. Those had definitely not been there a few minutes ago when she'd gone to get the mail.

A small green shoot with little leaves peaked out over the top of the dirt in a small orange clay pot. This sat beside a cage filled with pleasant smelling wood shavings and a small blue bunny, it looked sorta like the ones in the Easter commercials. There was a note taped to the top that said Buck, American Fuzzy Lop. For Winona. The bison girl had no ideas what any of this meant but she did know that these gifts were clearly hers.

Carefully she opened the door again wide to let some warm out out so her presents didn't get cold child she set the mail on the coffee table then ran back to lift first the pet and then the cage inside before closing the door again. Gifts she had gifts and they were just for her and she didn't have to share with Moloch because nobody sent her anything. Not that the bison child didn't love her sister just that well she was older than the other girl and deserved things and more of them.. right?

“ Mommy there's mail and somebody sent me presents” Winona shouted in the direction of the kitchen where by the smell her mother was preparing grilled cheese for lunch. The long white haired child instantly felt bad when the bunny kicked up some shavings and huddled in the corner of it's cage furthest away from her. Maybe she shouldn't have yelled.

Winona waited patiently in the living room with her pot and bunny cage on the coffee table next to the mail which was now of practically no interest to her though she could still smell the perfume sample. The girl shifted nervously from hoof to hoof as she waited for her mother to come see.

“ Winona what are you talking abo-... where did those come from?” Her mother looked and sounded confused.

The bison girl shrugged “ They were on the porch when I came back from getting the mail, they are just for me the note says so.” Winona tried to keep her voice calm, the bunny didn't like shouting. “ The note didn't say who they were from or why just that they were for me and I think what the bunny's name is” It was for certain a long name , it would have to be shortened.


~
A Half hour later Winona sat on the couch sipping a juice box and watching Dora the explorer. Her mother had called her uncle Charlie thinking he sent the presents but he hadn't so they still didn't know where they came from. Winona liked her mystery presents to be honest and as long as she got to keep them she was happy. She'd told Moloch about her presents but the other girl didn't seem to care much. Well at least she wasn't jealous. For now the bunny and potted sprout were up in her room and she'd go check on them soon as her show was over.