Welcome to Gaia! ::

"Ohhh..." Was the only coherent response from Taji, her eyes going wide. It was just -- it was so shiny and neat and--! Belatedly she remembered her manners, and sweeping her skirt out and creakily bending at the knee in a very wobbly curtesy, she clasped both hands together and looked most imploringly at the queen.

"Please, miss queen lady, would it be okay with you if we borrowed your crown for a little bit? We will be right back." And though she waited, there was predictably no answer; the model continued staring stonily ahead at nothing in particular. "Silence means 'yes'," Taji added hastily, wondering if she was perhaps a little shy.

Again there was no answer. Taking this to mean her approval, Taji curtesied again for the Queen and began looking for a way to get to the crown.

Taji had begun prowling around the edge of the display like an impatient cat around a goldfish bowl -- it was clear that she was fully expecting it to be surrounded by glass, and she had secretly been hoping that her request would be granted with a large clap of thunder and the appearance of a really neat door in the invisible glass and then the granting of powers that would transform her into a shiny magical girl superheroine (and some for Ziya too.)

So when Ziya stepped up and began to climb under the rope, she turned and stared at him, eyes wide, in awe.

"You dispelled the magical barrier?" She asked Ziya in hushed, impressed tones as she hopped and skipped her way after him to the edge of the display, obligingly slipping her hand into his.

With Ziya's help, the star spirit managed to haul herself onto the platform without resulting to falling all over herself as she usually did. "Monsters?!" Taji repeated worriedly, spinning around on one foot as she looked anxiously about the room.

Everyone -- and everything -- was still, roped off on platforms like this one or else in glass display cases. The walls, on the other hand, very clearly depicted large monsters as Ziya had said, ones with bodies of men and heads of birds and -- "Look! It's a dog-head monster!" Taji pointed to the illustration of Anubis.

But, then again.. "Nobody's moving," she noted distractedly, glancing back towards the queen they were to borrow the crown from, "Maybe.. Maybe they're under a curse? Maybe the dog-head monster did it!"

"Ok," Taji agreed with a nod. She too had been raised on fairy tales about genies and sleeping curses and poison apples, and it only made sense that a long-lost ancient relic would be required to lift a stone curse cast by a dog-headed monster.

"We should be quiet, so we don't wake the monster up," she stage whispered to Ziya, very carefully lifting one foot and slo-o-o-owly and silently placing it in front of the other. She did not think it would be very fun to be a statue herself, even if she would be draped with pretty gold jewelry and shining fabrics like these other poor unfortunate souls.

"Really? Wind with sand? Can you fly with it, or use it to blow the crown down?" This immediately intrigued Taji, who remembered another part of the museum with a sandbox and dinosaur bones. It wasn't too far from the mudroom, and she could always run and fetch a bucketful if it would help Ziya.

Else, their only other options, it seemed as she turned and squinted at the room again, were to either lug over the benches and somehow stack them to climb up, try and balance on a stack of vases, or... Climb up the Queen directly. She was up for anything, but the prospect of true and real Magic seemed most fun to her.

"Woow..." Her eyes widened at the initial appearance of the whirlwind, and she bunched her skirts in her hands as she leaned up on her tiptoes to try and get a better look at the thing. "That's so cool!" Promptly losing her balance, she flailed her arms wildly and narrowly missed falling down on her butt.

"Okay, little whirlwind, now you gotta go high high high and retrieve the crown from the queen and save the day!" It was too bad she did not remember to bring her cape, it probably would've looked quite dashing in it. Belatedly she remembered to ask, "Anything you wan' me to do to help?"

"Wha..?" Taji barely had enough time to look between Ziya and the growing whirlwind with worry and some confusion before it registered that yes, maybe ducking WAS a good idea. She quickly did so just as vases started flying past, knocked from their displays, eventually dropping down to lay flat against the floor on her stomach, eager to display as small a target to random things flying by as possible.

And just as eager to flee before either of their parents found out or the dog-head monster woke up to devour them -- as it surely would, with all this noise -- Taji darted forward, crawling on her hands and knees, and retrieved the crown from the fallen queen. Wobbily getting to her feet, she held it up to present it to Ziya and then, realization dawning, said, "We gotta run 'n get out of here quick!"