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Awen heard the girl calling out and it sounded like someone in need.
It didn't seem terribly urgent so Awen gave herself time to towel dry as she got out of her tank-bed and get a pair of shorts and a tank top to fit over her bathing suit. She had just layed down for a nap with her head above water before she heard the yelling.
When she exited her duplex she looked around. Seeing the dark-head right down the line of duplexes Awen's stomach tightened.
A new arrival? Or someone she just hadn't seen before? She slowly made her way forward, not to startle the girl if anything went wrong, or she hadn't seen another islander.

"Hello there." She said in a somewhat cheery voice. "Is something the matter?"

Antony had finally decided to return all the DVDs that she had borrowed from the entertainment room,
and after eating, she did just that.

With a cigarette lit between her fingers and a stack of DVDs nestled in the crook of her arm, the tattooed woman made her way through the village. She took note that Jamal was no longer in his cage before stepping into the entertainment room whilst taking a drag from her smoke.

It was only then that she noticed Sayuri, and she frowned sadly at her smoke.
"Want me to put this out?" She asked, motioning towards the cig in her hand.

It had been hours- nearly a day- since Emelyn's revelation at the foot of the mountain, and since that time, the strength the girl had prayed for seemed to have come for her- in spades.
During the day, she had gorged her small, pained stomach in berries and grubs- and drank enough water to satisfy her tortured body.
Then, during the night- she'd begun to gather herself, and walk slowly about the island, just enough to stretch her muscles before collapsing back inside her mountain home.
...Only recently had she awoken to find that her physical strength- though rife with many dips to contradict its normal valor - had mostly returned. Thus, why the girl found herself, basket at hip, coming down the mountain at midday to see if anything on her drying rack had been left lie by the birds.

The sun was bright, that day- and nearly blinded the hedgehog-girl as she made her way over the light, hilly dunes.
Sand crunched between her toes, and she wiped away the beadlets of sweat that gathered on her torso- which was bare to the world, except for her old, white bikini top- and, of course, the tawny fur that covered her body. Emelyn almost didn't see that there was a girl on the beach until she'd hit the tidal zone- and then, she gasped.

"Oh!" She said, squinting into the light, "I'm sorry- I didn't see you there." She didn't know, based on the way the girl was turned- if she'd met her yet, or not.

Kikue froze, looking at his face in the light of the room. "...The voices?" she echoed softly, fear creeping into the edge of her voice. From what she knew already, the thought of Julian hearing voices all of the time sent a feeling through her that disarmed her previous encouraging tone. There might be more than the Cat. Who else could there be? Might it be anyone out of Wonderland?

She stood in front of him, holding both of her hands over her chest. Trying to meet his green, feline eyes, she struggled with the decision to ask about the "voices." If they were like the Cat, they'd have come slinking right out of Julian's Wonderland, too. What she could remember of the stories from reading them as a child in London had her imagination grinding painfully to life, as she pictured him heaving up a chair and screaming "OFF WITH HER HEAD!" at any moment.

She watched his tail twitching over the edge of the bed, her eyes roving the feline features distinguishing themselves from his otherwise human body. The Chesire Cat, she whispered mentally. The stripes on Julian's fur were not lost to her. Maybe it was from the changes. Maybe Julian's Cat was the result of what the changes were doing to him mentally...

He had such a haunted look on his thin face... Kikue suddenly felt a kind of desperate pain, somewhere in her chest. It wasn't the fact he was hearing voices in the first place that scared her...it was 'who' those voices were, and where they were from.

"Julian," she started, her voice faltering as she tried to look at him again. That inward fear kept chewing on her insides, the thought that maybe, just maybe, the lines of reality weren't as clear as she had thought them to be. So often she hid in her own books or journals or music. What if it...it happens to me...

That's ridiculous. This isn't a story... It's from his changes... It's shocked him so that this is how his mind is dealing with it...

...But was that really it?

She noticed what he seemed to be looking at, out of the corner of his eye. "Your watch has stopped," she whispered, nodding at it.

For one wild moment, she thought if he never wound it again, Wonderland might vanish from his mind. Yet her voice still asked while she was thinking the very thought, "...Do you want me to wind it for you?" Stories are only stories...

A smile spread itself across Kikue's face. Colche's cheerfulness was infectious. "You want to be Belle?" Kikue questioned, her face showing more emotion than she had shown in a long time. She didn't say it in third-person... Kikue's arm was already around Colche's furry shoulders, but in a movement that surprised Kikue herself, Kikue laid her head on Colche's. Inwardly she stood at the verge of her mind, completely aghast at what she was doing. She was never like this so easily in front of other people!

"Belle's a good choice for you," she heard her voice saying, as if it were from far away. On-screen, Belle was just walking slowly onto the TV, dressed in her beautiful yellow gown to dance with the Beast. Kikue had only heard the story in books herself, but it touched something in her the same way all the other stories did.

She lifted her head from Colche's ebony hair and pointed at the screen. "Look at her dress, it's almost colored like your fur, Colche." Kikue smiled at the little cat-girl nestled against her side. Those blue eyes were watching the screen with such a sense of wonder... "One day, you'll probably dance just like that, too."

Kikue's head slipped back onto Colche's, watching the screen. Her voice came softly. "You'll dance just like a princess." Belle and the Beast whirled across the marble floor, the song leading them. "...With your prince."

Kikue's grey eyes slipped closed, images from her own fairytale book surfacing in her mind. It was kind of like a dance... From so long ago... But I've never danced...

The sound of one of her favorite pieces of the violin, echoing quietly.

And she began to fall asleep, holding onto to Colche, the song still playing. 'Tale as old as time...' Colche's fur was warm, and Kikue's mind had wandered too far towards sleep to even worry if she looked silly or not. The song...

The irritation that was now so often creeping up on Kikue and taking control got the better of her. A growl sounded deep in her throat, and she glared daggers at the girl. She had no idea what "PETA" was, but this girl had crossed an invisable line.

"I don't know who you think you are to accuse the first person you see here, but I have no idea what or who 'Feral Labs' is," Kikue nearly snarled, her vaguely feline eyes flashing. "But I have nothing to do with them. Especially if they're comprised of Moreau and the rest of the staff here." Her silvery fur bristling, Kikue unknowingly showed her sharp teeth in a look of what was unmistakabley a cat's aggression stance. This girl had no right to show up out of nowhere, pointing fingers at anyone that came around the corner as the torturer of her precious mice and kittens.

The one comfort, though, came from the girl's claim to going home and wrecking havoc on the internet with her little tale. "I don't think you'll be going home anytime soon," Kikue stated bluntly, not caring to try and soften the blow. As if this girl was going to believe her anyway. I should have told her I was a lab kitten that they're trying to grostequely turn into a human being. Even know, Kikue didn't know what she was turning into, but the fact it was feline was apparent enough.

"You shouldn't be worrying about rabbits and mice." Kikue finally realized her temper was getting the better of her again - that fierceness swelling up in her when she found herself in a confrontation. She tried to control it, but found in a way she didn't even want to. She glared into Fiona's stark blue eyes. "You should be worrying about yourself. Because you're the one in the lab now."

Whipping around, Kikue stalked off from the girl, her back to her as she headed back to her duplex. The anger was plain on her face, while she mentally made a note to burn the orange-haired girl's image into her mind. Then she wouldn't forget what she'd looked like, even when the girl began to sprout fur.

Assuming it would be fur.

"What a way to start the day," Kikue growled to herself.