Welcome to Gaia! ::

The children have been transported to a garden more beautiful and verdant than any they have ever seen. This is the storybook Eden, the one illustrated in jewel tones in expensive books. The landscape is made up of rolling hills, covered in wildflowers of every kind imaginable. Among them wade larger beings, sort of a combination between human and plant, that seem to be both at once. The trees dance and twist. It isn't hard to find human shapes among the branches and trunks.

It is daytime in this part of the garden, pleasantly cool and bright.

A wind pushes the children towards a hill that seems to rise above the others.

Someone is watching them.

Evelyn was flying through a silvery world, then it seemed like she was falling, falling, falling. The girl felt no different when she arrived in Eden and looked around at where they'd landed. Though she felt the same, Evelyn had changed in appearance. The poinsettia petals had grown in size and the girl's skin had taken on a greenish hue. As she stood there looking around, her feet, which had become more like two long sets of roots, began to burrow into the ground without the girl noticing.

Evelyn's eyes fell upon Alice and the toddler she held. The girl blinked, noticing that her friend was... different. More... puppy like... Odd. Very odd.

Alice was confused when the toddler in her arms started to struggle and fell out. This made her worried breaking her out of her happy little adventure plans, the ground was soft with grass and flowers but she didn't want the child hurt. However when she glanced around to check on the boy she noticed something more which distracted her from Aiden.

Her overall plan was to explore this strange new place, the friendly wind was encouraging her to head up the hill and she thought she smelled something similar to the little flower boy up there so she figured adventure lay up there and wanted to go there. However she had noticed Evelyn and more importantly that her friend was sprouting roots which Alice didn't think was good since then Evelyn couldn't enjoy the adventure with Alice.

Thankfully Alice still retained normal legs so her movement was not impaired as she rushed to her friends concern bright in her eyes as she pointed at Evelyn's legs.

Alice was relieved that her friend could still move her legs despite their new appearance but the scream worried her. With Alice's new senses Evelyn's panic and scream were even more noticable than normal and so worried Alice more. Alice saw nothing ugly about Evelyn's appearance and as long as the body was workable Alice didn't see anything to worry about but Evelyn clearly saw something to worry her with the roots.

Reaching her friend Alice wrapped her in a hug hoping to sooth and calm her down releasing little worried wimpers but smiling in an attempt to show that nothing was wrong.

Aidan wasn't quite sure what he was supposed to do, but he knew that sitting there doing nothing was not an option. He was stuck somewhere with two girls he had never met, away from his Qing and Nana, and looking and feeling different than he was supposed to. And now one of the girls was crying.

Why was she crying, though? He didn't know how she was "supposed" to look, but he rather liked the red petals she had. She reminded Aidan of... well, himself. "Not ugly," he said firmly, pulling himself up and looking around. "Pretty flower."

Speaking of which, they were surrounded by pretty flowers, in red as well as blue and purple and yellow and orange and several colors Aidan didn't know the names of yet. He didn't know much about what was going on, but he did know that the place where the party was didn't have flowers. Something was very wrong indeed.

Silver had given way to bright blue some time back, but Kirra didn't really note the difference until a cloud drifted by above her, restoring perspective. She was lying on her back in tall grass, soft and sweet-smelling. The cloud floated over and beyond her, and the toddler pushed herself upright to watch it as it drifted towards the distant hill.

This was a different place, Kirra realised, looking around. All colours, like a picture book - all flowers. Her Mummy loved flowers. She should pick some and bring them back. She reached out to grab a handful - or tried to. Her wing folded forward but her arm didn't move. Puzzled, she reached again... then tried the other arm... then tried to shake both arms. Her wings flapped wildly, frantically, unbalancing her till she fell forward on her stomach. Her arms didn't seem to want to cooperate. They were still there, just... sleeping? The toddler glared at her unresponsive hands, but even trying to wiggle her fingers just set her feathers ruffling. Not fair, hands, she thought. Wake up already.

After a few minutes of unproductive sulking, Kirra used her wings to get herself upright again. She was surprised by how strong they felt, like she could just jump up and never come down again. Now that she was standing up, she could see other children nearby. They looked a bit like people from the party, but a lot like something else.

"Hey, wait up!" she called, running over. Her tongue felt fuzzy in her mouth. Her voice rang clear and piercing, but the words were barely words at all.

Well, at least now she wasn't crying about being ugly. And she seemed happier to boot. Aidan nodded firmly, before catching sight of yet another girl. What was with all of these girls, anyway? But he flashed her a smile and started to follow the fuzzy one. It wasn't that he disliked his surroundings- quite the opposite, in fact- but they were unusual and he didn't like such a big change happening without him knowing why.

Still, he was interested in what was going on around him, and wanted to see what else was out there. He would get to the bottom of this!

It was strange how different it was to run with her arms hanging limp at her sides. Kirra felt a bit like a puppet with the strings all cut. But her wings spread out for balance, all by themselves, and tilted as she ran, catching the wind. Fun.

She spun to a dizzy stop when she reached the older girls, beaming up at them, and then at the boy - who was her age, yay! She couldn't wave, so she flapped her wings a bit more. Maybe they'd understand. They all seemed so nice.

"I'm Kirra, did you come from the party?" she chattered around her fuzzy tongue. "Do you know what this place is 'cos it isn't home. Isn't it pretty? Hello!" She paused for breath. "...so where are we going?"

Sunny day, new friends. Despite the strangeness, Kirra felt like singing.